I think I’ve mentioned that the face of our neighborhood has been transforming over the eight and a half years since we moved into our current home. Back in 2015 most of us ranged from upper middle aged families to retirees. As an example, there were three children boarding the school bus just down the street from us each day. In the past few years that number has ranged from sixteen to twenty. When a house goes up for sale, it is typically snapped up quickly by a young couple.

In the past year, three older women moved away from here to assisted living or full care facilities and two of those homes have sold in just the last month, each hosting a three-day estate sale. The first of those sales was just a month ago and a couple of other neighbors were setting out goods for garage sales because of all the shoppers on our street. Ken decided he should join in on the garage sale fun and started hauling items out to the driveway. They were perched on makeshift tables and many on the pavement. Carrying all of it in and out morning and evening was quite a task.

The second estate sale was announced for three weeks later and we wanted to try again with a more organized approach, but the location for the sale wasn’t divulged until twenty-four hours ahead of start time, leaving us uncertain. Once we learned that it would be in the neighborhood, we scrambled to put everything together. We made arrangements to park our car in a neighbor’s driveway so that there was no tearing down and resetting the following day, borrowed tables from the church, and set everything up in the garage. We felt quite ready to meet this little sale head-on.

The first day was kind of exciting because there were big expectations and we were not yet exhausted. The second day sales were really slow but Ken had fun just talking to the various people who stopped by. The third day we just wanted the whole thing to end.

In the midst of all our garage sale adventures, we had done some shopping that required rearranging a number of heavy items in our garage and shed, along with taking lots of kitchen measurements to be sure everything was right for the new stove. And, of course, our car windshield had been dinged by a rock and the glass repairman was scheduled on day three of the sale.

This may not sound like a big deal, but to a couple of seniors like us, it was a very busy few days requiring much more strenuous activity than normal, not to mention stress. And the day after the sale was Easter.

Attending church to celebrate our risen Lord restored our spirits as did delicious food and fellowship shared in a friend’s home. It was a beautiful Easter Sunday, ending too soon as we had to head back the forty-something miles to our home to finish our clean-up and prepare for the coming week. The first task for that Monday was returning the borrowed tables to the church. When we had picked them up, there had been a couple of handymen at the OMC who helped load and secure the tables. All they had to do was lift the tailgate along with the four eight-foot tables so that they were tilted upward and couldn’t fly out and hit another vehicle. The return trip was a different story. It was just the two of us and we couldn’t lift the tailgate with four heavy tables stacked on it nor did we have strength left to lift them individually over the closed tailgate. So we laid them flat with the tailgate down and tied them individually to the side tie-downs. I felt pretty good that they were well-secured. Ken was not! He worried every time a vehicle pulled in behind us that one or more tables would get away and fly through the front of the other vehicle.

Finally, I asked him if he, the veteran Boy Scout, trusted the knots he had tied. He answered, “Yes.” I then asked if he trusted God, and again he answered, “Yes.” So I told him I’d just prayed for a safe trip over and he asked, “Yes, but did you ask that the tables would get there safely too?” I quickly implored, “Please, God, deliver the tables safely too.” Ken visibly relaxed then.

 To speed up our unloading time, Ken cut the many layers of binder twine holding the tables, and when all were stored back where they belonged, he closed the tailgate. There, lying on the pavement, under where the tailgate had previously been, was a piece of our binder twine in the perfect shape of a fish, tail and all! Absolute proof that God had been with us all along! He always is, and when you start to doubt, take a good look at all the little ways He takes care of us each and every day.

The Lord keeps watch over you as you come and go, both now and forever. Psalm 121:8