All Part of the Plan

"For if you remain silent at this time,

relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place,

but you and your father's family will perish.

And who knows but that you have come to your royal position

for such a time as this?"

~ Esther 4:14

God has a plan for each of us. Our lives matter to countless others, even if we never see how. I have been blessed, on rare occasions, to get glimpses of the ways God used me as his vessel to answer someone else's prayers. These glimpses have typically occurred after the fact, when folks have graciously shared with me how God worked through me, and I have appreciated knowing.

One time, however, I was blessed to hear about my role in the other person's prayer as it was playing out. I had offered an item for sale on Facebook that someone living two hours away saw listed. I had noted in the listing that the item needed to be picked up and I was wary of the person legitimately wanting to make the trek. The person gave me her phone number and asked me to call about setting up a pickup time. I looked for a reason to ignore the message, thinking it must be a scam of some sort. With no good reason not to reply, I made the phone call.

The elderly woman who answered was delighted to have found the item, and for the price I was asking. Her teenage grandson had asked her a few weeks prior to help him find this item, at this price point or lower, so he could surprise his mother, who wanted to buy it but could not afford it. The woman told him to pray about it and she herself had also been praying. Just that morning she had asked her women's group at church to pray, as well.

We went on to have a great conversation about faith and the ways God worked in our lives. I told her this conversation was no coincidence and I was grateful God brought us together because I needed the joy as I was feeling stuck in my grief over my father's recent death. She then shared with me a bit of her own grief journey, as she had lost a child and her husband, and she gave me some wonderful faith-based grief resources to explore.

I hadn't realized it until then, but I really had been hoping and praying for someone to understand my grief, someone to help me figure out what the Lord needed me to do next to work through the pain of my loss. The woman recommended attending a GriefShare group, as she had done a couple times. I had seen GriefShare online and even signed up for a group but decided it was too soon for me to try, so never attended. I did, however, sign up for their daily email, and that had truly spoken volumes to me. As I was feeling ready to move forward, to let go of the grief and sadness, to let God heal me of it so I could once again embrace life fully, I knew I needed to somehow share from my experiences as a caregiver and daughter. I needed to help others in order to be helped...and I needed the advice from this stranger to get started.

After our conversation, I messaged the womn again, dropping the price of the item by half so she and her grandson could use the extra for gas money. I said I looked forward to meeting her and her grandson in person within the coming days, when they came to pick up the item. She and I both cried with joy at the way in which God brought us together to answer our prayers.

We are always faced with the choice of participating in God's plan or not. I had the option of ignoring the woman's request. I had the option of keeping the cost of the item the same, regardless of the distance they had to travel to pick up the item her grandson had prayed to find in his budget. I am confident that God would've answered their prayers even if I had chosen not to be the vessel through which he reached them; however, I would've missed the opportunity to help this woman build up her grandson's faith in God. I would've missed the chance to share in their joy and to be consoled by her grief testimony. I would've missed out on this part of God's healing for me - this very moment in time when God worked through me and in me. As noted in Deuteronomy 30:19-20, we are given a choice between life and death. Choose life!

Lord, thank you for always working in my life and in the lives of others.

Conform my will to yours so that I may always choose to participate in your plan for us,

a plan I know is designed to bring us all love, joy, and eternal closeness to you. Amen.

A stranger engaging in conversation with my niece, who unexpectedly sat next to her, wanting to talk.