The Answer to Her Prayer

A dedicated mother of nine children who listens to the promptings of the Spirit, my daughter Karen has been blessed with ample opportunity to bring happiness to the lives of many.

Not long ago, just a few days following the delivery of her ninth child, she felt strongly impressed, for a reason that she did not understand, to drive to the dairy to pick up milk for the next day. While getting into the car and while driving, she told herself again and again that she should not be driving yet—she was quite anemic and still very fatigued. And she certainly didn’t need to go for milk, because her husband could pick it up before breakfast the next morning.

Nevertheless, Karen knew that she should go, whether she felt like it or not, whether she understood or not.

After leaving the dairy, she passed by the store where she regularly bought groceries, all the while telling herself that she did not really need any. She felt too weak to do any shopping, and had not planned to make another stop.

But all her reasoning did not dissuade her from it, and soon she was driving into the parking lot and walking into the store. She picked up groceries that her family didn’t really need, frankly puzzled.

As she was about to leave the parking lot, she noticed a woman standing by a grocery cart with two small children in it. She had seen them in the store just a minute earlier. The children appeared to be upset, and their mother looked as if she had no place to go. There were no groceries in the cart.

Karen tried to convince herself that someone else would offer the woman and her children a ride, all the while knowing that she herself would end up doing so. She found the woman was stranded, without food or money, a divorcee with no work. She was many miles from her home and had ridden busses all day trying to make connections to the welfare center for help before it closed. This was as far as the bus would take her. Her children had become hungry and cross and the day was nearly over. Silently, she had prayed over and over for help.

It was then that Karen understood the reason she had felt compelled to go to the dairy, and the reason she had stopped to buy food her family did not really need. After sharing supper that evening with the young woman and her children, my son-in-law helped them return home, with the groceries my daughter had bought that day.

Needless to say, Karen felt especially thankful for her own bounteous life and the blessings she and her family had received from our Heavenly Father—blessings that made it possible for her to lighten the burdens of someone in need.