“Wash the plate not because it is dirty nor because you are told to wash it, but because you love the person who will use it next.” - Saint Teresa of Calcutta Every night after dinner, Niles does the dishes. Mostly, he stacks them in the dishwasher and runs it, but often he also hand washes the pots and pans, setting them in the drying rack and putting them away later when they've air-dried enough. He always clears the table and wipes it down, making sure everything is the way it was (sometimes cleaner than it was) before we sat down to eat. At the beginning of our relationship, when he’d do this I felt somewhat at a loss. Doing the dishes had always been my responsibility, along with nearly every other household chore, and I wondered what to do with myself while this other person took care of it. It was one of many mundane tasks that had always been on my already-full plate and freeing that space felt almost like cheating. A little breathing room felt suffocating in the con...
Recently, my aunt's brother in law, Tom, passed away. Tom was such a fantastic person - born with Down's Syndrome, he was a joyful and loving light to all who knew him, a blessing to everyone he met. While I was struggling through my divorce, Tom became fiercely protective of me and my three children; and it was shortly after this time that he gave me what appeared to be a purple rosary. At the time, I was deeply touched by this sweet and beautiful gift. It was a testament to his simple, faith-filled desire to pray for me and care for me. How little he knew what a miraculous gift that "rosary" was. One night, I picked it up and I noticed something peculiar about the rosary. Instead of five groupings of ten beads (each separated by one) it had fifteen groupings of three beads. Curious, I decided to do some research at Google University and discovered that it was actually a chaplet to Saint Joseph. Tom, who wanted nothing more than to protect my family, had inadvertent...