May Road Trip - Part 4 - An Amazing Story

From the beach we headed out to dinner. It was to be Colt's 19th birthday and I wanted to take him somewhere to celebrate this. We were in a small town, and I knew we didn't have a lot of options; basically, we had three choices, and two were family style restaurants, and the third was too expensive for this Mother of Many Mouths!

Colt and Tyler went back and forth on which restaurant to choose, and in the end, it was decided that we would go to the ABC Family Restaurant.

We set up at two tables and then commenced to enjoy ourselves for the next two hours.


The children all ordered the kids dinners, and we adults studied the menus for ages, before we finally came up with our choices. We weren't the easiest guests, as we changed our minds two times. The waitress was ever so kind, and didn't seem to mind, even though we made a dash to the kitchen to change one of the orders!


After a delicious dinner we ordered these monstrous desserts! I am amazed we even had room, but we devoured them!

Right before we were done for the evening, I received my bill. I decided to make a quick trip to the ladies room before we paid and hit the road again. Now remember, these children had been sitting in this restaurant for nigh on two hours. They were being extremely well behaved, but at the same time, they were getting restless...

As I came out of the restroom our waitress was waiting for me. Uh oh! The first thing out of my mouth was, "Is it my children?"

She said, "No." Then she hesitated before she continued, "This is going to sound kind of weird."

Have you ever noticed just how quickly your mind can think fifteen different thoughts in what seems like the same moment? Mine can do that in a mere 1.5 seconds!

I thought something like: 'Can't be too bad. The only thing bad would be if the children misbehaved. She doesn't know me. Can't be anything too personal. Mustn't be anything I have done. Must be the van. Van that size is going to make any one say something weird. What else could it be? Yup, gotta be the van.'

She begins to talk again and then hesitates and then says, "This is going to sound weird, but I really feel that God is telling me to pay for your meal."

Now the weird thing is how I react. I reach out and touch her arm and say, "I get it! I'm a Christian."

How weird was my response. This is not something that anyone has *ever* said to me before!! Why did I say that strange thing before anything else, and without even pausing to think? Probably because I know my God!

And the interesting thing is when I told this story to my girlfriend back home, without telling her what I had said in response to this unusual statement from a stranger, my friend immediately said, "You know my God!" (speaking as if she were me)

And that is just it! That is how my God operates! I have had that happen to me before, so when this young girl said this to me, it didn't seem foreign or strange. Just simply something that *my* God would do!

She said, "So don't worry about the bill, it has been taken care of."

For a moment, my brain got screwed up and forgot what she had originally said, and I thought she meant the restaurant was paying for it. Why? I have no clue! I just did. Maybe because the thought of a young lady of probably no more than twenty-two paying for our huge dinner bill was too much to comprehend. So I said, "Are *you* paying for it?"

To which she said, Yes.

I was suddenly (almost as if I came down to earth and could think straight) shocked that someone this young would be offering such a huge gift. I gave her a hug and thanked her profusely. She told me she knew she would be blessed by this. This young lady and I then began to talk. She told me that she had felt convicted to pay for our meal, and she had even called her mother and told her that she felt "God is telling me to pay for their meal."

At this point, I began to tell her our story. I did this because I really felt I understood where this had come from. I felt that if God had told her to pay for our meal, she deserved to know the reason this might have happened.

I shared how I had made this long journey to bless my son and his relationship with his girlfriend. I wanted to meet her before they went their separate ways. I explained how we had come down there with literally no money at all. Simply a gas tank of gas (and a few more on the credit card) and four nights in cheap motels.

My telling her was not to say 'oh poor me', because it was not a hardship, it was simply a fact that we had done this trip because it was so important and couldn't be put off.

I wanted her to see how God had used her as an instrument to bless Colt and Tyler's relationship, and how I felt He might be blessing me for my putting my son as a priority, while not being wasteful and spending oodles of money at expensive hotels and takeout meals.

The interesting thing about all this was that we had not even looked 'poor'. Our children had all had desserts, full meals, and drinks. So we had not spared anything, given it was Colt's birthday dinner! There was nothing to say we couldn't afford to pay.

As I left the restaurant (and yes, I left her a hefty tip to help with the financial damage I left! lol), she gave me another hug, and I felt the most incredible feeling. I felt like God himself had met me on this journey and blessed my son and his girlfriend!

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