Dinner with L.'s family

On Thursday I helped M. move some of her stuff to her new home in city an hour and a half away. We drove in a caravan of four loaded cars with M. in the lead, her brother and I in the middle, and L. taking up the rear. M. wasted no time getting there.

Our first stop was her 95-year-old mother's house. D. had dinner waiting for us. We helped get it on the table. M., L., and M.'s brother S. were exhausted. They'd been working all day in the heat trying to get things out of the house and cars loaded, that on top of the days, well, weeks of packing and preparing the new house. D. has been keeping them fed and helped guide the movers when they arrived with M.'s stuff on Wednesday, so she too was pretty tired.

We sat down to eat, the table full of food, everyone politely waiting for a blessing. D. looked around at the weary bunch and decided she would pray. She thought she was likely the least tired of the bunch, so we bowed our heads and waited.

"Good God," she said, more like a curse than a loving address, and I was immediately in trouble. It struck me as so funny I wasn't sure I could sit quietly. I started shaking and noticed what I thought were snickers around the table so I looked up. When I opened my eyes, I saw L. shaking and quietly laughing, a big smile across her red face. S. and M. were both smiling, heads still bowed and eyes closed. As soon as I made eye contact with L., I was done for. Trying to hold the laughter back resulted in a squeaky, pained laugh that I immediately tried to cover up with a cough. Mercifully, D. finished her prayer very shortly after that.

They all teased D. and she responded with a playful, "What? You don't think God is good?"

I've been laughing about it ever since.