Story of the Week, August 15 2009 We Know How she Felt

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August 16, 2009

Hello, friends. Just a few announcements, as usual:

—August 22nd is the 16th annual Be An Angel Day, celebrated throughout North America and several other countries. The day encourages us to give thanks for angels by imitating them. That is, doing acts of kindness, and helping others (anonymously if that’s possible—just like angels often do!) The type of angelic help you can offer is not defined or limited. It can be physical, emotional, or spiritual. Think about paying a stranger’s toll, sending a card to someone who needs cheering up (sign it, Your Secret Pal) or if you can afford it, buy some groceries for a family out of work and leave them on the porch. What goes around comes around, and God, who sees in secret, will send you a special hug.

—Do any of you know of a blog or two aimed at younger moms? Can you recommend them to me? (joan@joanwanderson.com) I’ll tell you about this in a week or two.

—The Cayces report that you are sending school supplies and other necessities, and they are able to make hundreds of Back to School bags for the kids. You guys are awesome.

And now here’s a shortie but goodie:
“The good Lord must know when I’m out of my comfort zone,” says Marlene Creech who lives on a pension, “because that’s when interesting things happen!” One day Marlene could not get on line. Her computer kept flashing the message that her dial-up server was down. After two or three tries, Marlene quit. (Don’t we all know how she felt?)

The “server is down” message continued for another few days, and finally Marlene called the company. “The automated phone systems are not easy for me at my age,” she says (and don’t we all know how she felt?) “but finally I reached a person, and told him the problem.” After checking, the man told her that her dial-up phone number was bad, and she needed to get a new one.

“The problem here is that there are no more local numbers available,” he told Marlene. “You’ll have to choose one of three long distance numbers.” Marlene never thought to ask if there would be a change in cost for this. She chose a number, and used it for a month. And when she received her phone bill she almost fainted. The bill was $257.

How could this bill be so much higher than usual? “With my budget being so tight, I had to call them again, get myself through the automated system again, and tell my story to two or three people before reaching an employee who understood what I was asking,” she says.

“Your town only has one local number to get on line, and it’s perfectly fine,” he told her.

“Then why did that other man tell me that my line was bad?” she asked. This employee had no answer, just the suggestion that she return to the local number, which she did. (And don’t we all know how she felt?)

“The next day I called the phone company again, this time to see if I could set up payments on this large bill, as my pension was already stretched to the limit,” Marlene says. By now she was a pro at navigating the automated phone system, and she ended up with yet a third employee, to whom she repeated the entire story. “Let me look up your account,” he suggested. A few moments later he came back to the phone, a bit puzzled. “A deduction to your account was made yesterday,” he told her. “You have a balance of $85, not $257.”

It was the exact amount of the long distance overcharge, Marlene realized. Although she had not gotten angry or even complained, someone (maybe an Earth Angel?) had taken pity on her and removed the charges. “The encounter left me so thankful,” Marlene says. “Many times we receive blessings, and don’t even know it.”

And don’t we all know how she felt?