Our middle son used to have an orange blankey he took with him everywhere. You could tell where he had been by the trail of orange fuzzies left behind (Trader Joe's in Bellingham, Grandma's in Tennessee, an old backpack in St. Louis). Sadly, we had to part with that orange blankey when we had to break his thumb-sucking habit.
When we moved to Scotland, we discovered that the blankey had been lost, and we were all heartbroken to discover Ikea didn't carry it anymore. That was one of a number of sorrows that compounded as we left Bellingham.
Fast forward to our arrival here in Malawi. We were all feeling discouraged with the temporary housing we were staying in. So we visited our future house and the couple staying in it. Chatting on the porch, we looked over and saw none other than the exact same orange blankey of yore! We assumed they had bought it and brought it from their home in the Netherlands. But, in fact, she had found it at the clothing market here and was happy to give it to us.
What most people don't know about the clothing market is the number of steps something takes to get here. Usually it starts as a clothing donation in the US. Thrift stores can't sell it, and so they give it to a group like World Vision. They then send it to a sorting facility, where volunteers (like RUF-UW students back in the day), sift through huge piles of stuff and send on what is decent and non-offensive. That all then gets bailed up and shipped to major open air clothing market stalls in Lilongwe. Buyers buy a bail for a small amount, and then hock the rest in their stalls. What comes to our small village has been bought by a local entrepreneur from the vendors in Lilongwe and then carted here by mini-bus to spread out on a plastic sheet for the big Saturday market. So, to have found our son’s blanket here, and from the open-air clothing market of all places is utterly astounding. We can't but see God's kindness to our boy who, at that moment, was really struggling with life here.
One of our major take-aways from this last year is that God is peculiarly kind to the broken-hearted.