Sometimes the moments that change our lives don’t look important when they happen.
There’s no announcement. No dramatic music. No sense that history is being made. Sometimes it’s just a phone call. For Monette, that phone call came in June 2012.
Her friend Vanessa was leading a small group that summer, studying the book of Ephesians one chapter at a time. About thirty minutes before the group was scheduled to begin, Vanessa called and invited Monette to come.
Thirty minutes wasn’t much notice. Monette had just awakened. She needed to get ready, she didn’t have a car, and Vanessa would have to pick her up before going to the group. Vanessa was already responsible for leading that evening and had someone else to pick up along the way.
There were plenty of reasons the invitation could have waited.
It didn’t.
Somehow, Vanessa picked everyone up and still made it to the group on time. Monette went along, not knowing that something much larger had just begun.
Something Came Alive
Monette had been around church most of her life. She had attended Sunday school, Bible studies, and church services. She had even read the Bible from beginning to end more than once.
But that evening felt different. The women sat together with different translations of Scripture and talked openly about what they were reading. Instead of simply listening to someone explain the passage, they wrestled with it together.
For Monette, Scripture suddenly became personal. Ancient words began connecting with present circumstances. And just as importantly, she found something else she badly needed at that point in her life: people.
She had moved to Montgomery the year before. She was hundreds of miles from her hometown, recently divorced, without reliable transportation, and raising a teenage daughter. She needed friends.
That simple invitation from Vanessa began providing them. But no one around that table could have known how important those relationships were about to become.
The Phone Call No Parent Wants
A few weeks later, Monette traveled home to Indianapolis for several days. Her teenage daughter, Latisha, remained in Montgomery. Shortly after midnight on June 27, Monette stepped off the plane and saw an urgent message from Vanessa asking her to call immediately.
Then her oldest daughter called. Their apartment was on fire.
Latisha was still inside.
Neighbors knew she was there and began pounding on the door. When she finally opened it, she was disoriented and apparently didn’t understand the danger surrounding her.
She started back upstairs to get clothes and shoes. A neighbor stopped her, picked her up, and carried her away from the burning apartment.
Latisha survived. The apartment did not.
By the following day, portions of her bedroom were open to the sky.
Monette was hundreds of miles away when it happened. But she was no longer alone.
People Showed Up
Vanessa’s husband, Jeremy, went to the apartment complex looking for Latisha.
More than a hundred people had gathered around the fire. He parked some distance away and began searching.
He found her.
Someone had already given Latisha pants and shoes. Vanessa and Jeremy took her into their home for the night until Monette could return.
Then the circle widened. Monette had insurance, so temporary housing was available while she searched for another apartment. But insurance couldn’t replace everything that had been lost, and it certainly couldn’t turn an empty apartment into a home.
That’s where people stepped in.
A service day was approaching, and Vanessa’s small group had not yet chosen a project.
Suddenly, they had one. Other groups heard what had happened and joined them. One group began gathering donated furniture around town. Another spent the day with Latisha, who was pregnant at the time, giving her a little room to breathe after everything she had experienced. Other volunteers cleaned, organized, decorated, and prepared the new apartment.
By the end of the day, an empty space had begun to feel like home. No one person did everything. Everyone simply did something. That may be one of the most beautiful pictures of community there is.
The Story Kept Moving
For Monette, the experience changed more than her living situation.
She continued participating in small groups.
Eventually Latisha began attending with her. Women who had once been strangers became people she could call when she needed help. They celebrated her pregnancy and supported her as she became a mother.
Then Monette decided she wanted to do for others what Vanessa had done for her.
She began leading groups herself.
She served. She taught. She encouraged.
She discovered that some of the things she had experienced in her own life could become tools for helping somebody else.
The influence kept moving outward. Her oldest daughter became involved. Her granddaughter entered a family whose spiritual story had already begun changing.
Monette eventually helped lead more than twenty different groups built around everything from Bible study and prayer to photography, tutoring, financial education, technology, transportation, writing, and physical fitness.
One writing group continued meeting even after its official semester ended. Members wrote books, published curriculum, continued serving, and began leading groups of their own.
It became difficult to draw a straight line from Vanessa’s original invitation to everything that followed.
Maybe that’s the point.
So What?
Years later, Monette asked a simple question:
What if Vanessa had decided not to make the call?
It would have been perfectly reasonable. It was late notice.
There wasn’t much time. Transportation was complicated. Vanessa was already busy.
She could easily have thought, I’ll invite her next week.
Instead, she picked up the phone. Vanessa didn’t know an apartment would soon burn. She didn’t know Monette would need people around her. She didn’t know Monette would eventually begin leading others. She certainly couldn’t have known how many people would eventually be affected by the decision she made that afternoon.
She simply invited someone.
That’s the part of this story worth remembering.
We usually don’t know which moments matter most while we’re living them. A phone call. An invitation. An extra seat at the table. A ride across town. A meal. A few hours helping somebody move into an apartment.
None of those things look particularly heroic.
But God has always had a remarkable ability to take ordinary acts of faithfulness and multiply them far beyond what the person doing them could possibly see.
Vanessa made one invitation.
Monette said yes, and years later, the story was still being written.
An Invitation Forward
There is probably someone within reach of you today.
You may not know what they are carrying. You may not know what will happen in their life next week, next month, or next year.
And you certainly cannot know what God might do with one ordinary act of kindness.
So make the call.
Invite them.
Pull up another chair.
Show up.
You don’t have to know how the story ends before you become faithful with the part of it that has been placed in your hands.
Sometimes one invitation is enough to begin something that lasts for generations.