#YestoGod – Blog Hop, Week One

First – new friends from the Blog Hop, welcome!  Old friends and family – “hi” to you, too!  I am participating in the Online Bible Study for “What Happens When Women Say Yes to God”, with Proverbs 31 Ministries, and on Thursdays they host a blog hop.  Today’s topic is “#YestoGod”.

Share a time you caught a “glimpse of eternity” as you said yes to what God was asking you to do.

Some of my readers have heard this story before, as it is over 13 years old.  But it’s the clearest moment in my life so far when I think God gave me instruction, telling me to get out of my comfort zone – and I saw the results.

B10 was a newborn, a *very* newborn, and I was a first time Mummy (at age 22).  I was nervous about everything, especially breastfeeding.  The idea of nursing in public (or even at home in front of people) made me about as insecure as I could have been.  I liked (okay, loved) nursing him, from the first time I did.  I knew that I wanted to nurse him – I just wanted to do it IN PRIVATE.

Here I was, not leaving the house, and trying to figure out this new baby thing.  My dear Sister, BooSheep, decided we needed to go out to eat.  Arby’s.  Fast Food.  In the middle of the afternoon.  I hadn’t left the house since coming home from the hospital, but I could do that, right?  It was close to the house, she would drive, and we could eat and be back within an hour.  If I nursed B10 RIGHT before we left, what could go wrong?  And I felt like I needed to go out with BooSheep.  I don’t know if I recognized God in that moment, or just felt like it was “time” to leave the house.

So I nursed him, got his little tummy all full, and put him in the carseat.  We made it to Arby’s and ordered our food and sat down to eat, when B10 started SCREAMING.  Here I am with a baby who weighs less than ten pounds (but has a set of lungs like a toddler).  The only other patrons in the restaurant were a group of teenage girls, High School Cheerleaders (based on their Varsity Jackets they were all wearing, it was January of 2000).

BooSheep (who is a wonderful sister) tried to help him calm down, I tried to calm him down – all the while we are getting sidelong glances and whispers from the table of girls.  I was so embarrassed.  Even at that point, I knew the only thing he wanted was to nurse, and I was NOT going to be able to do it sitting at that table.

I’m almost embarrassed to say that my other choice/option was to go sit on the floor of the bathroom.   And I did.

I took my newborn and a blanket and went to sit on the bathroom floor of a fast food resturant, in order to nurse him.  I was almost in tears, pretty humiliated, but snuggled him close and comforted him.

Then two of the girls walked into the bathroom, followed by a third.  One girl was crying.  And they were whispering.  Teenage girl whispering, which means I could pretty easily overhear them.

The girl was pregnant.  And getting ready to go with her friends to get an abortion.  Seeing and hearing B10, she couldn’t go through with it, and the other girls promised to go with her to talk to her parents.  They had been trying to tell her they would support her, they would help her, and they would stand by her, if she wanted to tell her parents and keep the baby.

B10 drove it home.

I don’t know why God used me, my sister and my son.  But I thank God that BooSheep was so insistent that we needed to get out of the house, that I let myself be convinced, and that I didn’t run back to the car to leave when B10 started screaming.

But I truly believe there is a 12-13 year old out there who is alive, because we listened and obeyed.  That child may be with his/her young mother, or they may be with an adoptive family that prayed for years to have a baby to love.  That child likely started school yesterday, 8th grade, if they remained close to home.  I pray that someday I meet that child, who tells the story of his/her mother that contemplated abortion, but chose life.

And I believe Divine Appointments and Divine Assignments can come even at the local fast food joints.

~Mummy Butterfly  )i(