On the Right Place at the Right Time

Almost every Saturday morning, I can be found awake early and preparing to head out. From late Spring until late Autumn my first stop is our local farmer market. There are so many amazing foods from fruits to veggies to homemade pasta and sausage and more. My favorite breakfast is the whole wheat, maple icing topped, cinnamon rolls from Moving Meadows farm. From there, it is off to the Piecemakers Quilting group, where I spend the next three hours.

Piecemakers sews for charity only. We provide homemade quilts to the local Safe House, the local pregnancy center and a foundation for children with terminal illnesses. We also sew fleece blankets for foster children in two counties. Come winter, we make fleece hats and scarves for four local elementary schools as well. It's a busy place to be! We are all a bit nutty and every single one of us has a physical limitation, be it chronic illness, heart failure, cancer survivor and more.

Two Saturdays ago was like every other one before it, except for one thing. The church we meet at was giving away free school supplies. Someone had generously donated several thousand dollars to purchase it. The problem is, three other churches had already handed out school supplies. Noon was approaching and there were still over 150 bags of supplies left. The pastor was starting to panic... and was doing so right in front of us quilters.

That's when that oh so gentle reminder ghosted through my brain. Hey, Holly, your mom teaches in Appalachia... they probably need the supplies. So, I had pastor pause his pacing while I made a call. Yes, they were desperate for supplies! The money they normally would have gotten to help provide it wasn't there this year. The principal was literally going to have to go from classroom to classroom, find out who brought what and who needed what and buy the items with her own money! I told the pastor and that panic turned into sheer joy. Word spread fast about the children in Appalachia who were going to be receiving the supplies. 

More donations arrived and, by the time I picked them up that Tuesday, my full-size pickup truck bed was FULL, plus my front passenger seat! There were tears of relief as the school started making piles of each type of supply, loading them up on carts, and handing them out to the children. It was EXACTLY what everyone needed! No extra purchases were necessary! 

Right place. Right time. And I was receptive to that little ghost of a reminder in my brain. Too many times I hear it and ignore it, making excuses for not standing up and acting upon it. What a great lesson to myself, and others, that great things can happen if we listen and act.