Home from the Dentist
Our family was so blessed to have Grandpa Richardson as our dentist. He did all of our cleanings and check ups, cavities and even extensive orthodontics for us. He was an excellent dentist, and loved us all besides! (And he had a super Surprise Drawer!) It was a wonderful blessing for us!
Our trips to the dental office for “ortho” were after school. I would load up all the kids and drive from our town to his office in an adjacent city. There were always several of us in the waiting room, reading the magazines, entertaining the baby, and chatting with the receptionist, our family friend, while trying not to make too much commotion for the other patients! So it was always rush hour when we would start for home. The exit from the dental office onto Southern was especially tricky, as it was a left turn on a very busy street, across many lines of traffic in order to be ready for my right turn on Rural to get on the freeway home. And even though I went behind the dental office first in order to exit onto Southern at an intersection, there was no light there and I was particularly stressed about that huge left turn. By then, almost dinnertime, the kids were starting to get fussy and I was anxious about dinner and the evening’s events. So that left turn loomed extra forbidding.
On one such attempt, there seemed to be no letup in the cars zooming past in both directions. Finally, I prayed, “Dear Father, thou who parted the Red Sea; I know that thou canst part this traffic for me to enter also, and I ask thee to..” In a matter of seconds, the way opened for me to enter traffic, across all those lanes! Marveling at the Lord’s goodness, I made my way home.
Every time I took that drive home from the dentist, I used that prayer, and every time, the way opened up. Not only that, the experience gave me the faith to pray for many other different “ways to open up.” Even small things such as opening some time and peace and quiet to write an experience in my journal! The Lord would help me wake up totally alert in the middle of the night, or find myself with an unexpected stretch of quiet. Then there were the times I totally messed up on something—handling it way wrong! With a similar prayer, the Lord gave me another encounter with that person, a second chance to handle things better. I knew that the Lord was mindful of me, a mom with hedged-up ways at times.
In our day-to-day struggles, if something just isn’t happening, I know that the great Jehovah who parted the Red Sea–through his Prophet Moses–He can make a way for busy moms to accomplish what is before us.
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