Mind Body Soul & Coffee

I was 16 years young when I stopped going to church. In part because teenagers make very poor decisions, but more so because it wasn’t feeding me truth. While I am grateful that my mother gave me a solid foundation, I do not believe that one must attend a specific church only because that is where their mother goes.

Fast forward to the year 2008… I am a single mother, living in a new home with my two pre-teen boys and my baby girl, 200 miles away from family and everyone I know. One of my neighbors, hearing I hadn’t attended in 20 years, invited me to his church. I knew before the service was over that this was the church I belong in. A church that preaches from the Bible and believes in modern day miracles!

November 26, 2009, Thanksgiving night

The boiler in our 4,000sq ft home had decided it was time for my life to change. It was an antique (as was my home…built in 1880), and it quit. The cheapest estimate I received to replace the dinosaur was $11,000. Which was about half of my life’s savings. I had just spent $17,000. on a new roof, and re-wired the house. The exterior needed to be painted. And I was in the process of insulating and drywalling the entire house. The thought of needing to spend 11K was very unsettling. I decided instead to look for a new home.

November 27, 2009

I contacted a realtor about a home that had been empty for 8 years; on the market a couple times with no buyers. I made an offer. Every penny I had. Which was about $15,000 less than their asking price. Not only did they immediately accept my offer, but as they were quite advanced in years, they had no desire to empty the house or do any work on it, so I got a 3/4 bedroom house almost completely furnished, overnight. I knew it was a gift from God.

December 2, 2009, Closing on house

The house did need some work done before living in it….a few rooms painted, some new appliances, a bathroom remodel (which included running all new plumbing in the kitchen and the bath). I did the work myself because just about every penny I had was spent on buying the house. We had not had the water turned on until work was finished, so it was a couple months before we could move in.

March 23, 2010

Finally we were able to live in our new home.

March 31, 2010

I receive a water bill for service through the 29th, in the amount of $129.72 for 10,000 gallons!!. Which is odd because we had only had service for 6 days.

So I called the water department and said that they must have made a mistake, foolishly expecting to hear that they would come out to do another reading. Instead I was told it must be paid or it will be shut off. I further explained we JUST moved in and had service turned on and the reading on my meter is not what the bill shows. She told me whether it is a correct bill or not, it must be paid and I’ll have a credit on the books for next month. I told her I have no money until the next month due to everything I had being spent on this house. She remained insistent in her statement.

April 1, 2010, Holy Thursday

Thursday evening I notice a faint smell coming from the back part of the house, maybe in the kitchen. It smells like a newly dead bird, or a dead mouse maybe. I take a quick look around in the pantry (which is still pretty empty since we were just moving in) and under the appliances (spotless). Not too many places for a dead thing to be hiding. We had a steam heat boiler with radiators so no vents to look in. I see nothing so assume it’s a smell coming in from something outdoors.

April 2, 2010, Good Friday

I wake to find that the smell remains. And, is actually quite a bit stronger. It is now reaching into the dining room. I take a look on the back porch… Nothing. I have the kids looking for something… Nothing. So I clean…everything. The smell remains.

Our basement was unfinished. Except for the area under the kitchen, which was where the well used to be. This part of the basement is bricked off from the rest of the space and filled with dirt. There is about 2½ – 3′ clearance from the dirt floor up to the kitchen floor joists. Just enough to slide around under. That is after you squeeze through the cubby opening into that area (which is no bigger than 2′ x 2′)! So, I have one of the boys crawl in there and check it out… Nothing.

April 3, 2010, Holy Saturday

The smell is enough to make me sick. I no longer am looking for a bird or mouse. A smell this incredible can only come from a large rotting corpse! But it doesn’t make any sense because we can’t find any anything!! A friend comes over who thinks I’ve gone crazy. He comes in and the smell knocks him in his face. He starts looking around thinking we must have missed something. We get to talking and I bring up the water bill. I don’t know if I am more mad about how the conversation went with the water department, or more worried because I simply don’t have the money. But that gets put on the back burner because this smell takes front and center.

Saturday evening and I’m starting to freak out because the smell is horrendous and nothing has been found. I am at this point desperate and shooting from the hip. I am certain there is a carcass (or corpse) buried in the dirt floor under my kitchen!

Only one option left

I decide I want the area under my kitchen dug out. There is no way for a grown person to climb in under there so it is decided that the stairs must come out!

The stairs going down into the basement are through a door in the kitchen. I did not take a picture of them, but they are similar to this…(the red has been edited into the photo where the retaining wall for all the dirt is, and the black above that wall is how high the dirt is filled in that space). And then the dirt filled area under the kitchen is on the left side of the stairs as well.

And so it begins

My friend goes into the basement while my children and I stand at the doorway above, waiting for something to make sense. Behind us, on the table, sits my water bill.

The stairs are detached and taken away, and I hand my friend a shovel. He fills a 5-gallon bucket, hands it up to me and I dump it outside. We do this about 5 or 6 times. As he’s digging in that dirt, some of the bricks in the retaining wall drop out and he finds there is no dirt in this square area. What he does find is this…

A tomblike open area, with a bricked bottom and top and sides, only open from the front…which had been blocked off with 2′ of dirt, a brick retaining wall, and a staircase.

My friend from the basement asks, “Is it finder’s keeper’s?”. I assume he’s found the dead whatever and laugh it off. And then, from the basement, a hand comes up and places this at my feet

I pick it up, grab my water bill, and walk to the doorway at the dining room where my boys are silently standing. No one says a word. We huddle around it on the floor, pour it out, and start counting. I already knew. And one glance at my sons, and I knew that they knew. And as we got down to the last coins, tears fell and praises went up.

$129.83

11¢ over my water bill.

The most recent coin in it was dated 1986. 24 years! This jar of money had been filled 24 years before that date, placed safely in a brick tomb, buried under dirt, behind a staircase , for ME!

Those facts alone are extraordinary. But for me, it was even bigger. It wasn’t just about the faith-building gift that He had given me and my children. It was about timing. With God, it always is.

I know it is debated back and forth, but I believe that Jesus died on the Cross on Thursday (the evening my house started smelling), and was in the Tomb for 3 days, 3 nights (Thursday, Friday, Saturday). Each of those days the stench in my home grew. Sunday his Tomb was found empty!

April 4, 2010, Easter Sunday

In our house, we woke with a jar of full of coins, an empty tomb-like space under the kitchen, and a testimony that brought others to tears at church.

Oh, and the smell? That was gone as soon as the money was found. Completely gone. Immediately after.

And a not-so-minor detail I can’t leave out

As you can imagine, the lid on this jar was not in great condition, as it was a metal lid buried in a damp hole in the dirt for quite a few years. But for those in the back who somehow didn’t already put it together

<and because God shows off once in a while!>

the only legible word on the lid was,

you guessed it….

~ M I R A C L E ~