Yesterday I was visiting at my son’s home and at times he will play a YouTube video to soothe his sleepy toddler. I was in the kitchen at the sink and I heard the familiar words of a song and it brought back a memory that I had forgotten about.

One night when I was in my late twenties I was attending our church ladies monthly meeting. This particular night we were meeting at a private home and the meeting had ended and our hostess had invited us into her kitchen for some refreshments. I can still remember what I ate that night for that is how vivid this memory is.

It had to be around the end of May because the dessert I ate was in season. It seemed everyone there was excitedly discussing their upcoming vacation plans. The more discussion I heard the more sad I began to feel. Just a few years previously I had birthed our 4th child and we had never had the money to go anywhere on vacation.

I left that home that night in the pits of despair and felt like just sobbing.

The next morning as I faced the same chaos that I faced every school morning my despair turned into bitterness. I not only had four kids of my own but taught Sunday School, was in charge of Christmas plays, and babysit in the nursery at Wednesday night Bible study much of the time.

I am not writing this to brag in any way on myself but just to let you envision where I was in my life during that time.

After rushing all morning getting 4 kids ready for their destinations and herding them out the door I was driving into work and was having a deep conversation with God. I was telling God how unfair that I thought that He was to me because I was trying to work so hard for Him.

I had my car radio on low and I remember as I yielded from Rickman road onto Highway 111 there at the Farmer’s Co-op, the song Thank You by Ray Boltz came on the radio. Oh how my pity party tears began to roll as I listened to the words of that song. Especially the part of the song that the child came up and said Thank You for you taught my Sunday School when I was only 8.

I released my bitterness that morning as I drove along and realized that some rewards come after we die and when we reach heaven and my hurt over not giving my kids a vacation subsided and I went my merry way.

I am here to tell you that before that summer was up a series of events happened and we were blessed to buy a mini van and we took our children on their one of only two vacations we ever got to take them to.

We went to Washington DC and also to New York to the Statue of Liberty. As we drove across the Potomac I felt like a history book opened up and all that we had studied about in that book flowed out of the book and sprang up into real life. I think I was more excited than the kids were!

We toured all the Smithsonions and our oldest was probably 10 and our youngest probably 3 and I remember thinking how our older 3 children were studying all the visuals we were seeing in the museum of American History….. it was a site to behold!

And myself, I got to see the Statue of Liberty which had been a lifelong desire of mine but a desire that I thought I would never see fulfilled but would take to my grave.

We stayed 1 night on the way to Washington with my brother’s family, stayed 2 nights in Motel 6’s and spent another night at my brother’s on the way back. We were cheapskates but we didn’t care….. we were on our glorious vacation!!

God gave us that vacation and it WAS glorious! Yesterday, as I heard the Ray Boltz song drift into the kitchen I got a big sweet smile on my face as I remembered once again how God had taken my pity frown and turned it upside down into a smile of praise! My God loved me that much! He loves you too!