She was devastated. One can understand how devastated the young mother was… Her husband had left. Without warning. He had taken a few belongings. And vanished.
No word can express the shock… Their three kids. The treason. The sleepless night and aching thoughts. Could she even think?… Unbearable. In one second she understood the people who take their lives… In such a tragedy, who can predict one’s own reaction?… Claire was done. She could not even cry. Or she would howl. She did not.
Dizzy. On the verge of collapsing. When she drove to the school to pick up the chidren… Tell them. Tell them what?…
She phoned her parents. They went mute. One and two friends. She just cried over the phone… Yet she survived. One day. Two days. No sleep. Three days.
There she was, sitting in the car, on the parking lot. And God?… Where was HE? Where was the God she had learned to trust ? Who could she ever trust?…
The sobs surprised her. Her tearful face on the wheel in the car, she sobbed and sobbed.
“Oh God!…” she moaned at last, through her tears, “If only you could give me a SIGN!” she cried, “Just a SIGN!” Her voice was piercing the air and aching hard.
Through the tears she saw that truck, backing, right in front of her. A big mass of a truck, showing large, shining letters; enormous letters:
“HELP IS ON THE WAY!”
She sat flabbergasted, her hands on the wheel. Could such a coincidence be a sign?… Claire felt like a warmth coming all over her: “I begged for a sign,” she thought, “and there I read: Help is on the way!”
The smiling mother who told the story to her friend, indeed, found a million helps, in the smallest needs of her days. To write them would be too much. But yes, indeed, “Help WAS on the way!”
Claire would never cease to recount the facts. Perhaps her story HELPED many other suffering people to trust, in spite of all their own trials… Lest they missed the sign?…
Fr. Dominique+
Thank you for the nice way you tell the story and for the reminder: we must be looking for signs of hope and never lost hope itself…