funny how things turn out sometimes. . .

I had this dinner at Applebee's last night that I was truly dreading. I'm part of the Aids Care team at church and whenever someone on the team has something happen to them, all the rest of us furnish a meal for them. After my Dad died, almost everyone sent a card and provided hugs for me. At the last meeting they decided that instead of providing a meal for me, they wanted to take me out for dinner. I didn't want to go. Somehow going out to dinner for the loss of someone's life, just seemed strange to me. I told them the cards and hugs were more than enough but they insisted I choose a restaurant. We met last night at 7 for dinner. Eight of us showed up, 3 couples, and Karen and myself. The whole night was unbelieveable! First they pushed 4 tables together to accomodate our large group, which would have been ok, but they put 4 of the chairs up against the back of the wall. Unless you leaned the chairs forward, there was no way to get in behind them. What a joke!! Then about 20 min. after everyone has ordered, our waiter and the manager come out to inform us that one of the fish dishes that 2 of the people have ordered, is no longer available. Out come the menus again so they can choose again. 20 min. later we all get served. When we finish our waiter is no where to be seen and we want to order dessert. We finally flag him down, and we enjoy our dessert. Another 30 min later he finally brings us our checks, but they're all wrong, so he takes everybody's slip back and says he'll be right back. We wait, and wait and wait, Finally he comes back over and he asked everyone what they had. We can see him over at the computer with his manager trying to figure out the slips, but again we wait, and wait, and wait. He then comes back over to the table and asked the men in our group to come back over with him to the computer so he can figure out the bills, Is he kidding?? The guys leave, and we're all laughing hysterically by now, how hard can it be to figure out the bills. . .come on now.
After it's all said and done the manager agrees not to charge us for the desserts, and he gives us 2 -$25 gift cerificates to use as door prizes for our Spaghetti Fundraiser that's coming up in 2 weeks.

But that's not the funniest thing that happened. As we were leaving, one of the couple's husband, Harold said, "Well, Cheryl, Happy Birthday!" I said, "We're not here to celebrate my birthday", but how could I tell him that we were there to celebrate my loss. The words just couldn't come out. One of the other women in the group said, "Harold, I don't think they have a song for why we're here with Cheryl tonight," At that, we all started laughing. Poor Harold was so embarassed but I laughed so hard, I cried. My Dad would have thought the whole situation that evening was funny, and so did I
It reminded me that life can be rough at times but God provides friends and laughter to carry through those hard times. What a God He is!! As we were all walking out to our cars one of the women grabbed me and said, "You know why we didn't want to just drop the food off at your house? We didn't want you to eat alone, and we wanted you to know that we're always here for you, no matter what". Is there anything more beautiful that she could have said, NOT!! Thanks God for the friends that you've provided. They mean a lot.