Dreams Redefined

BY KATHY

When Mark and I were newlyweds and he was in dental school, we visited a wonderful furniture store in Homer, Indiana called The Sampler.  It was full of beautifully hand-crafted fine cherry pieces, sure to be family heirlooms passed down from generation to generation.   The price tags were what would be expected for such quality, pieces made to last a lifetime.  We picked up a catalog and I circled the dining room and bedroom suites we one day would have when we “had enough money”.

Time passed and Mark earned his doctorate of dental surgery.  In the early years, the business was building and we invested any extra money in the practice.  The day had not yet come to purchase the furniture of our dreams.  Then came children.  With young children, a trip to The Sampler was not in the picture.   At the point in our lives when we finally felt we had the disposable income that we might make a trip for our first piece from The Sampler, God laid on our hearts a very different way to invest financially in the future.  For years to come, much of our income would be invested in the clinic in Saintard, Haiti.  There is nothing wrong with purchasing nice things, but the Lord wants us to always be in tune with His desires.  He sometimes choses to redirect our plans.

Last February, we spent a week with a lovely group of Americans while working with Haitians to provide medical care in remote areas of Haiti.  During the week, we got to know a lady named Cheryl.  She was very touched by her experience in Haiti, and each day, after long hours of serving in the medical clinics, she would sit by her new elderly Haitian friend who had Parkinson’s, and feed her dinner.  Cheryl truly understood how to serve the Lord in service to others.  One evening, after learning that Cheryl had connections to Homer, Indiana, we shared with her our story of how we once dreamed of owning furniture from The Sampler.

At our first annual Mission Haiti Medical Gala last month, we had the privilege of seeing Cheryl again.  She handed us a gift at the gala and told us it was a personal gift from her, to thank us for the opportunity to participate in the recent mission trip.  When we got home after the gala, we opened the gift: a beautiful hand-crafted wooden candlestick holder, made at The Sampler.  It wasn’t a dining room table or a bedroom suite, but something with much more meaning – a symbol of how God redirected our plans to become His plans.  This will be a much better family heirloom to pass down to our children.