Ahh, the pleasures of jury duty.
A testimony to the power of prayer:
It all began with a little summons for jury duty back in April for the end of May.
I received it, and didn't think much of it until I took the time to peruse through the summons and saw that it was for a capital murder case lasting anywhere from 4-6 weeks.
This was right after the decision to go to Morocco had been made; I had started making headway on all my preparations - my passport application had been submitted, my letter almost written, permission to take off from work had been granted, etc.
Getting called for a 4-6 week case would have put me being called into court up through and past my trip to Morocco. And seeing as how I was going to be out of the country and knew that was where I needed to be, jury duty needed to be postponed, if at all possible.
After several rounds of telephone calls with unhelpful and unfriendly clerks at the New Castle County Courthouse, I was told what I needed to do: get in writing a letter from my employer stating the reason(s) why I could not be placed on a jury for that particular call date.
That was the easy part. It was the waiting afterwards that wasn't so easy. I'd been told by no end of people, including those clerks in the county office, that the courthouse doesn't take too kindly for asking for postponement, and chances were that I'd have to go in on my called date anyway, "until such time as I was informed otherwise." And in the meantime, I did what I have a tendency to do - worry. What if they decided not to grant my request? What if they did, and decided to schedule my jury duty around the time of my brother's wedding? Praise God for those friends and mentors who helped encourage me through the waiting process, and encouraged me to pray about it.
Finally, an answer came: I received in the mail a few weeks later a postcard from the court system, telling me that they'd granted my request and had given me a new date - August 1. Two answers to prayer, staring me in the face in the form of a little postcard that I still keep stapled to my little bulletin board here at work as a testimony to the power of prayer. And here I'd spent all that time and energy getting upset over what "could have been." I wish that I gave more thought to that little thing called faith.
Fast-forward to the few weeks before Morocco. My new prayer became that I would receive my new summons before I left, so I could fill it out and not worry about it sitting at home for two weeks. I received it 6 days before I was supposed to leave. There was yet another answer to prayer with this new summons: I was no longer assigned to a capital murder case. Praise God, no 4-6 week trial to have hanging over my shoulders waiting for me to come home to.
And that brings us today. I went in, and spent the entire morning sitting and reading. Of the 31 cases that were supposed to be called today, only 2 went to trial, and I was not called for either one of them. They only took one small, select group out at the very beginning, and then said nothing more to us all morning. I got an entire book read.
To top off the morning, I ran into a friend of mine from church,
Melissa, who had also been called in for jury duty the same day. It was comforting in a God-sort of way to know that she was there; we ran into each other on the way to the bathroom, and could only laugh over the odds of having jury duty together at the same time. It was also a comfort to know that, if we both did get called into the courtroom, we'd have to explain to the courts how we knew each other, and if my understanding of the way the legal system works (which, believe me, isn't very much), then we wouldn't have been allowed to sit the case anyway. And in the end, while waiting for our respective rides to come and pick us up, we were able to chat and catch up on how our summers have been going thus far.
As for the little card from the court system? It will remain on my board, until one day it makes its way into my Morocco journal.
I am so incredibly thankful that God's answers are wiser than my answers.
. His heart wasn't growing the way it was supposed to; I think in layman's terms, his ventricles were squeezing his heart into an hour-glass shape. At least, that was what was determined when they took the ultrasound on him a month ago.
