Lights and a silent prayer

There is so much goodness and light in the world.  And so many evidences that the Lord is aware of us and loves us.  Our family has been the beneficiary of so many acts of kindness and service and Christlike love recently, and last night was no exception. 

If there are moments in your life you never want to forget, we experienced one last night.  As we went to bed, I told Tom I had so many thoughts and emotions in my heart that were just bursting to come out.  With everything that has been going on, he asked whether or not that was a good thing.  I’ve felt these same bursting feelings recently with emotions that have been unbearably painful, but last night, the feelings were gladness and light and joy.  I hope to be able to capture some of them here, because I want us to remember this forever. Our sweet Benny orchestrated a tender mercy and quite frankly a little miracle for us, and I’m so thankful to him and the Lord for the love we witnessed in action last night.

As I mentioned in my previous two posts, I was nervous to come home.  I suppose I can even say I was dreading it a bit.  We’d had such a nice time in Arizona, all things considered, and I was afraid of returning to our home and feeling sadness that Benny wasn’t here.  I’ve always loved our home, but I felt a significant amount of trepidation when it was finally time to come back.  Goodness, if only I had known the light that would be here waiting for us – both literally and figuratively.

A few days ago, I had a friend reach out and ask if he could help us put up Christmas lights if we hadn’t already, as an act of service to our family.  Such a gracious offer.  Tom and I have wanted to put lights up on our home for years, but the expense has always been more than we had saved for to have it done professionally and we knew we couldn’t do our home justice if we did it ourselves.  Not wanting to burden our friend with putting up the lights, since our home has such a unique design with lots of different angles and pitches to the roof, I declined the offer with our extreme thanks.  But then I started thinking how nice it would be to have lights on our home when we got back.  We love Christmas lights – especially me.  The kids are getting to the ages where they enjoy them too, so I thought it would be a fun surprise. 

I’ve been searching for light ever since Benny passed away.  I’m drawn to light that reminds me of him.  I was hoping we could find a way to somehow light our home, but I knew it was probably just an impossible longing of my heart.  Again I realized it was too much to ask someone to do, but I thought about it in my prayers that evening as I spoke with my Heavenly Father.  He’s been hearing a lot from me lately.  I don’t think I necessarily asked Him for it that night, because it seemed like such an unreasonable and unnecessary thing.  I’ve asked for so much already in recent weeks, that I didn’t want to burden Him with the seemingly trivial request of Christmas lights on our home.  But, I did have the feelings and thoughts in my heart as I prayed that I wished there was a way we could figure out how to get lights on our home this holiday season.

Tom and I have been talking recently about how we don’t want our home to be a place where people feel sadness (starting with us).  We don’t want our family to be “those people who lost their son.”  We want people to still feel the love and joy in our home that we’ve worked so hard to foster and that our sweet Benny brought here every day of his beautiful life.  We want people to feel our Savior’s loving light through our lives as we look for ways to carry on Benny’s memory.  We want our home to be full of light and to radiate that light to everyone who sees it or comes inside.  We recognize it may not be that way immediately, as we’ve seen the sad looks of those who walk or drive by right now.  We feel that too, but we’ve been trying to figure out ways to reframe the situation and return our home to a place where our Benny’s light can be seen and felt—and our Savior’s light as well, since all light ultimately is a reminder to us of Him and His goodness and love.

Last night as we made the final turn to come down our street, we saw that our home had lights.  Our little home had Christmas lights!  And, not just regular lights, but perfectly placed Christmas lights with special blue accent lights that remind us of Benny.  Our hearts just about burst.  The tears definitely did.  I could hardly believe that the thing I’d prayed for—that only the Lord knew was a wish in my heart—had happened.  Our home looked beautiful.  And so full of light.  It was a miracle.

As we learned the story of how the lights came to be, the miracle continued to make itself known in our hearts.  It’s a bit of a story, but it all comes together so beautifully.  The Lord is truly in the details and I’m grateful how we saw His hand manifest in this wonderful experience.

Ryan Bailey, a local entrepreneur and owner of Lights Etc., also owns a fitness studio called HotWorx in Riverton, Utah.  I’d heard about HotWorx before and wanted to try it at some point.  I learned of it while I was pregnant with Benny and knew I wouldn’t be able to try it until after he was born, so I started following their Instagram account so I could be reminded of it in the future and give it a try.  And, not surprisingly in the case of social media, when I started following them, they requested to follow me back.  I’m usually quite locked down with who I allow to follow me on Instagram, but I approved their request because it was a local company I figured I’d like to get to know better.

As the owner of HotWorx, Ryan was scrolling through their company’s Instagram page the other day and saw my post about losing our sweet Benny.  Not knowing me or where we lived or anything like that, he took a screenshot of the post and posted it on his Facebook page, asking if anyone knew us or how he could get in touch with us.  His company donates Christmas lights and installation to a “deserving” family each year, and he wanted our family to be that family this year.  (I put the word deserving in quotes because I feel so incredibly undeserving of the goodness.) 

Ryan’s wife Lindsay is friends with a woman in our neighborhood, Lindy Shook.  When Lindsay came to pick Lindy up for work recently, she asked what all the blue ribbons in the neighborhood were for.  Lindy told her about our sweet Benny and the goodness of the neighbors in putting up the ribbons in his memory.  It was then that Lindsay made the connection to her husband Ryan’s post on Facebook wanting to find our family.  The pieces came together and Lindy was able to arrange, with some others in our neighborhood, for the lights to be installed yesterday and be shining brightly when we came home.  What a wonderfully beautiful tender mercy this turned out to be for our family.

Last night after we got home, we were simply speechless because of the incredible lights.  They had extra special meaning for me because of how directly they’d been an answer to a prayer in my heart that only the Lord knew.  I asked my neighbor Jenny, who had helped coordinate the surprise, if it would be possible for us to meet and thank Ryan.  Jenny then let us know that Ryan and his family were at the Shook’s home just up the street and would love to come over and meet us.  When we opened the door a few minutes later, we were greeted by Ryan, Lindsay, and their beautiful family, along with the incredible Shook family and Ty and Cami Low and their family, who own Kneaders in Provo, one of our favorite local bakeries.  In addition to the lights, the Lows gave us an amazing Kneaders gift basket and gift card on behalf of their family as part of this awe-inspiring Christmas surprise.

As we visited with the angels who had come into our lives through this experience, we heard from Ryan of how he’d experienced a few miracles of his own as he hung the lights.  Apparently this was the first Saturday all season that he had time to even spare, and it turns out that somehow he had the exact number of lights and light clips needed for our home.  He shared how he hadn’t known what to expect with the size of our home or how many lights were needed, so he brought what he had and miraculously when he needed more, he found them in his truck and had exactly enough to finish each of the eaves of our home.  The last clip literally went to the exact final corner.  “This house wanted lights,” he kept telling us.  But we know that the family who lives in the house needed lights and that Ryan, Lindsay, the Shooks, and the Lows were the Lord’s hand in answering our prayers and bringing that light to our family.

As with so many things these days, this experience has touched our hearts in more ways than we can express.  We feel so blessed by the goodness of these strangers who we hope will now be lifelong friends. 

I have been desperate for light since Benny’s been gone.  For true, abiding light.  For the light that Benny brought into our lives and which I’ve feared would be lost with his passing.  But it isn’t lost.  No, quite the opposite actually.  We have had so many light-filled experiences recently where the good Lord has sent angels to minister to us in our time of need.  To share with us their gifts and remind us of our Savior’s perfect gift this holiday season.  To fill our hearts with light.  To even cover our home with light.  So much light and so much goodness.  Just like our angel Benny.

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights…”  James 1:17

“Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”  Matthew 25:40