The Fall Luncheon and All Those Leaves

Do Your Best And Let God Handle The Rest.

As the leaves once again cascade down from the trees in a dazzling array of fall color, the following story comes to mind and is a reminder that we are all the children of a very loving, kind, and helpful God who knows our needs even before we do.

There are fifteen beautiful trees on our property. Spring is beautiful, summer is beautiful, and fall is beautiful. I love to look up in the summer and contemplate that God knows how many leaves are on each tree. The fall color is just extraordinary in our neighborhood with its many, many mature trees.

By November the leaves blanket the entire area. Two years ago, my children and I made the decision to rake the leaves ourselves, put them in our garden for next year's compost, and enjoy working together as a family. Oh, but what a job!

We had the determination, the rakes, the barrels, and the energy, but what we lacked was the time. We knew that gathering up the leaves on our property with the tools we had would take a long, long time. Daylight was ending sooner following the time change, and basketball practice had started for both boys.

When would we find the time to rake all those leaves?

As we pulled out of our driveway shortly after 11:00 a.m. one warm and sunny Saturday morning, my thoughts were on the leaves and responsibly gathering them up so they would not blow on the yards around us. Our neighbors work hard keeping their yards tidy. It was the perfect day to get a lot of leaf raking accomplished, but we were on our way to a benefit luncheon hosted by The Icon Dei Guild. I factored it into the budget since we were saving money this year by not hiring anyone to do the leaves.

When will we find the time to rake all those leaves? I decided to ask God to handle it.

The luncheon was absolutely wonderful. The proceeds from the event were for Guest House, whose primary mission "is to provide the information, treatment and care needed to ensure that clergy, religious and seminarians suffering from alcoholist and other specified addictions have the very best opportunity for quality recovery.

Andre, Nick, Alyssa, Michele, & our friend Grace

"A related mission of Guest House is to provide the servants of the Church education and other resources that will foster and enhance recovery.

"For any Catholic it is a privilege and a responsibility to help these men and women back to full service in the community, well again in body, mind and spirit." -www.guesthouse.org

How blessed we were to attend this lovely benefit at a nice hall, meet wonderful new people, enjoy fellowship with friends from our parish who also attended, and feast on a delicious meal, which included great coffee and delicious dessert. Michael Voris gave a very passionate and motivating speech encouraging us to live our Catholic faith to the fullest and witness to others. How powerful!

My daughter was given a pumpkin pin by a kind lady and bought a beautiful rose pin. She even had the winning number for the snowman centerpiece on our table! So many blessings, so freely given to us as we sought to help our priests who, as Michael reminded us, "bring us Jesus!"

Andre, Nick, and Alyssa holding the snowman she won.

After the benefit we returned home and worked for an hour on the leaves. We moved A LOT of leaves in that hour, but most of the yard was still blanketed. Then we left for St. Mary's of the Hills, where we had been going to Reconciliation. We were so happy to be going to receive God's forgiveness and abundant graces as we prepared our souls for the next Sacrament. In a few weeks, Andre was going to receive the Sacrament of Confirmation.

As we pulled out of the driveway I wondered anew: when are we going to get to the rest of those leaves? God, I trust in you. Please handle it.

While waiting in the chapel for Reconciliation to begin, we encountered a couple who had just married. They were filled with such joy and spoke to us after ringing the church bells. We shared their joy with them and marveled at the beautiful wedding gift they had received in such a beautiful fall day! We prayed for them after they left. We saw two fantastic priests that we are blessed to know, were forgiven for our sins by God through a living Saint, and then ran into a friend on our way out. So much to be grateful for!!

When we returned home to the leaves, my middle guy was not doing too much leaf raking. Darkness was approaching. Nick had developed a fever, and now we were down a man. Once again we wondered when we were going to finish raking all those leaves. My oldest son, daughter and I completed the side yard and went in for the night.

The next morning, Nick's fever was higher. There would be no leaf raking for him that day. God, make it all happen. I had been feeling at peace and very trusting lately, perhaps the benefits of frequent Holy Communion and Reconciliation. Then the doorbell rang.

A young man was at the door, and out in the yard were many young people with rakes. They were raking our leaves! They had bagged up leaves in the yards of neighbors along the street to the left of my house and were raking the leaves of several more houses on my block. They would not take any money. In fact, the kids paid $3.00 each to participate. They were from Kensington Church and were shuttled to our neighborhood by bus.

God, once again You took care of our needs!

My oldest son and daughter and I joined them in the yard and we enjoyed a great time of fellowship as we worked. What a wonderful group of young people! I told them how they were the Hand of God for so many of us in the neighborhood: us with a sick child, the neighbor across the street battling breast cancer, another neighbor awaiting surgery and unable to do the work, another neighbor a recent widow.

Oh most generous and loving God, You know our needs even before we do! Sometimes You put us on the giving end by having us help others, and sometimes we are to be the ones on the receiving end of Your generosity.

I found myself remarking to my children, once again, that we did what we could to help others the day before, and others did what they could to help us that day. What a marvelous system.

God is at work in the Icon Dei Guild, our Priests, in the Middle School Youth Group from Kensington Church, in you and in me.
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Photos Copyright 2009 JKP.