Sunday, February 20, 2011

Unsolicited Prayer

Unsolicited prayer. Today my family was the recipient of one such prayer. Unsolicited but oh so welcomed.

A woman that we didn't know, sat in front of us at church today. This lady, a middle aged, heavy set, dark complected woman, sat by herself. She didn't come with family. She didn't meet up with friends. She was by herself. I wondered what her story was. In a mega church like ours, I find that it happens that I might sit near or next to someone I don't really know. I was interested to know her. But I didn't.

When the service was over we left to go collect our toddler - the baby and our two older kids were with us for service. On our way back from getting the boy we were headed to a meeting after church and this woman walked up to us - the same woman from the row in front of us. Now the sheer odds in a church our size that we would be in the same hallway at the same time as this woman are pretty slim. But there she was.

The woman stopped us. She told us that she felt God telling her to pray for us, the baby, our children. The baby had caught her attention in worship and the Lord had pressed it upon her heart. She was trying to be faithful. We stopped, she prayed, we made some introductions, and we parted ways.

How did she know? Her prayer, so simple, yet so deep. She prayed for the baby. She prayed for us as parents. She prayed for our family. She asked for protection and for God's plan to be fulfilled for these children. And then she walked away.

Unsolicited. Overwhelming. Covered in prayer from a woman we didn't know - but she knew us. Somehow her prayer cut right to the heart of everything we were swimming in. An angel? I don't know. In the whirl, I can't remember if she ever told us her name. 

Facebook Fast

I am pretty sure my posts here indirectly correlate with my updates on Facebook. I am looking at my past posts and I see a dramatic drop when I joined Facebook. Unfortunately for me - and perhaps for the two of you who still read my blog, my one liner posts on FB are far less entertaining than the elaborate stories about life that I loved to post here. Currently I am in a self imposed Facebook fast. I found myself spending unnecessary hours logged on seeing what everyone else was up to instead of actually being up to anything myself. YIPES!

So, naturally, what I would do in the absence of FB is get back to blogger :) Purely for creative purposes, of course.

My Facebook post today would be: "It's a washing machine miracle!"  See? It's a one liner with no back story. So, what you couldn't know with just my Facebook update, is that we have been sans working washing machine for officially one whole month. I know. We are a family of 6 with babies and pets that make messes. This was a very serious matter.

What you couldn't know by my FB status is the seriousness of the stench coming from the Mount Everest of laundry forming in what was once Brian's photography studio. You couldn't know that after weeks of laundry building up, we have had to move said mountain to our room for a birthday party and then back to the studio because of the stench.

What you couldn't know with just an "update" is that both my older children have been wearing some seriously mismatched clothing as they get further and further to the bottom of their drawers. We have had more than one morning of tears due to the lack of clothes to wear. I am not above making my kid wear his shorts twice. Yes, that was my kid that was stinky. We tried to minimize the laundry done at Aunt Jenny's house to only the necessities.

Certainly, by just a few words in a FB status, you could not know that we have had a comedy of errors in trying to get our washer repaired. Once I had finally convinced Brian this was a big job, we needed to call a repairman, it took him several days to get one out to the house. The repairman came, saw, charged us, and told us to get a new machine. We got a refund. Then Brian decided he was a washing machine repairman and took it apart himself. After taking it apart and finding that the repairman was not exactly right in his quote, Brian decided to repair it himself. One tub broken by Brian, one tub broken by Fed Ex and one tub on back order later, it was a sit and wait kind of situation.

The part finally came, Brian finally had time to fix it. And right now, right at this very moment, there is a washing machine miracle taking place. The miracle is, that after one month of nasty, piling up laundry, we finally have a working washing machine!