Stories of Encounter, Choice, and Identity
Hannah Nutt
My mom would often take me along to visit homebound members in my church—an experience I loved some days and simply tolerated others. Sometimes I would just sit to the side during the visit and wait for my mom to finish talking to whomever we were visiting, but sometimes I would get to have great conversations with the people who had helped form the church that was forming me.
One afternoon we went to a nursing home to visit with a woman I didn’t know too well. She had never really been in good enough health to attend church in the years we had been there. When we arrived, this woman was having a really rough time. She suffered from some form of dementia and was curled in her bed with her back to us, trembling with fear of something that she was sure was coming after her. I was probably 14 years old and I was terrified. My mom sat with her for a while, speaking softly to her, and then realized it was best for us to go. She prayed before she left, just like she always did on these visits. When my mom ended her prayer with the Lord’s Prayer, this woman joined in. That led my mom to recite Psalm 23, still with the other woman joining in. I was completely taken aback by they powerful experience of, not hearing, but experiencing the same words in a new way.
I never had much of a relationship with that woman as I grew up, but that encounter has had a lasting impact on me. I saw in that experience such an elemental, even child-like, expression of faith. The calming effect of the Lord’s Prayer and the psalms was temporary and did not end this woman’s struggles or pain, but it provided a respite. I have since remembered her from time to time and prayed for the foundation of faith in God that she had; a foundation strong enough to surface even in the most difficult times of wilderness.
