Grace and a boy in an orange shirt

Some of you already know about the boy in the orange shirt. Some of you have already walked the path of parenthood and dealt with the widening of your child's sphere of influence. Some of you know all about how gracious our God can be. For us, all these things have mixed together the past few weeks.

On the first day of school, Ethan came home and talked about playing pirate on the playground with the kid in the orange shirt. He didn't know the boy's name, or recognize it from the list I read to him. All we knew was he was playing, which was a good thing, and that he wanted to wear an orange shirt the next day to school.

On the second day of school, we heard more about the kid with the orange shirt. In fact, Ethan wanted to call him and ask him to come over and play. Again, though we didn't know a name. Ethan's assignment the next Tuesday would be to find out this boy's name.

However, God had other gracious plans. On Sunday morning, I rushed in to the sanctuary a friend pulled me aside to introduce me to a visiting family who also had a son going to Ethan's school. We quickly found out that this was in fact the kid in the orange shirt. HOW AWESOME! We put a name to the young boy, met his parents and little sister, and could tell from little things that this family was a gift of grace and a mama's answer to prayer. I've been asking God put good friends in Ethan's life, especially as he headed to school. Of course, I shared with Him that it would be awesome if Ethan could make some Christian friends. I was pleased when Ethan seemed to have so quickly found a buddy, and overwhelmed with gratitude at God answering this prayer to such depths so quickly. What a gift!