Pennies from Heaven

First, thank you to all who are praying. I cannot believe the outpouring of love that my middle of the night heart cry has received. God bless you all.

I wrote this after my father died. God has always made His presence known during the hardest times. Yesterday, as I was getting back into my car after dropping my two oldest at a friend's home, I found a penny outside my car door that wasn't there when I had gotten out. It reminded me once more of this story, and I had to share.

Pennies from Heaven

The day my father died was a warm and sunny late spring day.  I awoke

to the phone ringing over and over with my cell phone signaling text

messages simultaneously.  With my heart and soul I knew there was a

problem.  When I finally was awake enough to answer the phone, my

sister calmly recounted the events of the early hours and pleaded with

me sincerely, but sternly, to get to the hospital as soon as possible.

 I at first thought of taking a shower and making the kids breakfast

but then her words sunk in and I quickly dressed and coaxed the kids

to do the same.  I hurriedly called a friend to watch them for awhile

and then piled my two little ones into my car.

After ushering the children into our friend’s home and quietly making

my exit before the little guy noticed, I found a single, shiny penny

next to my car.  I recalled an email I had received years earlier from

my Godmother about a rich man who always picked up every penny he saw.

 One day someone questioned why he would bother to pick up a penny

when he had so many millions of dollars.  His reply changed my view

toward the meager penny forever, he picked them up because they said

“in God we trust” on them.  He said a little prayer of thanks that we

could trust God every time he saw a little penny.  I knew that this

penny was a sign that I could still trust God.

I slipped the penny carefully into my pocket and thought to myself

that I would keep that penny forever because I found it the day my

father died.  He was still alive at the time, but in my soul I knew

that it was only a matter of very short time before he would be gone,

perhaps I had already missed him.  I jumped back in my car and began

the drive to the hospital, praising God for His provision while

pleading for a miracle on the scale of raising Lazarus after four

days.

It had been a hard two years already, yet they had begun on the

ultimate high of my life—the birth of my son.  Our daughter had been a

very high risk pregnancy.  It was a miracle that I was able to carry

her to term, even a bigger one that she was completely healthy.  After

we had her, we experienced a three year battle of infertility that

dragged me to the deepest depths of despair.  The doctor was stumped

and prepared us that a pregnancy may never be possible.  When I had

pushed myself as far as I possibly could go on my quest for another

child, I threw myself at the feet of the LORD and begged for mercy.  I

was okay if His final answer was no, I just needed an answer so that I

could move on.

 By His grace, I conceived despite the amazement of the

doctors and all my hormonal issues disappeared much to their

confoundment.  And so, my Samuel was born and I felt like I had

conquered the world and held a piece of Heaven itself in my arms.

However, the high was abruptly thwarted by my mother’s diagnosis with

stage four brain cancer.  Despite my absolute love for my child and my

longing to just spend endless hours just soaking in this precious

little love, I put my motherly desires aside a bit and tended to my

own mother.  Through prayer and powerful intercession she made it

through Chemotherapy, radiation, two surgeries, and came out on the

other side of cancer—remission.

 My little love had been the glue that

held me together through it all, however when I opened my eyes after

endless months of a complete blur, he wasn’t a baby anymore.  I longed

to have another chance to cuddle and kiss my newborn.  I dreamed of

getting to hold a baby for hours and hours without interruption.  I

begged God to find a way for us to have one more child.  But, I knew

that I had already been blessed so greatly.  I finally realized that I

had two remarkable miracles, I was satisfied, and I had made peace

with the events of Samuel’s first year and praised God that our family

was moving forward again.

Then, much to our amazement, I became pregnant.  I felt as if the

storm was finally over, we had been through the valley and were

heading up the mountainside once more.  However, at ten and a half

weeks the baby’s heart stopped beating.  On the ultrasound screen, I

saw a perfect little face, hands and feet so still and peaceful.  My

heart sank immediately at the absence of a fluttering heart.  The

ensuing miscarriage ripped at my soul.  The emotional turmoil was

matched only by the physical agony of an infection, emergency D&C, and

two weeks of painful recovery.

The day before I found that precious penny, was only the second time I had

seen my father in nearly three weeks, I never dreamed it would be the last

day I would see him.  I was in shock, I text messaged friends and

asked them to pray and pray hard.  It all seemed too terrible to be

true. I kept thinking I must be wrong, this will pass.  But in my

heart I knew the truth.  It hadn’t been what my sister said, but how

she said it.  The calm, metered tone of her voice said more than any

words could convey.  I could feel in her voice what she wasn’t saying

and the weight of her knowledge of an unfolding tragedy that she could

not allow her brain to absorb yet.  She was caring for our mother as

her husband and our brother tended to our father at the hospital.  She

had called and sent me a text message when the ambulance left our

parents’ home, but it had been the first night I had slept in nearly

three weeks.  I am usually a light sleeper, but this time I slept

right through it.

When I arrived at the hospital, my entire family was there.  We sat

crammed into a room that was more like a closet waiting for a doctor

to talk to us.  A nurse finally came out and told us we could go in

soon but cautioned that he was very sick.  Moments after she left we

heard the beeping of machines and the announcement of a code blue in

room 420—our father’s room.  We all knew what had happened, but still

held out hope that we were wrong.  Less than two days earlier, Daddy

had gone for a “routine” prostate biopsy.  A twenty minute procedure,

took his life only 36 hours later.  He developed a case of sepsis and

was beyond any earthly means of medicine.

As we gathered at my mother’s home later that day, my husband, Drew,

and I dawdled and debated on when we should tell our kids.  We decided

to let them play and have fun as long as we could before breaking the

news.  Our God-sent friend kept our two through breakfast, lunch,

snacks, naps, and dinner while six months pregnant and tending to her

own three children.  At six o'clock Drew finally picked up the

children.  He sat them down and explained what had happened, our

daughter’s only concern was who would take care of Grandma.  The kids

agreed that they wanted to go to Grandma’s—we had given them the

option—and so the two came bounding in.  We tried to keep things light

and as my husband flipped Samuel upside down in a tickle monster

frenzy, pennies fell from his pockets.  More pennies to remind me to

trust God.

I saved those pennies and decided to give one to each grandchild along

with a photo memory book of their grandfather.  However, the pennies

didn’t stop there.  In the weeks that followed I found countless

pennies all over the place—on my countertop, in the laundry, in the

diaper bag and my pocketbook, in shoes and on the ground, in grocery

bags at Shoprite, the bathtub and dresser drawers.  Each a reminder of how

good God is.  The pennies all told would not even amount to enough to purchase a cup of

coffee from Dunkin Donuts , but I know that when I prayerfully accepted

each one another brick was laid in my mansion in Heaven.

Just after my father’s death, I heard people questioning how God could

do this and whether there even could be a God.  But, truly this was a

act of free will.  My father, of his own free will, chose the doctor who

performed the procedure and this doctor—who we have discovered does

not have a good track record—chose of free will to not take certain

precautions.  I think the bigger question is how could God give us

free will?  Why would a God who can simply speak an entire universe

into majestic being, give people free will to single handedly destroy

it?  Why would the God who formed Adam with His own hands and filled

his lungs with His own breath, who knew each of us from before the

beginning of time, then give man the free will to take a life out of

rage or desire or convenience?  God did not do this, but He has been

there through it all.

I praise Him for the little girl that He gave to me for almost three

months who peacefully died and rests now in Heaven.  I praise Him for

my mother’s conquest of cancer and the outpouring of love that we have

received and continue to receive from friends throughout her battle.

I praise Him for the 34 years I spent with my father and the chance

to see him and kiss him goodbye one last time before he passed.  I

praise Him for the eternity that I will spend with my daughter,

Ashley, and my father, and all those loved ones I hold only in my

heart now.  I praise Him for my two little miracles that are snuggly

asleep in warm, safe beds.  I praise Him for a country that was

founded by men who trust God and allows me to worship, praise and

trust Him any way I want. I praise Him that I have a family who is

willing to stick together in good times and bad no matter our

differences.  And I praise Him for pennies from Heaven, a wealth that

I neither created nor deserve.