The side-of-the-highway café was decorated for Christmas. Plastic balsam trees on formica tables. Beside the napkin dispenser, a nutcracker soldier with a Sharpie graphic drawn on his unmentionables, lending new meaning to the unfortunate soldier’s station in life.
There was a nun at the counter. Black skirt. Modest veil. New Balances. Her hands were vascular roadmaps, clasped in prayer. She hadn’t moved in several minutes.
“Ma’am,” a young waitress finally intervened. “Are you okay?”
The Sister lifted her head and ceased praying over her pancakes. “I’m alright,” the nun replied. “I just have a lot to pray for today.”
“Oh,” said the waitress. “Sorry to bother you.”
“You’re not bothering me. Is there anything YOU need prayer for, sweetie?”
The waitress must have been 18 years old.
“Me?”
“Yes, you. We can ask God for anything, and he’ll hear us.”
The waitress shrugged. “Can you pray that I earn enough money to get my daughter a new iPhone? She really wants one, and I don’t know how I’m going to swing it this year. It’s important.”
The Sister smiled. Then, the old woman looked at the guy sitting next to her. He wore a trucker hat.
“What about you?” she asked. “Do you need anything from God?”
He nodded. “Can you pray that my loan goes through? I just made a down payment on a new house, if I don’t get this loan we’ll be stuck in a rental house forever, and my wife just can’t live that way anymore.”
The old woman turned to look at the cook. A middle-aged guy. Chopping onions. “How about you, sweetie?”
The cook wore a serious face. “My wife’s sister is flying in town this week for Christmas, to stay at our house.”
The Sister nodded. “What do you want me to pray for?”
“Pray that the airline goes on strike.”
Other people began chiming in. Everyone, it turned out, had a list of pressing needs requiring attention from On High.
A man in a nice suit said, “I need my son to get a full scholarship, or else I can’t afford to send him to college.”
“I need a new car,” added a woman. “Mine gets terrible mileage, I can’t afford to keep fixing it.”
“I really need my boss to give me a raise,” said another.
Finally, a bus boy came from the kitchen. His white uniform was stained in a rainbow of grease. He was the only one who hadn’t added a request to the burgeoning list.
“What about you, dear?” the nun asked.
The boy said nothing.
A nearby waitress explained that nobody in the restaurant could communicate with this boy because he only spoke Spanish.
So the nun conversed in fluent Español. Whereupon the boy came alive.
He smiled as he told her his story. It was the most animated anyone in the restaurant had ever seen him. And evidently, he had a lot to say.
Everyone became very curious about what he was telling the old vowess.
“What’d he say?” asked the waitress.
The nun explained that the boy’s father had been murdered, his mother had diabetes, his older brother was recovering from a construction accident with a broken neck and his little sister was Deaf.
The boy was raising five siblings on his own, working multiple jobs to keep everyone fed.
The family got their clothes from Salvation Army bins. They got extra food from a dumpster behind a supermarket. Everyone in the family who was able, worked full-time. Nobody had time for anything besides work. Let alone Christmas.
And yet, even in such poverty, the family was still together this year. Somehow they were surviving. Somehow, they still had each other for the Advent season.
“Wait,” the waitress said. “But what did he ask you to pray for?”
The nun shook her head. “He didn’t. He asked me to deliver a message to heaven on his behalf.”
“What was the message?” said the trucker.
“He wanted to tell God thank you.”
Sean Dietrich is a columnist, novelist and stand-up storyteller known for his commentary on life in the American South. His column appears in newspapers throughout the U.S. He has authored 15 books, he is the creator of the Sean of the South Podcast and he makes appearances at the Grand Ole Opry.
