God's Reminders
We're back...Due to busy lives The On This Day Designs blog vanished this past month! The four of us neophyte bloggers have been flying off to visit friends/family, working on contests, fundraisers, sales, other business issues and dealing with busy family lives and the blog seems to be what was sacrificed to accomplish the rest. Are we slowing down--no, but blogging must go on...
There have been several times over the past seven years where my sisters and I wondered if we should give up the business because frankly, it's A LOT of work and we all have very busy lives. Without fail during these times God sends us a little reminder of why he wants us to keep going; the people we touch and who touch us, the sense of mission we feel, the wearing and sharing of our faith and the joy in Jesus' name we want to spread. It's all there in the connection we feel with our customers and our Catholic faith. I want to tell you about two of Gods little reminders he sent us this past month.
The first reminder happened while Nancy and I were visiting our Aunt Ruth and cousins in San Diego, California. Even though we were in sunny California much of our Friday was spent d
ealing with customer orders due to running an online fundraiser for one of our local Parish's Youth Group. The girls back in Ohio did much of the work but certain issues required my help, even being 2,000 miles away from home base. As long as I had access to a computer all was good!
So it was 8:00 p.m., California time, when a call came through our On This Day Designs number--I have it forwarded to my cell phone. It was a new customer named Rob. He said an item he wanted to buy would not go into his shopping cart...I though that was odd, but with technology you often find issues...not realizing at the time maybe it was a GOD issue. So I assured Rob I could take his order over the phone. He wanted the St. Christopher Rearview Mirror Medal. Now we have two different St. Christopher rearview mirror medals on the site but Rob was specific which one he wanted. After we chatted awhile I asked how he came across our website. He said his brother had recently passed away and spoke to him in a dream the night before and showed him an image, one Rob had never seen before. He searched online for the image and it was the St. Christopher medal found on our site! Now do you see why I think maybe God had a hand in messing up the shopping cart?! Could God have led Rob to our site to help ease his mind about his brother and to also ease our minds about On This Day Designs? Yes! So we will keep plugging along with our little company-not for our glory but for His!
The second reminder was an email we received from Matt. Matt has lived his life with a chronic illness where he has had four past surgeries with a fifth operation pending. I had the privilege of emailing back and forth with Matt and speaking with him on the phone. He writes beautiful emails about his joy in faith and the Catholic Church:
"It is true that I have many challenges in the life God gave me but with His grace we can overcome the pain, sufferings and problems of the world. Our Holy Roman Catholic faith is my true bread that gives me courage to face the future."
Matt has had a great devotion to St. Gertrude the Great since he was little but has never been able to find a medal with her image. He loved the medal my sister Patty designed of St. Gertrude and has gone on to purchase several of them. His comment about the medal was very inspiring to us and once again reiterates why we do what we do!
"Thank you and your associates for your time and for creating a medal that brings glory to Jesus and honor to his beloved spouse St. Gertrude the Great."
These are just the most recent "God reminders" for us to keep plugging away at On This Day Designs. There have been so many touching and awesome customer contacts over the years it would make this a very long post to mention them all. Suffice it to say we get the hint God, we'll keep going for Your Glory not ours.
Peace and Joy,
Sue