Sometimes You Get What You Ask For

Over the weekend, we did one of my favorite things. It is a very simple, little thing in the grand scheme of life but isn't that the way with many of the best things?

We watched a show on the National Geographic channel. There is nothing that my animal loving kid likes better than a good animal show—and this one had the added bonus of being a mystery.

The Beast Hunter (new to me) was on the trail of Cappy, a Loch Ness monster type of sea creature, that many locals claim to have seen. The Beast Hunter is a scientist so he wanted to see it before he believed it. He talked to the eye witnesses who all had very similar stories, he went through the possibilities of what this could be, he examined local folk lore. All in all, his investigation was quite thorough.

My girl, with her wealth of 12 year old knowledge and brief stint of investigating the Loch Ness monster, claims that she too isn't going to believe something that she can't see. “What about God?”, we asked her.

I began to pray that God would show Himself to her in a real way. I know that she knows that God is real in her head. I know that she understands that the very creation she so dearly loves is evidence of His presence and power. She knows catechism questions, Bible verses, and Bible stories. She even takes better notes during the sermons than I do. And all of this is exactly the foundation that we want for her, that we prayed for.

My prayer was that, in some way, God would show Himself to her in such an unmistakable way that she would have a physical memory to put on the foundation. She seemed to need this.

On our drive home from school yesterday afternoon, we had a near miss wreck. A tires squalling, horn blowing, swerving with reflexes quicker than I thought I still had kind of near miss. The car was turning into me—it was on me—I had an up close and personal kind of view. There was absolutely no logical reason that we weren't dealing with major damage.

I sincerely thanked God for the fact that it was, indeed, a near miss. I did some deep breathing for the next bit of the drive and Gracen and I both tried to stop shaking. But I couldn't shake the feeling that I was supposed to connect the dots. I wasn't sure what this feeling was but it was a definite impressing-upon in my mind.

Finally, it clicked. I had been praying for God to show Himself to Gracen in a real way. What had just happened was a very real way.

We talked about God being there. We talked about the fact that the car was literally on us—she saw that and had braced for impact. We talked about there being no logical explanation for the car not hitting us.

I explained that God protects us from things that we see and from things that we don't see. He is always active and present in our lives and sometimes we get the privilege of seeing it.

I pray she got it. I hope and pray that she has stones of remembrance set in her mind and visits them each time we pass that particular spot.

But, you know, it wasn't just for her. Sometimes it does the adults, the teachers, the parents good too.

(And, by the way, the Beast Hunter decided that even though he couldn't see Cappy or prove its existence in any way, he believed in Cappy. There was simply too much in the depths of the oceans that humans haven't been—and may never be—able to see.)