God's Sense of Humor

If any of you doubt that God does, indeed, have a sense of humor, read on. How could He possibly have created my family and be stoic. He must get great joy and lots of laughter from our antics.

Tomorrow is my mother's birthday. We're not planning anything big, since Daddy celebrated his 80th just a few weeks ago and we had a big shindig for him. But my father showed up at my house yesterday concerned.

"Hon, I don't have any ideas for your mother's birthday. I've been waiting to hear from you girls, but no one's called. I don't know what I'm going to do!"

There was real concern in his voice. I reassured him, then told him I'd gather the sisters and we'd do something for Mom. Thus began the day-long saga.

Since we have Choir Practice on Wednesday nights (and we've just started working on the Christmas Program and need every second of practice time we can get), I decided we should all try to take Mom to lunch. I called my two sisters that live in this area. Neither were home. I left messages for both of them explaining what I was proposing and asking for call-backs.

Quite a while later, one sister called back. She said that she had to take her daughter to school at 12, but could meet for lunch later. I asked when her daughter got out of school.

"4:30," she responded.

"Isn't that a little late for lunch?" I was a little taken aback. Was she really proposing we wait until after Amanda finished with school, at 4:30, to grab lunch together?

"What does that have to do with lunch?" she asked. We were both equally confused. I assumed that, if she had to take Amanda to school that she'd also have to collect her again. She's told me before that she runs errands in town while Amanda's in school or sits in the parking lot and reads or prays. Apparently, what she meant to say was that she had to drop Amanda off at 12, then was free until 4:30, when she would have to go back to pick her up. It took a few minutes of explanation for us both to get clear, but we managed.

"Okay!" I was getting excited. Two down, one to go. "So you could meet somewhere at 12:30." Now, if I could just get a call-back from the other sister.

"I have an idea," she said. "How about you pick me up at home, I'll let Amanda take my van to school, we'll eat somewhere out here (she lives a 40-minute drive from town in a neighboring small town) and then go to that Second Hand Store that Mama and Toni love."

Sounded good to me. I waited to hear from Toni. Before I did, Mama called and said she had talked to Toni.

"Really? I left a message for her hours ago and she hasn't yet called me back." I was getting a little frustrated.

"Well, she said she was REALLY busy," Mom explained.

Finally, Toni called.

"I have something at 10:00 that I'm in charge of. It'll probably last until 12 or 12:30. Then I have floor duty in the office, starting at 1:00 and can't leave until 5:30. Lunch is completely out for me."

Back to Ground Zero.

"But," she added, "I could do it on Thursday. I have nothing on my calendar for Thursday. Could YOU do it then?"

I glanced quickly at my calendar. All clear. In fact, nothing all week. I wasn't sure when Dane was going to get scheduled for surgery, so I kept my calendar clean.

"I'm available all week. But I'll have to call Trina back," which I did. But first, I called my father to make sure Mom was available on Thursday. He said it looked okay to him.

Trina said that Thursday was a possibility, but Amanda had an appointment and she wasn't sure exactly what time. She'd call me back later.

Without going into any more nitty gritty, I'll end the saga here but, trust me, there were many more phone calls and much more arranging to be done.

We are having lunch TODAY. Forget Wednesday . . . and Thursday. It all got moved to Tuesday - because Amanda's available on Tuesday and could go with us. As you can imagine, that took several more phone calls. Then we had to address the issue of where to eat.

When I finally crawled into bed last night, I realized that it took an entire day to make lunch plans for 4, two of whom were shoe-ins. And it wasn't just a day spent waiting on calls. It was making them and taking them - ad nauseum.

I'm picking Mom up at noon, then swinging by the school to get Deanna. We are meeting Trina and Amanda and my other sister, Toni, at a Chinese restaurant at 12:30.

It was a day well-spent, all things considered, but I can't help but think that God must be chuckling in Heaven about the "Hunt Women". We're quite a crowd. The good side is that we love each other enough to keep playing these lunch games. And at least one of us was motivated to make it happen.

No wonder Daddy didn't know what to do. He probably has enough experience to know what he was in for if he tried planning anything.