Three months ago while visiting my brother and sister-in-law in Albuquerque, I opened a fortune cookie at the end of dinner at a Chinese restaurant and found a most unusual fortune. It read, “Three months from now good things will be in store for you.”
Finding such a specific fortune inside a cookie is a rare occurrence. Generally the predictions printed on those tiny bits of paper are vague generalizations. So, instead of just leaving it behind, I tucked it in my wallet and made a note on my calendar that on September 17th and waited.
From time to time as I opened my calendar I would see the note in the 17th and wonder what the “good thing” would be. Or, would there be anything ? After all, I’ve never trusted a fortune from a cookie enough to bet on any of the numbers. This would be my little test.
So when I got started my day on Saturday I had my sight set with a heightened awareness to carefully examine each of the day’s events, looking for “the” good thing coming my way.
And it was a long day with an early start. My first event was a snack and raffle ticket sale to raise funds for Habitat for Humanity. By 7:30 I was comfortable installed under a canopy in the parking lot of a local antique store with a pot of coffee brewing behind me. The cheery child’s playhouse our local HFH chapter is raffling off was positioned alongside the highway, in hopes of enticing passersby to stop any purchase a ticket or two.
Even though it was a chilly morning by recent standards, the traffic was light and so were the coffee sales. As the day dragged on to the end of our assigned sales period at 3:00 that afternoon, our profits were very low. And yet, I waited, still looking for “the” good thing.
After closing shop on the snack sale, I had a two-hour window before having to go to my next fundraiser of the day, a spaghetti dinner hosted by the Methodist Women at Westover UMC also to benefit Habitat for Humanity. This was my fifth time attending this particular event. For the first years, dinner was served under a large tent in the church yard and we ate at picnic tables. All the fixings were all brought from home by the cooks in crock pots and were set on portable tables, providing a make-shift cafeteria line. Two years ago, the folks at Westover built a beautiful new church hall where the last couple of dinners have been held.
Understandably, the ladies take great pride in their new digs and like to show them off. Sadly, this year despite the adverts in both local newspapers and continual prompting on our website the word didn’t get out and the turnout to the dinner was very light. I felt bad that these ladies had worked to hard to provide a meal that only a few of us enjoyed. Consequently we didn’t raise the funds we wished for and surely this couldn’t have been the good thing I’d had my sights on either.
Later that evening, with my legs outstretched in my recliner as I reviewed the day in its entirety, I realized that my day, as disappointing as it was in my fundraising efforts, was full of good things. I’d spent the morning in the fresh air with the first chill of fall surrounding me, a refreshing change from the seemingly relentless heat of this summer. In fact, I’d become so cold at one point I call home to Dave to bring along some jackets!
That afternoon my son-in-law, Jan, sent me a new photo of Kaspar riding a rocking horse, his face full of mischief and his eyes twinkling. I so enjoy these impromptu glimpses his life. What a gift to be able to see what he’s up to.
And although my dinner was financially unsuccessful , it was prepared by someone else and spent in the company of a loving husband and the friends who have become my local family.
And as we were heading to our car after dinner, the heavens treated us to the beauty of a glorious sunset, one I can go see any night I am free. All these things were very good indeed.
It was then that it occurred to me that the fortune my cookie had come true; good things had indeed come my way. I think they were more of a product of my looking for them and acknowledging them for what they were, than anything special or different about the day. I suppose the key is to keep your eyes open, take inventory of all the good that surrounds you and accept it for the good that it is. With eyes wide open, it is much easier to see the good triumphing over the bad. It’s a simple case of allowing the light to have victory over the dark.
And, at the risk of offending by ending a story about a fortune cookie with a quote from the Psalms; “Surely goodness and loving kindness will follow me all the days of my life, And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.”