Tiffany

When I first met Tiffany about 6 weeks ago, she had bottle blonde hair and was eating a tv dinner on the couch. I (Mimi) decided to walk next door and introduce myself because her 2 youngest children, Dylan (5) and Taylor (2) had spent the last several days ringing my doorbell asking if the girls could come out and play. From there they wanted to come and play inside and even though I always said, "Go ask your Mama if it's OK," I still felt that I should introduce myself as the Mother of this house where they had been disappearing to. I knocked on her garage door and we talked briefly—she was shy and softspoken— then she disappeared back inside, leaving me to watch out for her children who were playing out front with mine. Dylan and Taylor have been Natalie and Becca's constant companions for the last month. Those 2 were always playing, unsupervised, in their garage when we came home from the grocery store, or the library, or the gym, asking if the girls could play even before we'd stepped out of the car. My collection of bikes and trikes became community property, my floor tracked with dog poop from when Taylor stepped in it in my backyard and then came inside to have a snack.

On Tuesday, Tiffany came with me to the Bible Study Fellowship group I attend weekly. Bob watched her 2 kids so she could attend the intro day and get them registered for the children's program. In the car on the 25 minute drive each way, I asked Tiffany about her story. It was good to see more of her than what she appeared to be. Thursday night, she came to church at our house, for the second time. Her kids joined right in with the 7-8 others, learning Bible verses and making crafts along with the rest. This night she asked for prayer. Her simple request was, "That my heart would know what my head already does," and she started to cry. We all prayed for her and then I sat and talked with her while everyone else did dessert. She had had a fight with her husband, so we sent her home with diapers, my phone number and a Bible. We agreed to have her over for lunch next week.

Yesterday afternoon, I got a call from Tiffany at the bus station. She had packed up her 3 kids and was taking a bus back home to Florida. Even though I managed to say some appropriate things and pray with her before she got on the bus, this phone call left me in shock. Obviously, I hadn't seen the situation as desperate as it was to her. I felt like a counselor who is talking a suicidal person down from the ledge and then without warning, they jump. She left the bag of diapers and the Bible for me to pick up next door from her husband, who is still living there.

"Lord," I ask, "why did you bring Tiffany into my life?" We were excited about her coming to church here and starting Biblestudy and asking for a Bible. I was even growing to love Dylan and Taylor who rang my doorbell over and over again during naptime, who left playdough and chalk all over our driveway, and who were finally responding to my lessons in cleaning up and putting toys away.

Was it because I was needing a lesson in giving without any thought of return? Or in loving the unloveable? About being a blessing to others because I have been blessed by the Lord by so much? Or for me to work on the area of my personality that hesitates and agonizes over what I should do. I almost gave her the cash out of the offering basket sitting on my coffee table that night, but I didn't. I had wanted to give her a Bible of her own, but hadn't gotten around to it yet. I'd been meaning to have her over for lunch for a while, but the days had been to full to find an opening. Looking back, I wish I had seized the moment more.

Do you have a Tiffany in your life? With whom the Lord would like you to seize the moment before it is gone? Do you have any stories to share?

Mimi