A year ago I received a call from the lady who plans the annual Gala that supports the crisis pregnancy center in St Petersburg, Florida. She was getting people lined up to head committees for that year’s celebration and she was reminiscing over the year prior. I had moved to town only one year before and had known no one involved in the pregnancy center ministries there. I had found a church family and about that same time one of the pastors announced she was forming a team to look into the possibilities of our church helping to support that ministry and I stepped forward to assist that committee.

Within a few short weeks I had met the woman who ran the center and bonded with her immediately as if we had known each other for a lifetime. Actually I have learned over the years that that is exactly the feeling one has when God puts you in a place where you never thought to go on your own. With that in mind, I signed up to be on the decoration committee, feeling it would be an inobtrusive place to help wherever I could. We were zoom calling our meetings at that time and I attended each of those where they admitted they had yet to find a head for that committee. I knew no one but had met the Director one time, so I just listened to try and get up to speed on the needs of the center. The gala date was only three months away and they were feeling a bit desperate. I volunteered to take the lead and come up with some ideas and prices for the formal evening for 250-300 guests for dinner at the huge and not exactly cozy Coliseum. They had no theme and no color scheme. In retrospect, I have often found God has me step in when no leaders step forward and then He supplies both the ideas, skills and the people I will need to succeed. I call myself a place card holder because I never really take possession of a role, knowing the rightful person will be arriving sometime soon. I fill in the gap. It always happens that way and it is easy for me to also step to the side when it does. I am a sub, by gifting and by nature, it seems.

The plans and team came together and all was provided that was needed. I was even able to use some of my ‘decorator’ talents to save the center a lot of money on the presentation. It was a gorgeous and warm welcoming evening. My abilities to do elegance on a shoestring allowed for a significant gain to their bottom line that evening. They had usually hired a decorator or event planner. When the financial officer looked back on it she called me to ask “Where did you come from?” as she couldn’t remember how I swept in and then, just as quickly, swept out of their midst ( I moved to Jacksonville two months after the Gala on the spur of the moment, to be in place for the birth of my newest grandson). In trying to replace me, she had tried to think through the whole scenario of how my being there had come about. We enjoyed a great conversation, as we retraced how God had supplied the very need they had laid at His feet in prayer, by a means they could not have foreseen (i.e. no one they knew!) and in His own perfect timing. We decided to pray together that He would do that once again and to trust that He would, as we already had proof that He had.

It is always fun to be reminded of things that He has done and the way He has provided for those who put their trust completely in Him. I came as an outsider. These women, many of them the same who started the center, had put together this Gala for twenty eight years. The revelation to us both on that call was that even though I was an ‘outsider’ to the center, I was an insider to the faith that ran it. They knew me because we both knew the One who sent me, and we recognized, from our long but separate journeys with Him, that our hearts were indeed already family. They trusted me implicitly, because they trusted Him completely. How often I have witnessed that in my lifetime and it is so beautiful. No egos to put aside. Grace.