Bringing Comfort

Submitted by Jill Vanderwood

This story was first published in It Happened By Design By Kathie M. Thomas

When I woke up, and reluctantly pulled myself out of bed, on a rainy Saturday, in late October, I had no idea the Lord would use me as an instrument to bring comfort. I also had no idea I could help answer the prayer of a young mother.

Our neighbors had moved to the country and invited my family to a house warming. I bundled myself into my purple raincoat and drove to Bed Bath and Beyond to pick up a gift card. I ran from the car to the store and stood in the entryway to take off my wet raincoat. Near the door were several shopping carts with comforters marked $9.99. What a buy. I picked up two blankets encased in plastic and continued to the checkout where I could purchase the gift card.

A family in front of me had several comforters which were blue and brown. But when I came along, there was only one blue, and the rest were two-tone pink.

When the cashier rang up my purchase, the price was $6.99. After taking my purchase out to the car, I returned to the store for more pink comforters, ending up with eight in all; some blankets were full size and some twin size.

The rain continued to pour as I drove to the grocery store, with these bulky blankets filling the front and back seats of my car. While at the grocery store, I met up with a young, single neighbor who had recently moved into her father’s home. She told me she had walked to the post office and then to the store. Offering the soaking wet girl a ride home, we stacked the plastic covered bundles into the back seat.

“Do you need a warm blanket for your bed?” I asked the shivering girl. “I bought eight all together and I’m not sure what to do with all of these pink comforters.”

“Sure,” she said, “If you don’t need them.”

“This will be your early Christmas gift. What size is your bed? I have twin or full size.”

“My bed is full size,” she said. “Thank you, thank you so much, for the ride and the blanket.”

“I’m so glad I ran into you today,” I told her.

“Me too,” she said, getting out of the car and hugging the comforter.

I decided to give another blanket to a single, college student in my neighborhood. She also chose a full-size. My granddaughters didn’t need them, and my grandson has a full-size bed, so he couldn’t use the blue comforter. The blue comforter was donated as a raffle for the Wheelchair Foundation.

An offer was made to Sub-for-Santa, at my church. My church leaders said they may have a need for two comforters. Setting those aside and I still had three.

I called my neighbor Sylvia, who has a daughter with eleven children, knowing most of her children were boys. Sylvia said they can always use blankets, and she could store them until her daughter, Lene, came to visit.

After Christmas, Sylvia asked where I got the blankets. I told about Bed Bath and Beyond’s October sale. “But my daughter wants to know how you knew to only buy the pink ones. She also wants to know why you gave her three blankets, one being a full size and two being twin.”

I told her, “I only had one blue one and the rest were pink. Everyone who needed a blanket got one, and they picked the size they needed for their own bed. Then I gave your daughter the three pink blankets, I had left.”

Sylvia told me, “my daughter’s husband is in Iraq. In October, her furnace went out. The boys sleep upstairs where it keeps pretty warm. The girls all sleep in the basement where it can get cold in November and December. A neighbor repaired the furnace as well as he could, but the basement was still cold. Lene got down on her knees and prayed for blankets to keep her girls warm. Right after that, their family visited our home and I sent her home with one full-size and two twin-size, pink blankets. Two girls sleep on a set of bunk beds, the top bunk is a twin bed and the bottom is a full-size bed. The other girl has a twin bed.”

“Not only did you give her children the right color of blankets, for her girls, they were also the right size for their beds.”

The Lord works in mysterious ways, bringing comfort to his children.

Submitted by Jill Vanderwood on May 24^th, 2010