hitting me over the head…with love

Dec 3, 2009

When I was a little girl, we went from being a two-income family managing a family grocery store and thus having plenty of food at all times, to being one-income family with a brother on a mission and there not being enough money to go around in the course of about 12 months. One day at church, my mother paid her tithing, and then came home and didn’t quite have all the ingredients she needed to make us dinner. As she went through her cupboards, she thought to herself, “if I only had eggs, I could make muffins and pancakes.” Just a few minutes later, a knock at the door sounded, and there was a man from our church with eggs in his hands. He told us that as he left church that day the spirit prompted him to go home and get some eggs to take to our family. That experience changed my life. I knew without a doubt that God knew exactly who we were, what we needed, and who He could prompt to help us.

Well, fast forward 20+ years. Once again, my life has been taken from a comfortable, plenty of money, plenty of food, plenty of clothes existence to having to count every single penny and there just not being enough of those pennies to make ends meet. Time and time again in the past two years we have been helped by those who are listening to God’s promptings. There have been so many miracles, so many times that people have brought us exactly what we needed…fresh fruit, gift cards to JCPenney so Richard could get new work clothes, gift cards to the grocery store, a load of food from the case lot sale, the perfect shoes for Fisher, a book we had been wanting, money for new tires, our family reunion fees paid, a tank of gas, a violin to borrow for Blythe, so many, many things. Well, this week, we experienced another one and I have to share because it is one of those moments like the egg story that I want to remember forever.

On Tuesday, I mailed out the pencil rolls. The total was $87 and after some donations people had made, I was out about $70. That night, while I was pulling out all our Christmas books and cleaning up the sewing machines, a loud knock sounded at our door. The children ran wildly to answer it and found no one there. Down on the sidewalk there was a big box of #10 cans of food! Apple slices that we are almost out of, soup mix that we love, and cocoa that is perfect for a chilly winter night. As we emptied the box with tears in our eyes, we noticed an envelope was inside as well. It had our names on the front and $70 inside. Seventy dollars! The exact amount I had paid for shipping the pencil rolls!

Simply amazing.

That morning, the children and I had read King Benjamin’s final speech in the Book of Mormon wherein he says:

I say unto you that if ye should serve him who has created you from the beginning, and is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will, and even supporting you from one moment to another—I say, if ye should serve him with all your whole souls yet ye would be unprofitable servants.

And behold, all that he requires of you is to keep his commandments; and he has promised you that if ye would keep his commandments ye should prosper in the land; and he never doth vary from that which he hath said; therefore, if ye do keep his commandments he doth bless you and prosper you.

And now, in the first place, he hath created you, and granted unto you your lives, for which ye are indebted unto him.

And secondly, he doth require that ye should do as he hath commanded you; for which if ye do, he doth immediately bless you; and therefore he hath paid you. And ye are still indebted unto him, and are, and will be, forever and ever; therefore, of what have ye to boast?

It couldn’t have been more perfect. I shared King Benjamin’s words with them again and then I explained to our children how the $70 was the exact amount of money we had spent shipping the pencil rolls…doing God’s work…and how He immediately paid us back. I explained that His blessings aren’t always as obvious as this, that sometimes when we are doing His will the blessings might be that our car keeps running, or we are protected from an accident, or our bodies stay healthy, or there is a spirit of love in our home, or a million other things that we may never notice, but that God is teaching us to trust Him right now and He is doing it by making it SO obvious that there is no possible way to doubt the reality of His care for us. He wants these things to be so impressed upon us that in the future when things aren’t as obvious we will remember these miracles and trust fully that our God loves us, blesses us, saves us, and knows us. He is not some impersonal being that rules the universe from afar. He is a father that yearns for us to give our hearts to Him.

It is like He is hitting me over the head (with love of course)!

To whomever listened to the prompting to bring us food and money this week, thank you. We are praying that God will bless you a hundred fold for your kindness.