A Cool God Moment Today

All month I’ve wanted to take the kids to the zoo.  We have a membership to the Grand Rapids Children’s Museum, and they do membership exchanges with other museums and attractions during different months throughout the year.  It’s such an awesome thing!  This month they are doing a membership exchange with the John Ball Zoo, which means we show our GRCM card and we can get into the zoo for free.  I’ve been looking forward to this as soon as I saw it on the membership exchange calendar months ago.

Looking at our schedule, this was the week for me to take the kids there.  And then today looked like the best day out of this week.  So, this morning I told the kids we’d be going there.  My original thought last night was that we’d go this morning, as that’s when the animals are most active.  But it turned out that Kevin had to be somewhere and needed the van so we couldn’t go until after lunch.  We had a great morning at home, but the kids were eagerly looking forward to when Daddy got home so we could go.  It turned out to be just one of those days though where I ended up having so many little things that HAD to be done before we left, so I kept saying to them we’d go soon, after lunch, after I do this, as soon as this is done, oh sorry, one more thing I forgot to do, etc., etc.  They were really patient with me, even when we had to run two quick errands on our way there.  We finally arrived just after 3:00pm.  Carlos and Maria were excited!  We had to park at the far end of the lot and the whole way up the zoo entrance they were so cute talking about which animals they wanted to see. 

We got up to the ticket window and I told them that we are GRCM members.  The woman asked for my membership card and I.D. which I happily gave to her while the kids continued to talk about animals.  She then looked up at me and asked, “Did you renew this recently?”  My face fell and my stomach dropped as I told her no and asked her why.  She showed me the back of my card which said that our membership to the GRCM expired on July 26^th!  Oh no!!  I stood there for a moment with my mouth open.  She handed me back my card and said a simple “sorry.”  I glanced at the rates board and then looked at the kids and then looked up at the woman and then back at the rates board and then back at the kids...and told them that I was so sorry but we couldn’t go into the zoo today.  Carlos asked why and Maria looked up at me and said so sweetly, “But I want to see the penguins.”  I felt terrible as I took them aside and had to explain to them what happened, and that we couldn’t afford to spend $24 to go to the zoo today.  Their faces and shoulders fell, but they didn’t say anything.  Just then two separate families walked up to the ticket window and one turned to the other and asked if they had a free pass to the zoo, while she was holding one out to them.  They thanked her but said they already had one.  This woman looked the other way (but not behind her where we were) and not seeing anyone else she started to put the pass away saying that they had two passes and really wanted to give this one away to someone since they didn’t need it and it was going to expire.  When I heard this I jerked my head up, and then sheepishly walked up to her and asked her if we could have it.  A big smile broke out on her face as she handed it to me saying, “Sure!”  She reiterated that she was hoping to find someone to give it to and with tears in my eyes (which totally surprised me!) I just said that it was a long story why we couldn’t go in but THANK YOU SO MUCH because now we could! 

With his mouth wide open, Carlos took the free family pass in his hands.  We couldn’t believe it!  What a blessing!  What a gift God gave us today!  Thank you God!