Words meant for me

Photo by Glen Carrie on Unsplash

It was December 26th, 2020. As the Christmas meal preparations were underway, my mother-in-law asked if we would feel comfortable, because of the pandemic, if she invited Karen to join us for dinner. Karen was unable to celebrate Christmas with her sons due to various health concerns, circumstances and well...Covid. "Absolutely," I said. No one should celebrate Christmas alone!

So Karen came and we enjoyed all the holiday fixins. Ham gravy being the most important one! The conversation ebbed and flowed, like conversations do and Karen naturally started talking about her kids, which circled around to Alan, and the need for a donor. I was compassionately interested, but simultaneously removed...after all, I don't really know Alan.

There have been a few times in my life when something was said, and no one seemed to notice except me. As the conversation moves forward...the words forgotten or unnoticed by others...become the only words remembered by me. I guess that's how I'd describe the next sentence that Karen spoke. 

"Women who have never been pregnant are more likely to match." 

I doubt anyone else around the table remembers that sentence. And to be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure those are the exact words she spoke, but those are the words that etched into my mind. After experiencing years of unexplained infertility, it was not lost on me that I had never been pregnant. 

I'm not sure where exactly the conversation flowed from there because for me, it stood still. 

Surely the Lord was not calling me to this. It's not that I didn't want help to come for Alan, but surely it would come in a different package than me, my body, my kidney. The conversation and meal concluded, but the invitation lingered...what was I to do with such a prompting? Were those words meant for me?