I was running errands one afternoon this summer when my cell phone buzzed with an incoming from Mike, my neighbor across the street.

“Mark, I have Evelyn here. She’s trying to get back into the house, and she can’t remember the garage door code.”

What is Evelyn doing OUTside the house? How did she end up at the neighbor’s front door?

I gave him the code and said I’d come straight home. I grabbed the item I was looking for and headed to the checkout. On my way home, about 20 minutes later, my cell phone rang again. This time the call was from Bill, my neighbor next door.

Bill had the same story. Confused Evelyn. Wandering outside. Forgotten garage door code.

“I’m just five minutes away,” I told Bill. “I’m almost ready to turn into the subdivision.”

Bill graciously waited till I was there, walked Evelyn over to our driveway, and copied our code into his phone. I took her inside and realized my whole world had changed.

This has never happened before. I’ve been free to get away a couple hours here or there whenever I wanted.

Weekly service

My mind raced through a mental list of lunches with friends, doctor visits, and other errands planned for coming afternoons.

Then I remembered my weekly Friday-morning volunteering at the Healing Center, a diversified ministry to under-resourced families sponsored by Vineyard Cincinnati. The facility is about 25 minutes from my house, and I’m typically gone from 8:15 till 11:30 or 12:00.

I don’t want to give up serving at the Healing Center!

It’s not that they couldn’t get along without me. All I do is check in guests at the front desk. But I want to be there—largely because I believe in their mission of restoring people, not just giving them handouts; partly because I value the interactions with the guests and the staff and the other volunteers. I’m an extrovert, energized by being around people. I hated the thought of giving up this break to be stuck at home one more morning every week.

First steps

Evelyn had never wandered before. (Nor has she since, by the way.) She usually sleeps till late in the mornings, sometimes till I get home from Healing Center. I decided the next couple of Fridays to try leaving her home alone, even as I was brainstorming other solutions—and breathing a sigh of relief each time I returned to find her still in bed or resting on the couch.

I compiled a list of ladies who have said they’d be pleased to come help us; eventually I had written down eight names. It wouldn’t be too much to ask someone to come once every other month, right? I considered the task of contacting them all, setting up a schedule, and making a plan for substitutes. It felt like a lot of work to me. One more task to manage and remember.

“Just create a sign-up calendar in Google Docs,” my son advised me. The first friend I called doesn’t know about Google Docs and didn’t say she’d be eager to learn.

Bowled over

I was asked to attend a 1:30 p.m. Zoom meeting on an upcoming Friday, right in the middle of Evelyn’s weekly beauty shop appointment. I chose a friend (one of the ladies from my earlier list) and was writing a text to ask her if she’d come take Evelyn to that appointment when I received a text from her.

“Mark, I’d really like to spend time with Evelyn one day each week,” she wrote, “to give you a chance to get out of the house.” There was my Friday-mornings solution!

I was bowled over. I never would have asked the same person to come every week. I stopped to breathe a thank-you to God, and then realized I had never even prayed about this. It was as if God had answered my prayer before I even prayed it!

‘Little’ problems

“God is in the details,” my friend told me later when I was setting up a Friday routine with her. And I remembered how hesitant I am to “bother” God with my little desires, or even needs. It seems self-centered or trivial to me. But I’m beginning to understand that God, like all good fathers, wants to hear everything on my mind. And like every loving parent, he hurts along with his children over even the “little” pains and problems.

(And this experience affirms one more thing I believe about God: the ministry of Healing Center must be important to him, too.)

Remembering faithfulness

I share all this not to brag or to suggest I have some superior “in” with our Father. I could tell you about all my unanswered prayers, my niggling questions, regrets, fears; my struggles with doubt.

But just as the ancient rulers of Israel, the prophets, and the writers of Psalms reminded God’s people of his past faithfulness, I’m remembering this story whenever I wander into wondering if God is near. It encourages me to believe he’s lovingly concerned about every detail of my life.

So I decided not to keep my story to myself. I figure it may be just the encouragement some reader needs today. God is here, even when we get too busy with the “little” things to include him in our struggles.

It’s a reminder I need almost every day.