Spoiler Alert: Plan 2 is better...

Here were the plans we had made:

1. Go to Big South Fork National Forest in Kentucky to the Blue Heron Campground on Tuesday and stay one week, leaving the next Tuesday.

2.  Come home from Blue Heron Campground.

Here’s what actually happened:

1. We didn’t like the Blue Heron Campground for reasons I’ll get into via my other blog Miscellaneous Ramblings on Friday.

2. On Sunday, we decided to travel back down to Alabama to a campground about 40 miles from our home.  We had never been there, but it had been recommended to us by several folks.

3. We planned on staying at least two nights and maybe three.

4.  Monday morning, as we were sitting outside our camper in the beautifully cool weather (hard to believe it’s August in Alabama), I got a phone call from a friend who said that my mother (who is 91 and lives in an assisted living apartment in the same town where I live) was going to be hospitalized for bronchitis.

5.  After calling Mom and getting details, David and I drove to the hospital, beating her there by about 10 minutes.  She didn’t really feel bad, but her cough was something else entirely.   

6.  I stayed with Mom during the three days she was there.  She handled the 2 nights alone just fine.

7.  It took 6 hours to get discharged from that hospital today!  Very frustrating.

8.  Mom is home, reunited with her cat, Gracie, who was very glad to see her mama.

As you can see, our simple 1-2 plans did not quite work out. 

But did you notice how God put us within shoutin’ distance of home where we would be needed?

And did you notice that Mom didn’t really feel bad?

And did you notice how much God loves each of us to orchestrate this whole deal so that it turned out well?

And have you noticed that God does the same for you?  Think about it.  It will come to you. 

And when it does, thank Him for His grace, His unmerited favor.

 

Grace (God’s undeserved favor) be with all who love our Lord Jesus Christ with undying and incorruptible [love]. Amen (so let it be).

                                                                   Ephesians 6:24 (AMP)

Little Girl Lost

Mom and my sister Linda were at home.  Daddy and I were at our church (Trinity UMC in Huntsville, AL).  We both thought the children’s choir was going to perform during the worship service.  For some reason, Daddy left the church and went home.  He said he’d be back to pick me up.

Anyway, there I was, a 3^rd grader in 1960, finding my way to the choir room where I found -- nobody.  My children’s choir was not singing in the service that day.

I didn’t know what to do.  We were new members of the church and I knew only a few of the kids by name.  One of the other parents offered to let me sit with them.  But it was going to be communion, and I didn’t know how to go down front unless I was with my parents.  I was getting panicky at the thought of not being with my mom and dad because they always knew what to do.

I was scared and felt so alone. 

I finally decided that I would walk home.  Except I didn’t know exactly where home was.  I knew that if I walked down Airport Road and hung a right onto the Parkway, it was just a little ways down there somewhere.

So I started out.  It was winter, and the wind was blowing.  I quickly got really cold. 

But I was determined to get to where I was going, so I trudged on.  I had a new coat on that looked (to me, anyway) like Little Joe’s horse on Bonanza.  So I talked to that coat (remember, I’m in 3^rd grade) and assured it that we would eventually get home.

I was scared and felt so alone.

I remember that a car stopped.  A woman was at the wheel.  She opened the passenger side door and I saw a couple of kids in there.  She asked me if I was all right.  I said I was.  She asked me where I was going.  I told her home.  She asked if I was lost.  I said no, I knew the way.  She invited me into her car, but I couldn’t get in a stranger’s car.  That was wrong, and I wasn’t going to do it.  She finally and very reluctantly drove away. 

I was scared and felt so alone.

Then, after some more trudging and what felt like hours going by, another car stopped.  This one had a policeman in it.  He was very nice, asked the same questions the woman had.  And when he said to get in his car, I knew it was okay because he was a policeman and he was there to help me.

He asked my name and address.  My name I could handle, but I didn’t know my address.  We had moved recently from one side of town to the other.  I could get him to the old house but not to the new one. 

I think it was then that it hit me.  I was truly lost.  I didn’t know where my family was and I didn’t know where my house was.  I started to cry.  Not loud and dramatic, just sniffling a little bit, trying to keep it together and be a big girl.

I had a vague notion of where the house was.  I knew it was close to Redstone Arsenal.  The cop pulled onto Bob Wallace Avenue and headed in that direction.

And then I saw my dad, driving toward us.  I pointed to our car and yelled, “That’s my daddy!  That’s my daddy!”  The cop slammed on the brakes and pulled over.

Daddy saw me as I pointed to him.  He slammed on his brakes and pulled over. 

And I joyfully ran across the road and into the open arms of my Father. 

I was lost but now I’m found.

Sound familiar?

I Say To-may-to, You Say To-mah-to

Several years ago, my husband David bought an SUV for me.

I remember telling my mother about it.  Then in her mid-80’s, she wasn’t grasping the concept of an SUV and kept asking how it was different from a regular car.

I was meeting both of my parents at a doctor’s office in the next few days, so I told her I would drive it then and she could see for herself.

On the appointed day, I drove my new SUV into the parking lot, knowing that my mother was glued to a window so she could see what the deal was.

 

When I opened the door to the office, however, I immediately saw that the waiting room was packed, and Mom and Daddy were not near a window.

As I approached them, Mom said, very brightly and in a voice that carried throughout the room, “Did you bring the SOB?”

“No,” I deadpanned, “I left him at home.” 

At which point my dad, then in his mid-90’s, laughed longer, louder and deeper than I had heard him laugh in years.

Photo by Jenny Wallace Webb

The Miracle of the Bed

When I was in 3^rd or 4^th grade, we lived in a little 3 bedroom, 1½ bath house in Huntsville, AL. 

I shared a bedroom with my sister, who was and still is 18 months younger than me.  We each had a twin bed on opposite walls of the small room.  One day while jumping on the beds (which was a no-no), a slat under the end of one of the mattresses slipped out and the mattress fell with a loud bump onto the wood floor.

We had broken the bed.

But we didn’t know it was just a displaced slat.  All we knew was that we had broken the bed and Daddy was mad about it.  He didn’t really say much anyway, so if his words were in anger, we thought the crime especially bad.

My dad got down on all fours, looked under the bed, did something, and healed it in the process.

“No jumping on the beds,” he said sternly.  My sister and I clung to each other and nodded.  Boy, that was something to steer clear of, for sure.

Sometime later, my parents invited a family to eat supper with us.  This family had one son, and he was about our age.  We knew them from our church, so it didn’t take us kids long to run to our room to play.

I don’t want to point any fingers here, but I believe it was our guest who suggested we jump on the beds.  Linda and I said, “No, no.  Last time we did that, we broke the bed.”

Our guest’s powers of persuasion were strong and our weak minds soon agreed that the forbidden fun would not result in another broken bed.

Wrong!  After some robust bouncing up and down, we heard a loud bump, and, to our horror, we realized we had once again broken the bed.

Amazingly, the adults didn’t hear it hit the floor.  They were in the living room having coffee and visiting.  We had some time to cover our tracks.

We tried fixing the bed; but, having no idea what the problem was, we had no idea how to repair it.  Our guest, who, of course, wanted to blame the bed for this awful turn of events, suggested we pray about it.

We all jumped (no pun intended) on this idea and started praying mightily.  We even prayed out loud – probably the first time any of us had done that.  We pleaded with God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost (as He was known to us then, way back yonder in the previous century).

Well, it seemed that God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost were not responding to our desperate prayers, so we decided to pray to anybody we could think of that was in the Bible.

We prayed to Moses and Noah, Samson and Delilah, all the disciples we could think of (similar to naming all Santa’s reindeer in that there’s always one or two you can’t remember).

When we ran out of names (which we did rather quickly), I sneaked out of the room to retrieve my Sunday School book for additional people to pray to.  We picked out the names we could pronounce, further lessening the number available to us.

We were sure the bed would miraculously be healed, and that would be the end of our troubles.

The wounded bed was not healed miraculously that night.  After our friends had gone home, we told Mom what had happened, hoping she could fix it and Daddy wouldn’t have to know.

Unfortunately, Mom didn’t know how, or didn’t have the strength to wrestle with the mattress, or just didn’t want to fool with it.  She called Daddy in and told him our pitiful story.

Daddy just sighed, got down on all fours, did something or another, and the bed was restored to its original state. 

And then he left the room.

No stern warnings, no anger, no nothing.

Linda and I climbed into our beds, breathless with the wonder of it all.  We didn’t get our miracle, but Daddy wasn’t mad so it didn’t matter.

Took me 40 years (and I mean that literally) to figure out that our miracle did come that night so long ago, it just wasn’t the one we were looking for.  We just hated to make Daddy mad at us, and he wasn’t mad at us, so there was our miracle!

I’m telling you, it’s a good lesson to learn.  Pray for a miracle and then keep your eyes open to everything.  Maybe it won’t take you 40 years to figure it out…