God's Great Sense of Humor in Answering Prayers

God answered a prayer for something that some may think a silly thing to pray about, but for me it was HUGE! You see, I lost a crinoline this week. A crinoline is the slip that a bride wears under her wedding dress to make it poof out. I had a crinoline, and this week it was not there when I went to look for it!

My friend's daughter is getting married on October 24 (Happy Anniversary, Mom and Dad!) and her seamstress told her to check with me to see if she could borrow my crinoline. I've had it for the past 10.5 years and have let many of the brides at church borrow it, and the seamstress knows that, so Kathy asked me if they could borrow it for Shelly's wedding. "Sure!" I told her, and we planned a fun little coffee date out of the exchange of the crinoline.

Monday morning I went to pull it out of the top of the boys' closet, where it has always been, and it was gone! GONE! I'm not sure how one can lose a crinoline, but mine was GONE! Fred and I searched every nook and cranny of this house, including inside suitcases, boxes, under beds, behind computers ... I even looked under every bathroom sink (not knowing why I would have ever shoved it under there). Nothing. Nada. Nope. Nowhere.

I contacted the last several brides and asked if I might have let one of them borrow it and I forgot. Nu'uh. I called the mother of the last bride that I know had it, just in case, but we both relived the moment that she handed it back to me in the parking lot at church two years ago. I knew she didn't have it.

After much, MUCH prayer and tears, begging God to remind me where I may have put that crinoline, I wrote an e-mail to another friend of mine and asked her to help me pick my brain and figure out where in the world that thing could be! Little did I know that while this e-mail was floating around in cyperspace and being read and answered by her, Kathy, Shelly and I were out looking at cheap and junky crinolines that might have to do. I even dug through racks of used clothing at Value Village and Goodwill because I had promised Shelly a crinoline and by golly, I was going to give her one! But no one had anything.

I came home, still all worked up about this whole thing and sat down to an e-mail from my help-me-pick-my-brain friend, Corina. She said, "I think we have a bag in the closet downstairs that has a crinoline in it, and I think it's yours!" WHAT?! God, did you just answer my prayer?! On a whim I wrote to Corina asking her to help me think, and lo and behold, SHE IS THE ONE WHO HAS IT?! She's been married longer than I had that crinoline in the first place, and her daughters are nowhere near marrying age, so why did she have my crinoline in her closet?! Oh yeah!!! She had borrowed it for our couples group at church last year, but for some reason, that evening was cancelled, the wedding dress and crinoline went into the closet and we all forgot about it...until yesterday!

I know some of you are reading this saying so what?! Why this whole post on a missing crinoline? Well you know what? If it's a small thing to you, that's ok, because to me, this was monumental! You don't know the agony I went through this week looking for that thing (Ask Fred. He can vouch for my agony. And the boys who heard all week, "Where in the WORLD can that thing be?!") I confessed to God that I thought it might be a silly thing to ask Him to tell me where that crinoline was, but He cared! He cared so much that He let me write that e-mail out of the blue to Corina, and He cared so much that He let her and her girls remember that I had let them borrow it! God loves me! And He loves to answer my prayers in funny ways! I'm sure He's done this to you before, too, hasn't He? Well, go ahead and give Him the praise for it, because He deserves it! Thank You, God, for finding that crinoline for me! Now Shelly and her mom can breathe a little easier, too! You would have been a beautiful bride even without that thing, Shelly, but I'm so glad that you can now wear it!