This one goes out to you, my lovely great aunt.

I have this great aunt. (Actually, I'm sure I have many, but she is the only one I know). Her name is Aunt Ella. It's a lovely name for a lovely person. I'm not sure I ever realized quite how lovely she was until this past thanksgiving.

Aunt Ella is blind, and mostly deaf. The deafness isn't so bad now that she has a super-de-duper hearing aid, but she still can't hear too much. She can be kind of a pain in the neck. I know she gets lonely, living all by herself and never really seeing relatives except at holidays. And it's not like she lives far away, either. She has just been so difficult for us all to deal with until just a few years ago when hearing aids improved substantially. And old people can be a bit difficult to deal with anyways. And I'll admit right now that I am one of the worst offenders...I drive by/near her house every work day as opposed to everyone else that would have to drive 20 minutes out of their way to see her. But I do take time on the holidays to say hello and talk for a few minutes, which is more than most of my relatives do. And I do so without grumbling, which is what almost all of my relatives don't do. They tolerate her, but that is all. She is considered an oddity. She's pushy. She's inappropriate at times. She pesters.

But she is still lovely. Mostly because she truely loves the Lord. I went over to talk to her on Thanksgiving and mentioned that I've been studying for my CPA exams and was kinda stressed about them. "Well, let's pray then!" she says. Heads that were trying to purposely look away shot up, to see my reaction. I don't think they expected to see surprise that was quickly replaced by abject relief on my face. And maybe they didn't see it, but it was there. I'd been more stressed than I was willing to admit, and I just kept remembering that I had all kinds of people praying for me with the first two, and no one was praying for this one. And in some ways I'm more nervous about this exam. So instead of being turned off by her standing in the middle of the room and holding my hands to her heart and praying out loud in front of everyone, I stood there and thanked God for putting her in my life.

God cared for my needs that day. I'd already turned my exams over to Him, but I really felt the lack of prayers for this exam, and it added to my stress. Last time, people told me that they asked God to help me pass in such a way that I would know it was Him. And He did. But would He show up in such a way again without those prayers? Now it doesn't matter. Pass or fail, God is still taking care of my needs, and that is really whats important.

For the record though, I really really really want to pass. The idea of spending another month of time doing nothing but studying makes me sick. And I would have to pay more money. I really really really want to pass. I still don't feel like I'm going to. But as Sarah pointed out to me Friday night, I felt the same way with the first two and I managed to pass them both (with a ton of help from God!).

So today, the day of the exam, I am not worrying. The exam is in His hands, just like my need for someone to pray with me was.