Hope you’ll enjoy this true-story vignette. It took place in 1996 and remains one of my favorite autumn and thanksgiving memories.
Homeless in the Big Apple
When I landed in LaGuardia Airport with two suitcases and an acceptance letter to graduate school, I had no place to call home. My plan to live with a friend had fallen through just a few weeks before and my graduate school (which started in two days) did not provide student housing. I said a prayer as I wheeled out of the baggage claim and stood in line to catch a taxi into the city. “Lord,” I said, “You know I have no place to lay my head. Please provide a home for me here.”
A few weeks earlier I had placed an ad in a Manhattan church newsletter inquiring about an apartment to share, but I had never received a response. However, the day before my school started, two women in a wonderful neighborhood nearby answered the ad. I prayed before I went to meet them, and the moment I walked into their apartment, I felt a sense of peace and relief. Though I knew nothing about these young women, I knew that this was the home God had provided for me. As I peered out the seventeenth floor window to the beautiful city view, they gave each other a secret thumbs up (which I found about weeks later) and invited me to move in with them. I promptly wrote a check for the rent and moved in that afternoon.
For the next year, my roommates and I laughed together, cried together, prayed together and helped one another through the tumultuous terrain of young professional life as single women. When I couldn’t afford a trip home for Thanksgiving, Anne (who was a first generation Korean immigrant) invited me to her parents home on Long Island where we feasted on sushi and noodles, and praised God from whom all blessings flow. It is one of the best holiday memories I’ll ever have.
Enjoy your holiday as you give and say thanks!
For more info. on Beth Webb Hart and her novels click here
