By Kim Griffin • Posted November 10, 2016

My sister recently had back surgery. At 26 years old and with a 2-year-old to take care of, she quickly discovered that recovery was going to be a difficult road. Besides being in pain her son required all the love and care every 2-year-old demands and she still had all the duties of helping maintain her household.

Not an easy task considering her doctor had informed her that bending down and driving were not in her near future. She was feeling overwhelmed and discouraged because she had thought the surgery would be the hard part.

But my sister is a fighter. Growing up in a family of 11 children will bring out the resilience and lioness in anyone! And so she did what any millennial would do, she bought a Grip’n Grab Reach tool from Amazon so she could pick up things around the house. And she figured if she purchased a step stool for her son he could use it to climb in and out of bed so she wouldn’t have to pick him up and risk injury.

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So when I visited her our mission for the day was to find the back-saving step stool. I thought this would be a simple task. I said a quick prayer that God would bless our day together and that my sister would be able to get what she needed to help in her recovery.

First, we went to Michael’s Craft Store. Maybe not the most obvious first stop to take but I’ve had lots of success finding other random and helpful items there in the past. While they did have step stools, all of them had two steps and my sister explained she needed a taller one with at least three steps or he wouldn’t reach the bed.

Next stop, Home Goods, mostly because it was two stores down and didn’t require driving somewhere else. They also only had two-step step stools. Who knew two-steps were so much more popular than three?

Focused, we tried a third store and they didn’t have any step stools at all. Beginning to get discouraged at this point, we decided we would take a dinner break and then resume our search afterwards.

While we were driving down the road and in the middle of conversation, much to my disbelief, I saw in the corner of my eye about a dozen step stools on display for sale in front of an unmarked building, which turned out to be an antique shop.

“Step stools!” I yelled abruptly. “What? Where?” she asked me, alarmed. We turned around, pulled into the parking lot behind the building and walked to the front of the store. There they were, several three-step stools and some taller ones too. We couldn’t believe such a random item would be put on display on the side of the road and just the random item we hadn’t be able to find on our own.

I was surprised that my prayer had been answered so quickly and realized how little I turn to God in prayer and even when I do, how small my faith can be.

I was so thankful to be reminded of the well-known verse in Matthew 7:7, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you!”

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Kim Griffin is a writer in Philadelphia.