Short Stories

Be Careful What You Pray For...God May Be Listening

My precious daughter Tracy Christina was taken by cancer (No, I won't give that word the honor of having a capital letter. It is not deserving of that) January 9, 1998 at age 27. We had moved her into my home for the last two months of her life and her sister Rebecca Lynn and I took turns around the clock, caring for her.

We lost her right after Christmas, it seemed like she just gave up after the holidays. Maybe not, but it seemed like it. Of course we haven't had a real Christmas since but what I want to share with you in this writing is the first anniversary of her death. I had been praying really hard for days and days for God to get me through it. I wasn't sure what I would do and I was so afraid for myself to try to deal with it. She died at 12:00 noon and I dreaded that hour most of all. I prayed so hard and pleaded with God to send me a distraction of some kind so that I could bear it. I really didn't know what I was going to do or how I would react. I had visions of breaking all the windows in the house, running down the street screaming and other reactions that don't even need to be printed. I really felt that I could NOT get through it. I prayed until I thought God must have been sick and tired of listening to me. I didn't pray for strength. I didn't pray for Tracy. I didn't pray for anything except a distraction to keep me from losing it totally on that day and especially at that time, noon.....I prayed repeatedly, "Please God, give me a distraction, please Lord, send a distraction so that I can get through this.

On the anniversary date so dreaded, when I awoke, the world around me seemed fine. I wasn't but it was. I made coffee and decided to step out back with my coffee cup and thought maybe if I stayed outside it would help since my 'baby' died inside the house. I drank the cup of coffee but my mind was on nothing other than how I could handle the day. If you have been there, you know. I finally went back inside to refill my cup and go back out but by then God's plan for me was already in effect.

I heard a sound from the guest bath that sounded like a commode running. I went to check it out and found that the commode was almost overflowing with raw sewerage and the bathtub was half filled with it. I ran to the master bath and the commode in there was doing the same thing and the shower in that bath was almost full of the raw filth. I ran back to the den and looked in the central A/C closet, and saw that it was even coming up out of the drain pipe that NOTHING ever comes out of. I checked the kitchen....both sinks were filling. When I went into the laundry room I could see that the raw filth was coming out of the drain pipe for the washer. By the time I got my wits about me, of which I had very little anyway at that time, the raw sewerage was overflowing two commodes, one shower, one bathtub, the washer, the A/C unit drain and the kitchen sinks. I phoned the city. I phoned my plumber. Within just a few minutes, I had people from the water department in business suits and a room full of water department workers in uniforms. Then I had police officers there because the water department was obligated to bring them out in the event of this happening. Then the plumbers showed up. Then a call went into a local 'loss mitigation service' and three or four of them showed up. There must have been at least 15 men there, running rampant through my home. It was decided that it was the city's fault. Some left, some stayed.

Then it was decided that because of the threat of disease from this (and I don't mean just brown colored water, I mean everything the entire neighborhood had flushed in the past days) that it was not safe to stay there. By then, all of the carpets in the den, the hall, the master bath, the master bedroom were ruined. It ruined the flooring in the laundry room and kitchen and Master bath as well. It got deep enough to damage the bottom of sofas, loveseats, entertainment center and so much other furniture I won't even mention here.

I was told that after they moved all the furniture, cut and rolled up and removed all the floor covering and cleaned the (by then) concrete floors with a special cleaner that they would put a machine in the house to kill any germ that existed. It was so powerful that it would kill pets and/or people if they stayed. It removed the oxygen from the air as best I understood. We were sent to a motel and forbidden to even enter the house for 24 hours after the machine was removed. One grandson forgot a school notebook that he needed the next day. I phoned them and told them I was just going to run by and run in and pick it up real quick. They forbade me to do it. They met me at the house, the man went in with a mask and picked up the notebook when we told him where it was.

We got through it all of course. We went back home. The insurance company did what they needed to to replace things. After about a week, all was back to normal. It was maybe two or three days before it dawned on my poor brain what day this happened and what I had prayed so much for and so sincerely and so hard about. The anniversary of Tracy's death never crossed my mind that day. The next anniversary of her death, I prayed again. I didn't ask God for a distraction because when he answers prayers, he means business. I only prayed for strength and courage and to remember her love and her life instead of her death. This may be a silly story for you but I warn you now, when you pray, be sure you want your prayer answered because He is still there answering them, so whatever you do, don't pray really hard for a distraction. He just might send you one.