The tale I want to share this morning really started a month ago. Exactly a month ago!
On Wednesday, March 14th I returned home from a 3:00 P.M. to 7:30 P.M. shift at the hospital. I don’t remember if it was an easy shift or a difficult one. All I was thinking about that drive home was the ultra sound that was scheduled for Thursday morning at 10:00 A.M. The ultrasound was likely to confirm the bad news we’d had the week earlier that our much longed for child was not developing and that a miscarriage was eminent.
After I got through the door and hugged the kids I rifled through the day’s mail. There was a plain envelope addressed to me with a business address in NYC for the return. Inside this envelope was a gift card for Bugaboo Creek Steak House and a note addressed “The Butler Family” and with the message, “Thinking of You.” The line indicating who it was from was empty.
I was intrigued. But honestly, my heart was not into digging to the bottom of the mystery at that moment. I just wanted to get to bed and pray myself to sleep. As we did our family bedtime prayers the kids tried to guess who it was from. The fact that they had SO many guesses available led Stewart to pronounce how cool it was that there were so many people it COULD have been. “We have a lot of people who love us, huh?”
Over the last month we’ve moved through the physical bits of the miscarriage, as well as a lot of grieving. I admit fully that I have been grieving a lot. And I’ve had a lot of questions for God. They don’t all dwell on me, mind you. These losses have led to other dear friends sharing the depths of their own grief when, for reasons we can’t pinpoint, God has said, “No,” to growing their families.
Yesterday morning I was blue. Very blue. John had the day off and we were preparing the house for a small birthday party for Tabitha. As I stood mixing the pancake batter I sobbed and wondered out loud the meaning of prayer. My friend Dotty stated chemotherapy last Monday. She was diagnosed roughly the same time as Pastor Jeff. All week I’ve been praying for her to be without fear, to be courageous and brave, to be physically able to tolerate the chemo, to be filled with COMFORT. I’ve continued to pray for Pastor Jeff’s family. I’ve prayed for a family torn apart by the evils of molestation. I’ve prayed for a homeschool family whose oldest son is failing from a degenerative, congenital disease. I’ve prayed for a woman my age riddled with metastases from breast cancer first diagnosed 13 years ago. And I cried wondering if any of the prayer matters. Or works. See, I know that people who love ME have been praying for MY comfort and healing. I know because they’ve told me. Yet, I do not feel comforted. What does comfort feel like? What does it look like? Do MY prayers mean anything? I’ve always LOVED praying for people. I am glad to pray. But I don’t’ know if it really helps.
The birthday party (which I will post about later) was a delight. Little girls eating pancakes, hunting eggs, playing Tape the Ladybug on the Flower can’t help but make you smile. My dear friend Jenn listening to some of my hard questions and not trying to find pat answers. Seeing Marie dig into her bag of egg-hunt booty to share with a 5-year old, without being asked. Nigel commenting, “Wasn’t if awesome to see Tabitha so happy, Mom? All those little girls were running and were so excited. Wasn’t that cute?”
But when it was over I was tired. Somehow I had failed to include a dinner for last night on our monthly meal calendar! I looked at last week when we had planned to have tacos but had served left overs instead and I knew I could rustle that meal up…. if I wanted to. Then I considered NEXT weeks’ listings. I’d written in Thursday night’s dinner to be a trip to Bugaboo Creek. Thursday falls between Tabitha and John’s birthday and we figured it could be a birthday night out. Dare I allow my type-A self to borrow next week’s fun for this week? Could we mobilize the sugar-high, birthday-high, outdoor-play-clothes-dressed kids into out-to-eat mode quickly enough? Will they have safe food for Stewart? Yes, yes, YES!
We had never been to Bugaboo Creek before. “Is it a long drive?” “What do they serve?” “Do they have pop, Mom? If they have pop, can I have some pop?” “Is it fun, or boring?”
“About 20 minutes, I’m sure they have lots of things you like. I’m sure they have pop and you can have it. I am sure it is fun.”
My kids LOVE to eat out. LOVE it. Feeding this crowd can be expensive and finding a place that is safe for Stewart can be a challenge. We rarely go out, but boy, when we do I love to watch them. They are so animated and excited.
There was so much to look at as we waited. “Look, a MOOSE!” “Look, that owl just moved!” “Do you see that? What kind of animal is that?” “Do we EAT moose here?” [Don’t mind Stewart, he is in that stage where he tries to take a grave photo.]
As we ate, the kids resumed their guesses as to who may have sent us the gift card. They were enthralled with the talking buffalo head, even if they didn’t get all his jokes. The place reminded us of Disney World. AND the staff was out-of-this-world on top of the food allergy thing. Wow. The waitress was a 10-out-of-10 in attentive and the kitchen manager on duty visited us to confirm we were doing alright and shared he, too, has a number of life-threatening allergies.
The kids all enjoyed their orange pop. They got safe ice cream WITH their meals. The baby only ate one crayon. The bill was completely covered by the gift card and we left our sweet server a generous tip.
Is this what it means to be comforted? Gift-card hugs from people willing and able to bless a family a seven? Friends who help you with a birthday party and listen as you ask hard questions with your voice trembling? Servers who don’t disdain a child-heavy, non-drinking, allergy-concerned party of seven? Forgetting grief (yours and others’) for a while as your children giggle, color, slurp, and gawk, all while getting a chance to practice their restaurant manners?
I don’t know. I don’t know at all.
I guess I will keep praying. I believe it matters. I know God HEARS the prayers. I know He does things His way for a reason. I know He allows us free will and I know the sin on our earth causes most of our problems and concerns. I know that He still cares. I’ll keep praying for my loved ones, and the for people others ask me to pray for, too.
And I’m going to hang onto the card on my refrigerator a long while.
I hope our anonymous benefactor reads blogs.
I will never know if they’d heard about the pending miscarriage through one of the very few people I’d told. It doesn’t really matter, though. I know we are loved. And the kids saw Jesus through their gift. Thank you.
He got a cool new Crown of Thorns tie, two shirts, and two books. One was by Dr. David Jeremiah on the upcoming economic Armageddon, and the other was a Focus on the Family book on Raising Knights. The kids were a little dubious about his spoil. It seemed to be a little lacking. 
Marie studied Indians in her Little House on the Prairie Class. 
Dayspring Disciples 
