The Circle Unbroken

We spent last week in Beavers Bend State Park in Oklahoma. We had a relaxing time with some of our most precious family friends. We took our daughter's best friend with us again this year, and most of our son's best buds were there as well. So, the kids had six straight days of friends, bike riding, games, movies, hiking, canoeing and building campfires. I finished 2 books and worked on current and future school plans. I enjoyed long chats with friends and lingered in God's Word. I really sensed God's presence, as I always do when I take the time to really soak it in.

Each year before we go, I bake our family's favorite banana bread using my Nana's recipe. (Oh, how I miss her!) I have always baked it in the same tube pan she always used. A few months ago I started to make some, and couldn't find the outside of her pan. Anywhere. I called friends to see if I'd left it at their houses, and checked everywhere I'd taken food in recent months. It never turned up. Heartbroken, I prayed about it and decided that if God meant for me to have that pan, then it would eventually turn up. I kept the inside piece in the back of my cabinet, just in case. Before we left last week, I finally bought a new pan in which to bake Nana's recipe. Last Tuesday as I was putting our food in the cabin's kitchen, I opened a cabinet and there it was! It had been in that cabin since last year! We all were open-mouthed with amazement, as our whole family had searched for it months earlier. I could almost hear Nana say, "Well, I declare..."

What if we hadn't gotten the same cabin this year? (They don't assign cabins until the week you arrive.) What if I had figured out several months ago that it was sitting in Oklahoma? (I would've gone crazy trying to get it back!) But... it was there all along. God knew that "by-and-by," on the four year anniversary of Nana's death, finding something that was hers would be a nice surprise for me. And I had a chance to trust. I clutched that well-used pan that was so precious to me and breathed a prayer of gratitude to a caring, listening Father Who is in the details. That little cylindrical, hug-shaped pan has truly "come full circle."