Just over a week ago, as I loaded the last box into the old Trailblazer, I came back into the emptied clinic and had a moment. A mid-day sunbeam shone through the reception window onto the unintentionally unpacked last two items I still had left to carry out to the car. It was a hand drawn-framed piece of art donated by a volunteer years back. With several babies wearing different vocational hats, it had been stenciled on the wall around it “Children are like a story waiting to unfold.” The other item was the telephone. I remember wanting every call to count on that phone when I began as receptionist 11 years earlier. Moving hurriedly the past 2 hours to get boxes out and vacate Unit H, I paused to glance at these remaining items and was stilled by an audible God-thought, “This is why we’re here.”
It was for those anxious calls from moms-to-be, and the babies that would be born. I felt overcome with emotion as I thought about the lives touched, saved, and changed over the 16 years of ministry on Temple Avenue.
Like Meg Ryan as “Shop Girl” in the movie, You’ve Got Mail, it was those bittersweet memories dancing with her mom in the very place she now was locking up and saying goodbye to for the last time. I wondered how many moms have danced with their babies, toddlers or children, since CHOICES began. As sentimental as it was to go, I realized there is more work to be done in the new place. God goes before us because we are Temples of His Holy Spirit. Just as it says in Acts 17:28, "For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’
I thanked God for His faithfulness and prayed for God’s blessing upon the faithful supporters, which are the behind-the-scenes heroes of ministry. I recalled so many heaven-sent friends and partners of CHOICES since my beginning. I picked up the now unplugged phone and the baby art and locked up the clinic. With a loaded down car, I drove over hills and headed into the quaint and blue October skies of Bonita Avenue, San Dimas. With gratitude of heart and faith in His provision and love, I shouted,
“GOD, YOU ARE SO GOOD!"
Executive Director, Karrin Shurtz
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