Counting Answers

Counting Answers

Have you ever been stuck in traffic and all the lanes except yours are moving? I don’t know why but it seems like I’m always stuck in the lane that isn’t moving. Then, just the other day, I was in a traffic jam – but some how I ended up in the one lane that moving. As I thought about it; I realized that there have been lots of times I was in the “fast” lane… but for some reason my mind always focused on the time I stuck and not moving.

I started to wonder if I had the same kind of selective memory when it came to answered prayers. Maybe God answered more prayers than I realized because I was too quick to focus on the unanswered ones. I decided to make a concerted effort to pay more attention to the prayers that are answered.

This leads me to my au pair situation. Having settled the financial issues with agency, I had to set about the task of finding an au pair to actually live with me. As luck would have it, the very day the money matters were settled, the agency sent me a name and phone number for an available, in-country au pair.

I called her right away. She seemed very sweet on the phone, so we made arrangements to meet the next evening. Elizabeth and I picked her up at the metro station and stopped at the diner for a bite to eat. We discussed the cold and specific details of what I was looking for – Elizabeth’s schedule, my schedule, what duties needed to be accomplished during each day and each week, and what other rules would be in place. Then I asked her if she had any questions.

She looked me square in the eye… “Do you have faith?”

Her question took me a little off guard. I figured we’d get around to discussing faith and religion at some point… but this was her primary concern. She was relieved to hear that we were Christians and that we go to church regularly. As an interesting side note, later we were talking about our respective churches and it sounds like her church is Spanish speaking version of mine… I’m going to have to explore that further.

When we finished at the diner, I took her back to the house to see her potential room. She seemed to be hitting it off really well with Elizabeth. We visited for a while at my house. As we talked, it just seemed to evolve that we were a good match so I offered her the position.

She wanted to come live with us very badly. But there was one problem. Gaby isn’t planning to leave until mid-February. Andrea doesn’t have a family. She is allowed two weeks of transition time where the agency provides housing for her. However, we were meeting on the last day of her two week allotment. If she didn’t find alternate housing until Gaby left, she would be deported and therefore unavailable when I needed her. Soooo… I invited her to stay in my office on my air mattress until her real room is ready.

It’s going to be a full house… We now have Gaby, Gaby’s husband, and Gaby’s mom arrives tomorrow. Andrea is arriving this afternoon. This could get interesting!

But what was really interesting… As Andrea was leaving for her temporary housing she told me that on Monday her church had a special prayer meeting to ask God to find Andrea a good family. I had been praying that God would provide me a good au pair. In one act, God brought it all together. In one stroke he answered the prayers of many people. It really does feel like the fast lane.