"THE HAG"

Mrs. Lila Sue Haverty lived in a modest house in a small town. Four children had grown up in this house, and it contained many fond memories for her. Ralph, her husband, had kept it in good repair while he was living. Ralph worked as a millwright.

Their children are now grown and are all prosperous and comfortable.  Samuel is 60 years old, and is an engineer.  He is married and has grown children.  He and his wife live in a beautiful home built on the edge of a golf course.  They have a cabin on a lake, belong to a country club, and travel to distant places on vacations.

Lorelai is 58 years old and divorced.  She is an investment banker. She has a condominium in what used to be a huge warehouse.  She parks her car in a garage on the ground floor. She is so busy with work that she has a maid come in every day to make the bed and clean her unit.  She also has a personal shopper who does her grocery shopping.  She has three grown children, but has not seen any of them for at least several years.

Jonathan is 56.  He is a widower.  His wife died in a car wreck twelve years ago.  He is a social worker and works sixty to eighty hours a week.  His children all have good jobs and nice families.  Sometimes, one or another of them will invite him for Sunday dinner.  He always goes, but never without an invitation.

Diane is 54. She is on her fourth marriage.  She does not work outside the home.  Neither does she work inside the home – she doesn’t cook, wash clothes, or clean the house.  That is what maids are for!  Her chief occupations are to buy a new dress and shoes every week, to go to the hair salon, to keep up with the gossip within her circle of acquaintances, and to go to a party once a week.  She has no children and has never wanted children.

After the children were grown, Lila became a nurse.  She and Ralph made a comfortable living and both were careful with money. When they retired, their Social Security checks were more than enough for the two of them. They even had enough to travel to places they had previously seen only on calendars. Ralph only enjoyed his retirement for three years before he died. That was fifteen years ago.

With Ralph’s passing Lila’s only income was her Social Security check.  She had lived simply all her life. Her house was free of mortgage.  She adroitly balanced utility bills, food, and medicine costs. Lila always took out a tithe of her check for the Lord. She cheerfully carried it to church the first Sunday of each month. Lila sent another 20% of her check to several different missionaries whom she had faithfully helped to support for many years.

In town Lila was called “The Hag” behind her back. She was odd in appearance. Every day but Sunday she wore a sunbonnet, and one or another worn and faded cotton dress covered by an apron. In cold weather she traded a knit toboggan for the sunbonnet and added a thick wool, moth-eaten cardigan. In very cold weather she also wore a scarf and a rain coat or even her husband’s thick wool Army overcoat. She bought mismatched socks at the Clothes Closet operated by a Baptist church. She wore the mismatched socks and old, scuffed nursing shoes left from the years when she worked as a nurse. The sunbonnets/toboggan hid the fact that she was bald on much of the top of her head. Her face was wrinkled and had hairs growing like weeds. There was a prominent mole on the left side of her chin.

None of Lila Sue’s children have visited her in over ten years. They were embarrassed by her straitened circumstances.  Each of them in their own way determined not to spend the last years of their lives as their mother spent hers.

Lila carefully planned her meals.  She had a large garden which she worked in during the growing season. She canned hundreds of jars of food each year. She had meat just once a week, usually on Sunday.  She would buy a pound of hamburger or a pound of some other inexpensive meat and divide it for her four meals with meat. She bought a dozen eggs and made them last a month.  Her breakfasts were usually oatmeal and coffee or dry cereal and coffee.  A couple times a week she fixed a poached egg on toast. She used dry milk and instant coffee because there was no waste.  Her lunches were a sandwich of peanut butter or toast and jelly with a glass of milk. Despite her frugal personal diet, she spent a large proportion of her funds on food. There were other hungry persons to feed.

Lila had a sunny smile shining out of her hag-like face. You had to avoid looking at that smile to see her frowzled appearance. She greeted everyone she met on the street, in the store, in the doctor’s office, or in Sunday School. People found her easy to talk with. Nearly everywhere she went, someone unburdened to her their health problems, family squabbles, or some other reason for being downhearted. They all went away comforted by a quiet woman, with gentle, well-educated responses who listened, who really cared, and promised to remember them in prayer. Most of these people didn’t know about Lila’s other circle of friends.

Every evening Lila carried a large purse and a shopping bag to the park. There was no money in the purse. Both bags were bulging with sandwiches, thermos bottles, and cups. She sat down on a bench and waited. One by one homeless people would come and sit on the bench with her. Unless they were new, she greeted them by name. She would hand them a sandwich and then pour a cup of hot coffee. She also gave them a homemade granola ball or donut or cinnamon roll in a plastic baggie.

“Don’t eat that now. That’s for your breakfast.”

To many of them those words were like an echo of the own mom.

Over time many would cautiously open up to her and share their heartaches, not like the townspeople, but just a little bit now and a few sentences again later. Sometimes there would be runaway teens or throwaway teens. She would urge them to go to the authorities rather than continuing to face the dangers of living on the streets.

There were pregnant teens whose parents/boyfriend/pimp threw them out of their “home”. Those who shared this particular burden with Lila ended up living in a spare room at Lila’s until their baby was born. Lila would take them to Child Protective Services, to a doctor, and then to the school to enroll the mothers-to-be in all the programs that were available to them.

Lila’s ministry to the homeless did not remain a secret. There were many who shook their heads in disbelief.

“I wouldn’t dare go to that park at night with all those weird people. Doesn’t she know the danger she is in? Anyhow, it is their own fault they are homeless – alcoholics, drug addicts, fugitives from the law, bums!”

But there were those who admired her courage and compassion. On his way home every night the baker left a bag with loaves of bread and the leftovers of donuts and sweet rolls on her porch. A woman who worked at the Food Pantry periodically left jars of peanut butter and cheese spread. The owner of a café she passed on the way to the park insisted that she stop there and let him fill her thermos bottles with coffee every night.

One dark night Lila caught her foot in a hole on the walkway out of the park. She fell forward, scraping her hands and knees and then crumpled to the ground. She had twisted her ankle, her hands and knees were bleeding, and she couldn’t get back on her feet.

“Help me! Please somebody help me.”

In a few minutes Maudie the bag-lady was there, kneeling beside her, comforting her. When Maudie saw some of the homeless men approaching, she took charge.

“You, Ralphie and Harry, go down to the street. Go in opposite directions on the street and stop the first person you meet. Tell them to tell the police that Ms. Lila has turned her ankle, she can’t get up, and she needs two strong policemen to pick her up and drive her home.”

That is what happened. When the police got her into her house, they called her doctor at home. It was not his custom to make house calls and at night! But when he heard that it was Ms. Lila, he was on his way.

She couldn’t bear to think of her friends in the park going hungry for a week or more while her ankle healed. She called her friends at church and asked them to take turns. The volunteer-for-the-day came to Lila’s house, made thirty sandwiches and wrapped them, put the donuts and sweet rolls in plastic baggies, and put them all in a cardboard box. She then delivered the box to the park and placed it on Lila’s bench. The grocer agreed to deliver a case of bottled water to the bench each evening while Lila was incapacitated. Maudie took over at that point making sure there was a fair distribution of food and that all the litter was picked up.

Lila, the Hag, sat on her bench each night until all her sandwiches were gone. When it was raining she went to a gazebo in the park. The homeless would already be there waiting. She quickly passed out her food and poured their coffee. With her bags empty she was able to carry an umbrella on the walk back home. Every evening she thanked God for the ones He had sent to sit on the park bench with her. She told Him about the pains and problems each of them had shared with her and begged Him to help them.

Lila Sue Haverty died as she had lived - quietly and simply. Some ladies from the Methodist Church stopped at her house after church.  They had missed seeing her in her pew.  The ladies found her seated in her rocking chair.  Her Bible was in her lap. She had died there a couple days before.

Her children were notified. The funeral director asked who was going to plan her funeral and who would be paying for it. Mrs. Haverty owned a burial plot beside her husband, but had no life insurance. Jonathan replied, paid the undertaker, and attended her burial and memorial service. He was the only one of her children who was present.

At the memorial service for Lila Sue Haverty the church auditorium was filled to capacity with people who came to mourn their loss. Outside the church some of the homeless stood with hats off and heads bowed. Some were wringing their hands. All of them were weeping.

“…the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7b NKJV)