The dark side of helping others

I love hesring peoples wonderful stories about helping a lonely person in need. Everyone expresses the amazing feeling they have after handing a granola bar to a homeless person outside their car window. Even the occasional coat is handed to one who needs the warmth moreso than you. How about giving someone a ride to wherever they need to go? That sounds pretty Christ-like to me. Honestly, I am not very good at giving things up nor taking time out of my busy schedule to take a person where they need to go or giving money to someone out the window and thinking.. Are you going to use this for drugs? I have wanted to be better and love those experiences shared with me about helping someone in need, but .... Why is the other side of the story never told? Well I am here to tell you, sometimes these amazing spiritual experiences are watching the spirit leave as you have a drunken homeless guy enter your car. As you probably know, Brian is in love with knives. We have about 11 total knives in our car alone. One under the drivers seat is a machete. Anyone who has ridden in the back seat of our car can vouch for me and let you know that yes, in fact, there is a machete under there. Tonight, Brian and I went shopping for groceries and when we were loading up our car, a man who looked confused and mentally challenged came up to us telling us that he needed a dollar or two to help get him back to slc. We don't have cash, we have cards. We sent him on his way. Brian asked if there was something more that we could do and I said we could give him a banana! We drove over to the other side of the parking lot to get to the homeless man. We handed him the banana and he asked for a ride. You give a mouse a cookie, right? Brian said sure and I told Brian as I was getting out of the car to let him in..grab the machete. I got out and we let him in our car. We began to drive and Brian asked if the guy had been drinking. right then it hit me what the smell on him was..he was completely wasted. The man got incredibly....TICKED off at Brian's question. He said we needed to mind our own business. My stomach dropped and all I could think about was that this crazy guy has access to knives back there. I am going to die! He was talking about how he was going to call a lawyer and how he wanted to take this to the next level..whatever that meant. Somehow after Brian apologized we got to talking and the guy told us he was a millionaire and works for ozzy Osborne. He was chomping loudly on his banana and chatting it up with us thanking us so much for giving him a ride. After a mile down the road we asked why he was up in Provo and he was like I don't know it's weird here. It's funny here. I don't like it here. Mutterings and mumblings within the sentences. We were turning the corner to where he wanted us To go when Brian asked if he had run into any Mormons around Provo. wrong question dearie! The guy hit the seat and put his hands on his face like he was totally upset and on the verge of tears. He looked up at me and He started cussing and yelling saying something about being in a place that is populated 99.9 percent of everyone around here is Mormon. He started yelling that he wanted out of the car and wanted to get out of there. he was totally freaking out. Brian pulled over and all I could think about was how he had his face on the other side of the seat right where the knife laid. As soon as Brian pulled over I jumped out of the car and he was muttering and cussing about Mormons and wanting OUT RIGHT NOW. He ran out of the car yelling at us and muttering and yelling. Needless to say..I was scared for my life tonight. I was mad that we would even consider taking someone down the road two miles. Brian did make me feel a lot better when I told him I was terrified about the knife being in reaching distance of that guy. He smiled and grabbed the machete that was rightly his knees the whole time. He said he got my back! Lol the point of this story is..helping ones in need is great, but there are occasionally totally freaky stories where the dude yells at you and wants to kill you cuz you mentioned Mormons. Be careful when you help others. I learned that I am happy to be cautious anytime I try to help someone. The end