[Gráinne]

Boy, did I have to remember this story from many years ago:

30+ years ago, a former partner and I found ourselves driving cross-country from Denver to Cleveland, Ohio. We had very little money and finally decided to stop in Moline, Illinois to ask for help. We stopped at a church, and the kind pastor gave us $20 and told us to go to a nearby gas station, saying he knew the owner.
When we got there, a tiny little man in dusty overalls came out and told us to fill up our car on the house. Then he told us to go around the corner to an Irish pub restaurant for lunch, and of course he knew the owner.
I was sitting in the passenger side while my partner filled the car. The little man was walking away from me, and I called out the window "Mr._____, thank you so much!"
The man turned around, and his entire face was glowing. It was not the sun; it was from inside. At that moment, I "heard" a kind of voice saying that I was on the right road and everything was OK, and that I would never be alone in hard times. I was overcome with a sense of great peace. This was over in a second, shorter than it took to describe.
My partner, standing at the gas pump, saw the little man turn back towards me but saw nothing unusual. I didn't tell him all this.
After our delicious lunch, I told my partner I wanted to go back and thank that man at the gas station (I really wanted to see if I was crazy or if I had really seen what I saw). We went back to the corner, only a few hundred feet, and there was no gas station. I was sure we were on the right corner. Even my partner was a little weirded out at that point, and we left. I've never forgotten that.