The Story of the Fifth Seat

After our presentation meeting last Thursday and we knew things were going to move forward, we decided we probably needed to start looking for a new dining room table.  Our current table is  a 42″ round table and holds 6 in a pinch, but forget about having a family style meal.  We keep the 4 chairs around the table and 2 along the wall until we have guests.

 

 

The girls stayed overnight with Scott’s parents last Friday night so Scott and I decided to take advantage of the kid-free time and drive to a few furniture stores in the area.  We weren’t really planning to buy.  We just wanted to get a feel for what size tables were even out there.  Can you believe we’ve never really bought a proper table in 16 years of marriage?

When we first got married, we bought a glass top table from an outlet store and recovered the chairs.  It wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I was still in college and we were broke.  When we moved to an apartment in Columbia, we didn’t even really use the table.  When we moved back home, my parents let us have the round table as they were upgrading their own.

So, there we went shopping, feeling like grown-ups.  Leafs? Side tables? Legs? Distressing?  It was all new.

And unfortunately, we didn’t find anything.

We picked the girls up and then headed to one last furniture store just to see if they had anything different.  “Two minutes, girls, we’ll just cruise through.”

Well, you know where this is going.  We found The Table.  It’s a dark wood with straight legs.  It seats 6 but then has 2 different leafs so we can either seat 8 or 10.

We host small group and a lot of family functions so it’s very normal for us to need even twice that.

So we’re sitting there with the sales lady who is really nice and I start making small talk as she writes the sales receipt.  “We’re adopting a boy so we need more space!” I told her.

Her eyes get as big as saucers and she says, “I adopted a boy!”

I told her ours is an 8 year old from DSS and she says, ” I adopted a 4.5 year old from DSS!”

She slapped her hand down on the table and pointed at me with her other finger and says, “Listen, it is hard work. Don’t ever think it’s not going to be hard, but it’s worth it.  My son is 23 now and he is awesome.  We have 2 grandkids through him. Just rely on the Lord every day and you’ll be fine.” And then she looked back down at the sales receipt and kept writing.

I was teary-eyed and it hit me that was my moment for the day. I knew that was God’s little nudge to say you’re on the right track.

We couldn’t get the table right away, but had to go late Wednesday to get it.

So, Wednesday about lunch when we were talking with The Boy and the DSS case worker about the photo album, she mentioned that he was worried because he noticed in the picture of the dining room we could only sit 4 people around our table (Bless his heart).  I am so thankful I could turn to him and said, “Don’t worry!  We bought a table on Saturday and it fits 10!  We’re going to get it today!”

Isn’t God just awesome?  One little thing he was worried about was the exact thing God led us to get this weekend AND by a woman who had also adopted a son from DSS.

Needless to say, I can’t wait until our first meal, saying grace not just for the meal, but the table too.  Grace, grace and more grace.

 

Due to some issues on DSS’s side we moved our Saturday day visit up to Friday morning!  We’ll pick him and take him home and if the weather cooperates, he wants to swim. Please pray it goes well!