A BOWL OF OATMEAL AND PENNIES FROM HEAVEN

With my husband gone this week, I easily morphed back to my single ways - running at dusk, not turning on the TV, being engrossed in a book, and eating oatmeal every night for dinner.  I subsisted on Cliff bars, raw veggies, peanut butter, coffee, apples, and oatmeal during my single stint.  I do not miss anything about being single, except the oatmeal.  

Out for a run last night at dusk I was talking to God.  In particular, I was remembering His great love for me during my divorce.  I recounted to God how I felt covered by Him during that time of my life when most people ran the opposite direction.  Many times I had cried physical tears to God that really only held part of the pain I felt, the fear I was experiencing, the struggle I was having.  There weren't enough tears to hold the enormity of what I was experiencing.  So many times He provided His voice to me through this unbelievable peace and comfort, soft words to my spirit, the encouragement of a friend, a verse out of the Bible or a coin found on the road.

Coins and God and I have a thing.  It has been an avenue of God to visibly show me He is listening, He is loving, He is present.  It started many years ago when I was too ill to work and was beginning my slow and painful recovery.  Walking a few blocks daily I would talk to God about wanting to go back to work to earn a living, to feel whole again.  I began to find money on my walks.  God was showing me He was providing for me.  He heard me.  He loved me.  It would be ok.  I would recover.  I would work again.  To trust Him.

Last night running I told God again of my disappointment in the church and their reaction to me being a pastor's wife who went through a divorce.  I wasn't holding the volume of hurt I did six months, a year, or two years ago, but I still felt I wanted to keep the church a bit at arm's length.  I told God I did not want Him at arm's length and wondered was He growing tired of my slow journey through this process of letting the pain go?

I instantly heard God's reassurance....I still love you like that.  Watch.  I ran just a few feet further.  There, splayed across the road, were 9 pennies.  N I N E !!  In the same block I spied a nickel laying perfectly in a small indentation in the center of the road.  At first a wave of astonishment washed over me.  It wasn't the first time I felt that intimacy with God, but it felt brand new.  Tears trickled out of my eyes and ran down my cheeks, and then a smile stretched across my face that carried me the last two miles home.