My friend Anne told me her story this evening and I asked if I could share it.

She and her husband had gone out for ice cream.

In her words, after asking me to pray for the elderly gentleman:

“We were waiting for someone to take our orders, and he gave up and walked out just as someone showed up. I went and got him, and paid for his milkshake. As we were leaving, and he was heading to his car, I told him to have a nice day.

That’s when he said his wife died yesterday. To say I was gutted is an understatement. I parked, got out of the car, gave him a hug and prayed for comfort and that good memories would counteract the grief he feels.”

To which I expressed that the fact that the employee had been out of sight to the point that he had given up while they happened to be right there feels to me like the choreography of G_d: had he been immediately taken care of, there would have been no conversation, no meeting of hearts, no sharing of pain nor offering of compassion nor even the simple gift of a milkshake on a day when he so needed to feel human connection. Enough to get him out the door to go buy, what? Ice cream? I can imagine him thinking, Why? What does that matter now?

But there was. It happened. There was.

She and her husband were part of the answer to the very prayer she’d sent up on the man’s behalf.