Praying Friends

Our bible study group read and discussed an excerpt from St. Francis of Assisi's writings in which he mentioned a decision that he had trouble making, so he enlisted the help of two of his good friends, Claire and someone else (sorry, I don't have the book with me to jog my memory.) He asked them to pray about the matter and said that he'd act upon whatever answers God told them. And he did! We discussed what a bold move that was to rely on what God told other people to make a life-changing decision. Most (maybe all?) of us had never done that before.

I have my own Claire story. My friends Karin and Magy are planning a shower for me and they couldn't start working on it until we had the DNA results. After the test, the threat of the adoption falling through decreases dramatically. So, Karin and Magy talked through figuring out a date to hold the shower. The first available for both of them to be there was October 23rd. I thought that was cutting it close to when we'd travel, so we tried to come up with an alternate plan. That didn't work out, so we decided to stick with Oct 23rd with the caveat that it could be rescheduled if we got called to travel at that time.

Then another snafu came up - that weekend is my grandmother's 100th birthday. I surely don't want my party to compete with celebrating her! Magy said that we shouldn't stress anyone out, especially my family, so we'll work with whatever we have. A call to my aunt and the decision to work around the shower settled us back to Oct 23rd. In the meantime, Magy said, "I was praying about the date of this shower this morning and then I suddenly realized that Kevin's going to be here for it anyway, so why rush?" Funny thing... I felt the same way that morning, but I didn't trust myself. Hearing Magy say that she heard from God was an entirely different deal. I thought of Claire and St. Francis and tucked the thought away. Then we got the call yesterday and I called Claire - I mean, Magy - on the phone and told her the news!