Anyway this isn't about me, I'm excited to tell you this story.
I've known my friend, for now we will call her MaeBob, since the summer of 2000, she was one of my bosses at the Christian camp we both worked at.
MaeBob was in her 30s at the time, and working toward a second degree in education. She had a great desire to be a wife and a mom. That hasn't happened in her life, until now, sort of.
MaeBob is an elementary school teacher, she has chosen to teach at a small Christian school, she makes very little money. But she loves kids and sees her job as ministry, the way we all should.
Recently, through a series of events, only explainable by saying they were clearly orchestrated by God, MaeBob is in the process of becoming the guardian of an abandoned little girl.
MaeBob wasn't pursuing this, she wasn't trying to be a foster parent, she wasn't looking into adoption, she was approached by someone at her church, and she said yes.
She said yes to this little less than 2 yearold child, and she said "Yes God, I take Your Word seriously. I will trust You."
On Monday when I heard about these events unfolding in my friend's life, I was so excited and overwhelmed I got a little teary eyed. I've known MaeBob for 12 years, I know this isn't the way she imagined becoming a mom, but wow.
We don't know how long this little one will be in MaeBob's care, we don't know if MaeBob will be her forever family, or if this is for a season.
What I did know on Monday is that MaeBob's income is very small, this child came to her with nothing but the contents of her meager diaper bag.
When my friends have gotten married and had babies, we've thrown parties, showered them with the "things" they would "need" for the journey. To be totally honest, anyone who knows me well knows that I'm not a huge shower fan, I think they tend to be extremely shallow and vain.
But this time I knew, I knew we had to do it and we had to do it fast.
So with the help of Arwen, and her sister Bethany we rallied the troops. We decided an impromptu shower was not a good idea, it was necessary.
Arwen sent out a message to her church, which her sister in law Melissa sent to her MOPS group.
Can we just say "Holy Wow God's people, just WOW"
One woman in Mellisa's group is in the process of moving, she already had a pile of goods to get rid of, and this woman's children are adopted, she has a special place in her heart for orphans. Other moms contributed too, expensive strollers, ride around toys, clothes, sippy cups.... IN 24 HOURS, 24 HOURS.
Friday night when we were hanging out with our friend Diane, who has many mutual friends of MaeBob's and we told her the story, she said hold on, walked upstairs to the room where her daughter was sleeping, and brought down some gifts, she said "here, I've never used these, add them to the gifts."
Our friend Lauren, who has never met MaeBob said, stop by on your way, I have a flexible flier tricycle.
Let me also just say that these are mostly women who don't know MaeBob, have never met her.
Bethany drove around and collected goods. Arwen called MaeBob's house, which is more like a duplex where she lives on one side with her mom, and where her sister, brother in law and niece and nephew live on the other side. We invited ourselves over on Saturday. We decided that with all the changes going on in MaeBob's life, the last thing we wanted to do was make life complicated, and we had collected a ton of stuff.
I went and got flowers and cake, cut veggies and made dip.
And we showed up.
And bags of clothes were opened.
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