A God appointment...

Yesterday I was blessed to spend the day exploring Chicago with the ladies from the Dallas chapter of MEND.

(Seeing as how we have only lived here 1 year and only have made it downtown on 1 occasion, I was a terrible hostess... I have no idea how to use the train system, where anything is located or even what are the best ways to get around... We figured it out, but I felt bad that I could offer no direction whatsoever... :) I think the deep dish pizza we all had at midnight made it all better:)

Truly, we had a great time...

Unfortunately, the founder of MEND Rebekah ended up not feeling well which had delayed our start to getting into the city... We were so glad that later in the day she was up to giving exploring Chicago a try...

We hit Portillos for some famous Chicago Style hot dogs...
We hit Navy Pier for a ride on the Ferris wheel...
We hit the sky deck at the Willis tower (yes that is the ledge that cracked just a few weeks back... and yes... it is TOTALLY freaky standing on a clear ledge 103 stories up in the air:)

We were on our way to Millennium park to see the bean when we decided to stop in at Fannie May for the Dallas girls to buy some Chicago chocolate...

As we were checking out, the checker, a sweet young gal, I would guess no older than 20, waited on us...  She commented on the purple sweatshirts some of the girls were wearing, and asked if they were breast cancer sweatshirts.

One of the girls explained that no, we were actually a part of a support group called MEND that was for women who had lost babies to miscarriage, stillbirth, or early infant death... We told her about the group that we just started here in the Chicagoland area this week...

She sort of had a blank look on her face and asked, "Why would you do that??"  It was sort of an odd question that seemed to have more meaning behind it... And of course one of us shared that we had all indeed lost babies either to stillbirth or hours after birth.

Our director asked... "Do you know anyone who might have lost a baby?"

"I might..." was her reply and then she sort of quickly disappeared...

Immediately our director thought it was her that had lost a child...
We scrambled to find a business card with some MEND info on it... but ended up not having any, and found a Fannie May card to write our website, my email and number on it.

When she came back she had to wipe away tears... I just reached out and asked if she was ok... and another of our gals quickly gave her a hug...

She indeed had lost her twins just last year...
What a God appointment... to meet this precious young girl... We visited for a few minutes assuring her that the feelings that she was having were indeed normal and ok to have.  We invited her to group and to sign up for the newsletter. My heart just ached for her... it just felt as if this was one of the first times she had felt free to talk about them.

She has been heavy on my heart.

My prayer is that she somehow will reach out to MEND... even if she can not ever make it out to group... that she would feel the Love that God really has for her, that she would know the support that comes from sharing the burden she feels, and that she would know that she doesn't have to walk this journey alone...

I am so thankful that the Lord placed this precious young lady right in our path yesterday... What a sweet God appointment...