By L.A. Nicholson
All manner of obstacles came my way the weekend of September 9, 2023, the ninth of the ninth month. My refrigerator, which had been ailing, decided it had had enough, and the fridge section stopped cooling Saturday night after I had prepped for Sunday dinner. We were going to have curried goat, a rarity and something dearly loved by an old lady I knew who lived alone.
MALFUNCTIONING FRIDGE
Bone-tired, attention had to be turned to the now-leaking fridge and re-assigning items to the freezer that was half-cooling.
I had had no reason to call the fridge man in years, but, thank God, his number was unchanged. After telling me that he was going off in the morning to tend to his new-found joy and soon-to-be retirement activity—a farm in St. Mary—he promised to stop by nonetheless. I couldn’t stay to see him due to a church engagement, so I turned him over to my husband.
EXPLODING THERMOS
My mind was on the curried goat as I sat waiting for my church meeting after the main service ended. Just as it started, my phone rang—it was my daughter calling to say that her stainless-steel thermos of uneaten lunch (from Friday) had exploded!
How???
She said I had closed it too tightly, and since I was finally out of the house, she had decided this was the best time (Sunday) to resolve the problem by placing it in a pot of hot water (longer than Google had advised, she surmised), and well… the pressure had built up, and the lunch was now on the high ceiling and some was on the floor…did we have a tall ladder?
She KNEW we did not!!!
I had already received word that the fridge man had come and had said he couldn’t do much to fix the fridge because when I had unplugged it to try to dissolve ice that I couldn’t see or reach in a section of the freezer (as per Google), this had interfered with some settings he would have needed to check.
So now to hear of thermoses exploding and food spattering all over the place—it was too much. Somehow, no one heard my uncontrollable groan as I gathered my things to leave the sanctuary…but I guess my family did, for by the time I reached home, a ladder had been borrowed and they had just completed wiping the floor! No one was in the kitchen at the time of the incident so there was no physical damage done.
The freezer had picked up speed, and my attention soon turned to cooking and just praising God for how He had worked things out.
IF YOU HAD WAITED ONE DAY LONGER…
My mind turned again to my elderly friend, who loved curried goat. I hadn’t been to see her in a while or called her either because I was just always too short on time and she was a wonderful communicator. But I couldn’t stop thinking about her, so I repented of having abandoned my friend for such a long time, and tired though I was at the end of the day, I drove to her home with some dinner.
She was happy, still, I could tell that something was wrong—she couldn’t straighten her back. She had run out of pain medication and had only $1000, which she figured wasn’t enough to fill her prescription. I knew that was more than enough because I had filled it for her months ago. When we found it, we realized it was dated 2022, but the pharmacist said it was still valid when we called.
The cost was $76.00, along with two insurance cards! My friend had been suffering without the medication needlessly! As the pharmacist handed me the health cards, she glanced at the prescription again, which she said was now fully dispensed and she would be keeping.
“Wow! Did you see this?!” she exclaimed. “The prescription is dated September 10; that’s today’s date! If you had come tomorrow, I couldn’t have filled it!”
Believers, I shed some tears of repentance and thanksgiving to God as I drove back to that old lady’s house.
I learned that day that when the Holy Spirit keeps nudging me to do something, I should do it, no matter the cost.
