Dear Dave & Irene –

My wife Christina, my kids, Katarina (11) and Jake (9), and I are all praying for His strength to indwell you to overcome the pain you’re suffering while we wait on Him for the miracle of complete healing and recovery.  We have a couple churches here in the East Bay lifting you all up in prayer as well.

Speaking of miracles, I have a little one (or two) to tell you about…

I met Dave a couple years ago when I started working with one of his accounts.  He is truly one of my favorite people and a very good brother in Christ.  Though I’ve never met you, Irene, I know that you’ve got to be pretty spectacular by extrapolation, since he is very clear that you are his “better half”.

Dave emailed me and another brother about the amyloid about 2 months ago and asked for our prayers and directed us to the website.  I spent a little time on the website to get the gist of your situation and then went home later that day and told my Proverbs 31 wife about it.  After talking about it at the dinner table with all of us deciding to pray for you daily, Christina later came to me and told me that she’d like to knit a “prayer shawl” for you.

I didn’t quite know what that was so I asked her.  Although my wife had only started knitting about 6 months ago, she had just heard about this ministry in which a knitter would knit a shawl or blanket while praying for the recipient – praying the whole time while knitting.  In this way, the recipient would literally be “covered in prayer”.  Christina asked me if I thought it was a good idea that you would be the first recipient of a prayer shawl she made.  I told her that I thought it was a beautiful idea and that I would be happy to deliver it to you.

The next day at work I ventured back onto your website at lunch and read a good portion of it that I hadn’t read before.  Among other things, I learned that your favorite color is purple and made a mental note to tell Christina when I got home so that she could use that information in selecting the yarn for the prayer shawl.  At the dinner table later that evening I mentioned that I had found out what your favorite color was.  Christina immediately stopped me from telling her and the children.  She said that they had all gone to the fabric store that day to select the yarn.  On the way they were talking about what type and color yarn to get since they didn’t know you at all and didn’t know what you’d like.  They decided to pray about it when they got there and let the Holy Spirit guide them.

Christina walked over to our front door while telling me this and grabbed a large paper bag from the fabric store.  She told me that they prayed together for you when they entered the store and then asked the Holy Spirit to show them what material to use.  Christina told me that Katarina then made a beeline for this one particular yarn and said that it was the yarn that should be used.  Christina then asked me to go ahead and tell her what your favorite color was.  When I told her it was purple, she gasped and lifted a couple of skeins of the loveliest purple yarn I had ever seen out of the bag and we both praised God!  He knows you so well, Irene, that he even knows your favorite color!

It took several weeks, but Christina completed the most beautiful purple shawl I had ever seen last week and we wrapped it up and I took it with me to work in San Francisco.  After work I tracked down Dave and told him the above story and gave him the shawl for you.  After praising the Lord, he told me that God did another miracle just then.  Dave told me that he had taken your favorite purple blanket home to wash it the day before, but hadn’t finished it.  He said that you had just asked for it and he had to apologize to you that he didn’t have it.  He went on to say that God organized everything just right so that on the day that you needed the comfort of something familiar that wasn’t available, you would be comforted by something new but similar that was created to bless you, cover you in prayer and edify Him, the lover of your soul.

God is so good, Irene.  He is blessing many through the story He continues to write for you and through you.  A small example is my wife and children, who will never forget this little miracle, a loving answer to prayer and faithfulness.  And we know that He intends to bless you far more greatly through this ordeal and test, this refiner’s fire.

We love you,

Paul, Christina, Katarina and Jake Grabowsky