The last week of April 2021 is the final family vacation we took together. My husband Jim and I decided to go on this vacation with our two adult sons, Hayden and Jordan, even though Jim was battling Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. The time there was bittersweet because Jim didn’t feel like doing any of the fun things with us, but in the early evening hours each day, he made a special effort to spend time with us as a family. I will never forget him doing that with us.
One of the mornings while we were there, I had been walking along the beach thinking of how my world was going to come crashing down at some point in the next few months if God didn’t miraculously heal Jim. Trying to imagine a life without Jim was impossible because I had been with him since the 10th grade. I was praying a lot on these lonely sunrise and sunset walks asking God to be with me because I really didn’t know how I was going to keep going without Jim. A few nights before there had been a particularly beautiful sunset and God brought these words from the Psalms to my heart:
“I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Psalm 27:13-14
I felt like this was a promise from God in the middle of my despair. Even though Jim was dying, I was still living, and God was telling me I was going to see His goodness if I would wait on Him.
Fast forward to two days later. I was sitting upstairs in the bedroom beside the bed where Jim was laying. I opened my email to find a request for a commission from someone I didn’t know. Many times I have received commission requests from people I don’t know that have turned out to be scams, but there was something different about this request. It intrigued me enough to consider it and ask my family their opinion about responding to it. We agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to respond just to see what could come of it.
Within a short period of time, I received a reply stating the person who was inquiring about the painting would like to give me a call to talk to me about painting something for his family. The person who wanted to call me was Dayton Moore, who at the time was the General Manager of the Kansas City Royals. I gave his assistant my phone number and she said he would call me later that day.
Something in me still wondered if this was truly real or if it was someone pretending to be a person I had heard of. I didn’t think much more about it. We had lunch, then the boys and I went out to the beach while Jim rested.
I spent so much time on the beach praying for Jim’s healing, praying for the awful journey we were going through, praying for strength to make it day to day that I totally missed the phone call from Mr. Moore. I’m not usually a bold person, but when I saw on my phone that I missed a call from him, God gave me the boldness to call him right back, and he answered.
I apologized that I missed his call and told him what was going on. We talked for a bit and I could tell he was a man of God and that God had orchestrated this conversation between us. We talked about what he wanted me to paint and agreed to follow up all details with his wife, who is a precious woman of God and someone I have gotten to know better throughout the painting of the commission.
The Moores commissioned a painting of their son Robert, who at the time played second base for the Arkansas Razorbacks baseball team. One night earlier that year he had hit for the cycle — meaning in one game he hit a single, a double, a triple, and a home run. This is quite an accomplishment and the Moores wanted me to capture that in a painting. As big Razorback fans, of course my family and I had seen this game and we were so excited to be part of this wonderful moment in their lives. Jim was incredibly excited for me! Unfortunately, Jim never saw the completed painting as I delivered the painting to the Moores after Jim passed away. However, he was able to witness in very real ways how God would take care of me after he was gone.
I was in contact with Marianne Moore throughout the painting process but when I went to deliver the painting, Marianne and Dayton were both there. I had been curious why, out of all the people Dayton could have asked to paint such a monumental moment in their son’s baseball career, why they asked me to paint for them. I’ll never forget Dayton telling me that he actually found me on Twitter because I commented on one of Robert’s baseball posts, and he saw that I was a Christian and an artist and thought I would be the right person to paint for them.
And there it was again —“I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” God was showing up. My Heavenly Father saw my desperate cry as I was losing the love of me life and all the fear and uncertainty that came with that. He saw me and He assured me that He was still with me and would continue to be with me. He assured me that I could trust Him with all things and that He would never leave me or forsake me.
All glory to God forever and ever!