An Open Letter to Idgie

Dear Idgie,

Your recent post about a ghost in your home got me to remembering about an angel that came to our house one cold evening.

I had just started school in a small Christian college; married with children. We lived in a huge house in Portland, Oregon. Living in Portland—far away from our original, warm Arizona home—in the dead of a wet winter, homesick, with two small children, with virtually no income…

I did that?!?

We were down to our last ten dollars. My First Wife sat in a corner at our tiny kitchen table and made a grocery list that would pretty well eat up our last ten bucks. After we ate the groceries she was about to buy, we planned to cuddle up together in the living room and starve. On that cold, windy evening, I figured we had about two weeks left to live—after I did my homework.

When she finished her list she trudged up the stairs, stopped and yelled down to me, “Honey, will you see who’s at the front door?”

I opened the door to a stranger who was holding three heavy bags of groceries. “Are you Paul?” he asked. The winter wind was flying about 50 knots and he calmly stood there in a light windbreaker.

“Yes.”

“Good. I brought some things for you.” And he marched in without invitation and went straight to the kitchen table and left those three bags of groceries. He turned and headed back to the front door.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Wait a minute. Who are you? What’s your name?”

He told me his first name, which I’ve since forgotten.

“Where you from? How do you know about us?”

“We got your name from the school. We have a little church down there a ways.”

“What church? We want to thank them,” I said in a hurry.

He mumbled the name of the church, and then stepped out into the brutal Portland wind. “God bless,” he waved.

“But…but…” I couldn’t even say thanks or goodbye.

Those three bags of groceries contained everything on My First Wife’s list. Except that his items were the giant, economy size—and some extra goodies were tucked in there, too.

Days and weeks of investigation couldn’t find the man, or a church with the mumbled name he gave me. My family and I agreed that the Lord sent us an angel that cold night. He brought all the warm provisions we needed for a little while. No amount of arguing will convince us otherwise.

And look! We lived much longer than two weeks.

A lot of people have asked us skeptical questions about that incident. “Well, Paul, maybe this? Maybe that? What if? Just suppose…”

And I always answer: “How’d he know what was on My First Wife’s list? And how’d he know where my little kitchen table was?”

So Idgie, perhaps your visitor is more like an angel. Maybe he knows our angel. Although, with a name like Chuck...

Your friend,
Paul