Seeing the Lord's hand in little things

I think the Lord blesses our lives in ways that we often don't notice.  This week, I noticed the Lord blessing two of my sweet children in a small, but very special way.  I'm sure if I look harder, I would see evidences of this kind of thing quite often.

My sweet Rachel, who has earned quite a bit of money lately babysitting, wanted to buy a birthday present for Josh.  She didn't know what, but she wanted it to be something he would really like.  While I was shopping at Costco last week, I saw a table full of Seahawks t-shirts with the numbers and names of players on them.  They resembled jerseys, but were t-shirts, and were only $20.  I thought Rachel might like to get that for Josh, so I asked her about it. (I thought about buying one while I was there and asking Rachel later, but decided against it.)  Rachel thought that was a great idea.  I had seen the shirts on Thursday and we went shopping on Monday.  There were two shirts left - both XL (which is entirely too big).  I asked an employee about the shirts and she said they had sold out in less than a day. We were sad, but we wandered around to see if there was another suitable present.  There was a cool looking book that was shaped like and felt like a 2D football, and was about college football.  There were a few of them in the stack.  Rachel decided that would be a pretty good gift and she bought it.  On the drive home, she noticed some sort of hardened goo on the outside of the book.  She decided she wanted to return it and get a replacement.  I told her I would do a little later in the week.

On Tuesday morning, I was thinking about my plans for the day.  Sarah had preschool from 9:20-11:50 and I was helping in Emilee's class from 10:30-11:00.  I had the thought that I should do some housework before helping in class and then go to Costco after.  Costco is a 12-13 minute drive from the school and a 10 minute drive from preschool.  This would leave about 25 minutes for returning the gift and shopping, if everything went perfectly.  This was a bad plan, but I couldn't let it go.  I decided to go for it. 

Everything went perfectly at Emilee's school and I was in the van at 10:58.  I got to Costco a little before 11:15.  I walked into the store and there was a line at the return desk.  Thankfully, it went pretty quickly.  I got a cart, went into the store, and walked straight to the book section.  I walked past the table that had held the t-shirts and it was still empty.  There were no more books left.  My heart sank.  So I walked through the store and did my shopping.  I kept my eyes open for anything that Josh might like, but there was nothing.  After getting my groceries, I decided to walk through the book section one more time to see if I had missed something.  I hadn't.  So I walked out the other end and noticed a couple of employees next to the empty table.  They had just unloaded a box of t-shirts and had several more boxes next to them.  It was a new shipment of the very t-shirts Rachel had wanted to buy for Josh.  I was so excited!  I walked up to them and asked which players they had.  They didn't have Josh's favorite, but they had his second favorite.  So one of the employees dug through the box she was getting ready to unload to find me the right size for Josh's t-shirt.  I grabbed the shirt, went to check out, and got to Sarah's preschool at the end of the pickup window.

If I had listened to the first prompting and just bought the shirt, none of this would have happened.  But since I didn't, the Lord honored Rachel's desire to celebrate her brother by helping me be in the right place at the right time to buy the present she wanted.  And Josh is wearing it today for Seahawks Friday and will probably wear it during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

The parable of the tangled hair

My daughter has long beautiful hair.  She loves her long pretty hair (although not as much as I love it), but she hates to have it brushed.  I generally keep her hair in braids to prevent too many tangles from forming.  On Sunday, I take out her braids, then wash and brush her hair and usually leave it hanging down her back.  It takes a little while to get the tangles out, but it's not too horrible.  On Monday I brush her hair and put it in braids.  Then each day after I take out the braids, brush the hair again and rebraid it.   Last week was a bit different.  On Monday, I was forgetful and didn't braid her hair, nor did I brush it.  On Tuesday, I did not brush her hair or braid it either.  I looked at the hair and thought, this hair is going to get really tangled if I don't do something, but before I could do something, she was off to play with her friends.  By Wednesday morning, the hair was getting bad, but I was lazy and didn't feel like fighting her over the hair.  I put it in a quick ponytail, without brushing it, thinking that maybe it would stop the tangles from getting worse.  By Thursday, it was clear that this strategy hadn't worked.  Her hair was ridiculously tangled.  But I fixed the ponytail and let it be.  On Friday I was more interested in getting out of the house to play volleyball.  On Saturday we were busy cleaning the house and taking down Christmas decorations.  On Sunday, I had no choice but to deal with the badly neglected and unbelievably tangled hair.  I washed her hair.  I put a lot of conditioner in her hair.  And then I went to work.  I carefully started to brush her hair, starting from the bottom.  I worked slowly to try to avoid hurting her, but the rats nest on her head was not going to come loose without some pulling.  I tried to distract her and was a gentle as possible, but still I hurt her head at times.  After 40 minutes, I still wasn't done.  But the hair I had brushed was beautiful again.  We had to leave for church so I took a break and finished her hair later after church.  And once I had finished brushing her hair, I put it in braids to avoid pain and suffering next Sunday.

As I was brushing, I realized how this experience illuminates repentance and the wisdom of following the commandments and repenting quickly when we realize we have made mistakes.  We, like Sarah's hair, start out perfect.  But as we make choices, we inevitably make mistakes.  Our beauty is marred by tangles.  We can brush it out quickly and it can be a relatively painless process , just like repenting on a daily basis. We can take steps to prevent tangles from forming, like making efforts to keep the commandments and filling our time with positive things.  But if we ignore our problem and sins, they can become worse and more painful to resolve.  But, like Sarah's hair, even if we allow our lives to go wildly off track, there is always a way to fix it. Though repentance can be a painful experience, through Christ's atonement we can be beautiful.and whole again.