After No Regrets was published Alexandra and I both accepted as many invitations to speak as possible, and the money we received as speakers was an important source of income for our family. Our expenses were paid, and we received an honorarium. In addition, we sold our tapes and books at these events.
In the spring of 1991 Alexandra spoke to a group of homeschoolers, and on the return trip her plane was delayed for several hours. When all the passengers were boarded and the plane was finally ready to take off, the stewardess announced that to make up for the delay the airline would be giving one lucky passenger a free round-trip ticket to anywhere in the United States. She then announced the seat number of the winner.
Alexandra did not even bother to check her seat number. The stewardess kept calling for the winner to identify himself, and finally the man sitting next to Alexandra said, “It’s you. You’re the winner.”
I was thrilled for her. Alexandra gave everything she had to the family, and I felt that this was God’s way of doing something special for her. I asked her where she wanted to go with her free ticket. She told me that she did not have anywhere that she wanted to go.
The ticket was good for only one year, and as the months passed, I began to exert some pressure on her to use it. I kept saying that she needed to treat herself to a vacation with that free ticket. She was working as a history instructor at the El Paso Community College and would have been doing well if she had not given every penny she earned to the family. She could use some of her own money to have a nice vacation with that free ticket.
In February, 1992, when my mother was seventy years old, she was diagnosed with cancer. She had surgery and afterwards had to undergo chemotherapy. I really wanted to visit her, but I knew that was impossible so I talked to her on the phone and prayed for her, but I never said anything to my family about wanting to make the trip.
One day Alexandra came to me and said that she was certain that God had given her that free airline ticket so that I could fly to Kansas to see my mother. I adamantly refused; she insisted. Finally she told me that she had checked the expiration date on the ticket and that it would expire in one week.
I quickly made my reservations and was able to spend three days with my mother right after she came home from the hospital. My stepfather was with her, and she had plenty of money. I did not really need to be with her, but God knew that I should be with her, and He provided a way for that to happen a whole year in advance.
I made a 1400 mile round trip with only ten dollars in my purse. I took my best “at home” slacks, a pair of old Dockers with an iron-on patch on the knee, and an old dress that still looked pretty good. My step father had his birthday while I was there, and I did not know what to do for a gift. I finally went to Braums and bought two ice-cream sundaes to go, one for my mother and one for him, and I wished him a happy birthday. When my mother asked me why I had bought only two sundaes, I said, “I didn’t want one. I’m on a diet.” Ten dollars wasn’t much, but it was enough.
The day I flew home was the expiration date for the ticket. God has great timing!
One of the most important lessons that I learned during those thirteen years is that what we want and what we need are rarely the same things. God did not always give us everything we wanted, but He always gave us everything we needed. During that time, I came to know Him as Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord who Provides.
Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her own story of teaching her ten children from the first grade through master’s degrees before their seventeenth birthdays is retold in her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother. For more information visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/ or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.
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