He Prepares Hearts

Written 12/20

***This is an unplanned followup to the post below***

We had moved into our home only two days before. I was nine months pregnant and couldn't locate the master bed amongst all of the boxes, packing papers and furniture. It was miserable sleeping on the floor of our foyer instead. It was late Saturday morning when the door bell rang.

There she stood, J and her three young children, smiling and conversing like our standing there together was more of an established habit than a first introduction. That is until her oldest blurted out that our home's previous owners had buried their crazy uncle in our front flower bed and that if we looked closely enough, we would see the six-foot mound that proved it. Ha ha ha ha! J was mortified! Sure enough, it DID look like a grave. Of course, it really was just the left over effects of landscape neglect. And how THRILLED J was to find out that my hubby LOVES that stuff as much as she does! They spent hours tending to our adjacent yards.

J's family and ours became wonderful friends. We've shared holidays and babysitting and errand running and problems. She's had WAY MORE than her fair share. For her privacy, I won't even mention the worst ones here, but she was a single mom (not by choice) raising three children including one of a family member with problems that prevented capable parenting. Her son had died eight years prior from a heart defect at age 11. When she spoke of him, you could tell that she had learned a lot from life. She never uses flowery language or grand ideals in describing it. No, she has learned to find blessings in the every day - and to enjoy more than to reflect. To explain all that she has endured would literally sound like a soap opera, and yet she has managed to raise a normal family, with happy active teenagers and thankfulness for her job and her life.

Oh, and how thankful I've been for her. I can still remember the single most atrocious day of my life as a parent. I was so sick, I literally could not lift my head from off the floor without puking. I had a five-year-old, a toddler and a newly crawling baby. All I wanted was to make it to the telephone to curse my hubby for going to work that day (just being honest) and beg him to come home, but I was literally too dizzy to orient myself toward the right room. That's when the baby crawled through the vomit as I simultaneously tried to coach Dalton on clean up even as I puked some more from talking. I felt so defeated, so exhausted, so absolutely nauseous and really mad at God to boot.

The door bell rang and against all I had ever taught him, I ordered Dalton with a grunt to answer the door. I needed help and I didn't care at this point if it came from the UPS guy. But it was J, who fixed me up with a sofa palette, the remote, some ice chips, and the telephone before taking all three of my kiddos with her to work, at the Mother's Day Out at her church, for free, for three days.

Life was just like that as their neighbors. I tooled her kids all over town and listened to their concerns when they didn't think she might want to hear it - like about her dating again. Her kids babysat mine and would never take pay. In fact, they probably would have PAID ME to do so, even despite the dead guy living in our front yard. It made them feel so grown up. I can't tell you how many of our home videos include them teaching my kids to swim in the kiddie pool or take their first steps in the snow.

We have both moved to new neighborhoods, J and us. And, having three children each, we only find the time to yell and say "Hey" a couple of times a year now. But whenever we do, we usually spend hours talking and that old adage is played out in perfect harmony: ".....picking up right where we left off."

Which is why, I found it particularly loving and poignant of God to prepare my heart the way He did through the writing of my last post. I had just finished it less than an hour before I heard the news. After all this fun, strong and wonderful family has been through, L, J's beautiful daughter, has been diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, a highly curable form of cancer. She just shaved her hair in the past couple of days. In reading her online journal, I rejoice in that she has been keeping such a fantastic attitude. I am STILL in shock, though, more so I think because of knowing all that J and the kids have already been through. I know this thinking has no Biblical basis, but I can remember having the conscious thought at her last ordeal that "this is it. Life for them will be smooth sailing from here on out because they have reached their limit of what one family can be expected to endure in a lifetime."

I am just so - astounded - completely - that even as God directed the words of my last post, He was preparing me, not only for this news, but for recognizing that whenever we are given rest in this world from the overwhelming problems of life, it is so that we might have the energy to be a help to someone else at that time. And it just because He is SO GOOD that we get blessed in the process. To once again have the opportunity to be in fellowship with my friends on a more regular basis and to know that while hair loss and missed school is certainly no small trial for a gorgeous young girl in her her senior year of high school, it sounds at least as if the prognosis is good.

We're praying for you L! Kick it's butt! OK?