Monday, April 13, 2015

Dear God, 

Your ways are better than our own.  When we chart our own course and are diverted, we grow irritated and angry.  We cannot understand.  In due time, you reveal the mystery and we are left humbled at your feet.

 

On our way out east we learned our travels would take us a few miles from old friends  in West Virginia so we decided to call to make arrangements to visit; however, their phone had been disconnected.  We got online to double check their address but it had changed.  We decided to take the chance to find them.  During the course of the next two hours we drove through back roads, river roads, and dirt paths only to wind up at some camp.  We walked up to the house but no one was there.  We asked neighbors only to learn it was the wrong address.  So we started the drive to the next address several miles away.  All the way one of us moaned, groaned, and complained.  One of us yelled and screamed.  It was awful.  We should have been stopped in our tracks but that was not your plan.

When we arrived in their town, we got lost so we stopped at a store to ask for help.  The clerk said she knew our friends and told us the man was in a hospital extended care.  She gave us directions and we were on our way.  We had to drive out into the country once again to get to the hospital.  Just when we thought we were lost again, we came upon it.  We stopped in the emergency room and asked for assistance.  The person knew our friend and his room number.  He directed us into another building and before long we stood in the room with our friend who was sitting in a wheel chair.  Just a few words and we knew he had dementia.  Several minutes later his wife stepped into the room and we hugged one another.  We talked, prayed together, and left, my husband in tears over the shape of Bob.

It was sometime later as I drove to our friends’ home in Maryland, I realized how your hand had been at work.  If we had driven straight to our friend’s home in West Virginia, no one would have been home because the wife had been running errands.  We would not have known her husband was in the hospital.  We would have missed them altogether.  Instead you sent us on a wild goose chase to see the scenery, spend time enjoying the beautiful day, and sharing together.  We failed to see the plan and forfeited that time.  But you did not let go of us; you guided us to two angels who pointed the way.

 

Heavenly Father,

thank you

for unmerited grace.

Thank you

for mercy

and compassion.

Thank you

for humility

that comes

the hard way. 

Love, Andrea