The visible tender mercy

Last year for a while I was working to follow Elder Eyring’s advice from many conferences ago and write down each day the ways I’d seen the Lord’s hand in my life.  The only problem was that often I wasn’t quite sure if I had seen His hand.

I started praying to be more aware, to be able to see past the ordinariness and identify things that the Lord was helping me with.

I didn’t really notice anything different then.  I did recognize several incredible tender mercies that happened this summer after they had happened.  But today I saw one happen.  Was in the middle of one happening.  And there was NO question in my mind but what the hand of the Lord was working in my life.

Helping me get my bacon.

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For a year or so now here in Oregon I’ve been buying meat from this company called Zaycon.  They advertise online, sell online, and then at a specific date/time/place you go and pick up your meat.  We’ve been really pleased with everything we’ve purchased from them and so last month I ordered some bacon and sausage.  It was supposed to be picked up between 4:30 and 5:00 today in a little town called Forest Grove, which is 2 towns away. 

I finished up at the chiropractor at 4:40 (ongoing neck pain from my accident) and started immediately for Forest Grove.  I noticed that a reminder had come on my cell phone from Zaycon, but I ignored it because I was on my way.  I got to the usual Forest Grove pickup site at 4:58—but there was no one there.

I panicked.  Then I thought to check that text message.  Sure enough, they had moved the pickup.  It was still in Forest Grove, but at a new address.  The problem was that I had left the GPS at home so I had no way to find the new address in a town I wasn’t at all familiar with.

I called home and told them I was having a crisis and got Josh on the phone.  He pulled up Google maps and started looking for the address that I gave him.  Forest Grove has 2 long one-way streets running through town, and the pickup was on 19th Ave which runs East.  As I was talking to Josh I decided that I had probably driven too far and so I turned off onto another street and drove back west for a couple of blocks, then got back on 19th.  This time as I looked for some street numbers I realized that the numbers were going in the opposite direction of what I had expected—so I still had quite a way to drive. 

Josh told me what cross streets to look for and told me it was in a shopping center on the left, then got off of the phone.  I watched for the right cross street and then watched for the right address—2784.

For a minute I couldn’t see any addresses, and then the next address I saw was in the 2800s.  I panicked, thinking that I had passed by the right place again, and it was already a few minutes after 5.  I was worried that the truck would leave soon.  I pulled into what looked like a narrow drive between two businesses, thinking that it would take me through the block to the other one way street and then I would drive west a little way and try to find the address again. 

As I drove through what turned out to be a small cramped parking lot, something caught my eye.  Way at the back of the parking lot was a white semi.  I wondered if it could possibly be the Zaycon shipment.  Sure enough, when I got closer it was.  I was right there, and I wasn’t even sure where “there” was!  I pulled up beside it and within a minute or two I had my bacon and sausage—probably even before my pounding heart had calmed back down.

Driving back out to 19th to make my way home I couldn’t even figure out how I’d gotten in to the parking lot.  The entrances were small and poorly marked and the parking lot itself was hard to navigate.  The fact that I turned in at what happened to be the right space and drove right to the delivery truck was truly a miracle—there was just no way I ever could have done it on my own.

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Thinking about this afterwards was interesting.  There was a part of me that was like “Bacon?  Really??”  But the other part of me was interested to think that even for something as (relatively) trivial as bacon, I was being watched over and guided.

And for that I am grateful…