A Place at the Table

Thanksgiving was awesome.  I was blessed to have stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, and pumpkin bars, all because an amazing adoptive mom carried the ingredients in for me!  I didn't start cooking until 2, and then friends arrived around 3:30 and we kept preparing.  I let my little dude watch TV (on the iPad) and eat Chiritos (orange colored, cheese sort of flavored, styrofoam peanut textured snacks), drink juice, and top it off with some yogurt.  He did great most of the time.  Around 4:45 everything was ready.  We sat down at the table and gave thanks.  Then we dug into the feast.  I had invited 5 of my friends, and Magalitha, and Miliene.  Magalitha took one look at the food, giggled, and walked away.  Miliene arrived around 6, but was all wound up.  She told me that a woman was sitting at the gate, holding her baby and her little girl, and crying.  She said I needed to go talk to her.  I couldn't imagine why anyone would come to our gate.  She said that the woman knew from asking in the neighborhood that there was a white woman who lived there, and that maybe I would help.  I stood up, muttering, 'That's what I get for reading that blog last night!'
I went outside and got Magalitha and told her she needed to come with me.  We found a woman just as Miliene had described.  They were filthy, hungry, and scared.  She said she had spent the last nights on the street, and had slept in a vacant car she found.  She said she was scared to keep sleeping on the street.  Magalitha looked at the baby and gasped, saying, 'The baby looks like Adriana.'  I asked what she thought we should do.  It was dark, and I couldn't very well invite this woman to stay in my house, not knowing her or her true situation.  But I could feed her.  So that's what we did.  The woman and her 8 year old daughter sat down and devoured plates of food.  My friends played with the baby boy, dressed head to toe in girl's clothes, complete with a pink bonnet.  They noticed that the baby was not clean, so I asked if they would like to bathe.  Magalitha and I scrounged up some clothes for the mom and daughter (Magalitha laughed at the underwear I had pulled out and she commented on the size.  I said 'my butt is big' to which her honest 17 year self replied, 'I know'), and when I opened up the suitcase we keep Adriana's extra clothes in, the first thing on the top was a blue and purple sleeper, clearly for a boy, in size 3-6 months, a perfect fit for Diego, the sweet baby downstairs.  I quickly put together a bag of supplies for the baby, warmed some water, and delivered the items to the exhausted mother.  I had called Pierre in the middle of all of this to ask what I should do.  I just couldn't tell them they had to sleep on the street again.  He said to take them to the orphanage, and they could sleep there and he'd talk to her in the morning.  So Magalitha walked them over, where Franckis had already had beds made up on the floor of one of the classrooms.
They've been there since Thursday night, and some things are coming together to help the mom with the baby, but we are unsure of what to do to help her and her daughter.  We know that God will lead and direct them, and us.
Two of my friends spent the night, and we were chatting about the whole thing.  They asked why I had mumbled something about a blog or something.  I laughed, and explained that somehow, I knew that this situation was going to happen.  I read the blog to them, and said that I had thought the place would be for Miliene and Magalitha.  But God surprised me, and sent a widow and her two children.  And when I think about amazing Thanksgiving tables, I'm in awe of how God chose to bless me and my friends.  We were literally blessed to break bread with God's treasured creations.  To be trusted with His most precious, beloved children.  And to be given the opportunity to love the broken, the hurting, the scared, the hungry, and to be called to be vulnerable in that moment, to let down my guard and put aside doubts, and realize that while I always have a place at His table, I'm called to make a place at mine.  What a precious gift to me.  And so I am thankful for the 'extra places' in my heart, life, and home.  I'm thankful that God himself sees fit to fill them, with old friends and new, and that I am never ever left to figure things out on my own.
Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone.