speaking of waiting, i want to share another story of God's blessing that involved a bit of waiting on our part.
it all started a few years ago when i was researching high quality water filters. not only do i want to make sure as much of the chemicals and yuck as possible are out of our drinking water, but i would love to have the peace of mind to know that if there were some disaster in so cal (like a major earthquake... a pretty realistic possibility) that we would have access to safe drinking water.
in comes the berkey water filter: the seeming answer to my quest. the only problem: it costs about $300. (don't you hate how expensive it is to eat healthfully?) since then i have waited until we had an "extra" $300 around to buy one, which hasn't happened.
and then a few months ago, i started reading a blog. every day they post an article written by a different person, entries for their bi-monthly writing contest. and reading further i noticed that part of their third prize offering for the writing contest was that exact water filter i have been wanting! after a little bit of thinking, i realized i have expertise in an area that had been barely written about on the blog thus far: sourdough bread baking.
i got right to writing. life being what it is with two babies, it took me about a month to write something worth submitting (and a big thanks to my husband alex for editing and helping me with that!). in early october, i finally submitted it. and i prayed multiple times specifically that i would win third place (the other prizes were good too, but i was really hoping for third because of the filter).
i was so excited after i sent it in! my piece was high-quality and i couldn't wait to see it post. i checked the blog every day. and every day, i saw somebody else's article. after about a month of checking, i gave up hope. alex told me not to feel bad because they probably get lots of entries. but i have read many of the entries and know that most of them are on redundant topics, poorly written or shorter than the minimum requirement. and if those get published, why not mine? i was bummed, but gave up hope and started to think about another topic i might have enough expertise to write about.
a few nights ago, alex and i were spending time together after a long hard week. i was looking over his shoulder as he was reading some blogs on the computer that he subscribes to. at the same time, we noticed that someone had written a letter to the aforementioned blog about sourdough bread baking. "what?!" i said. "they will post that person's random letter but not my well researched, lengthy article?!" i was incredulous.
but only for a few seconds. because after looking further down, we realized that the letter was in response to an article posted earlier that week about sourdough bread baking. written by none other than "sarah in california"!
woo hoo! we were so excited! but it didn't stop there... we also realized the writing contest had ended the day after the article was posted. searching a little further, we found the post with the contest winners.
looking at first and second place i didn't see my article, but two other really good ones. i was bummed, thinking that sourdough isn't cool enough to quite make the cut for that blog.
but before my eyes found the third prize winner, alex yelled out, "you won! you got third!"
i was really, really excited and happy at that moment. its hard to describe my feelings. it was a mixture of excitement to finally get the long coveted water filter, with happiness that my hard work paid off and writing was deemed worthy of a prize, with an over arching sense of gratefulness to God for giving me the ability to write the article as well as answering the prayer so specifically with the exact prize that i was hoping for.
soli deo gloria. (to God *alone* be the glory)
oh, and if you haven't read it yet, i recommend my (prize-winning!) article on sourdough bread baking over at survival blog.
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