conspiracy of grace

and now for yet another reason i love being a part of tapestry.

one of our guy’s life has changed dramatically over the past 18 months (i will call our friend “fred” from now on). he was doing some things that are no longer who he is. a girl that he “hooked up” with over 18 months ago called him to tell him that he was the father of an 8 month old baby boy that he didn’t know about. surprise.

fred’s son lives with the girl back in fred’s hometown in the upper peninsula of michigan. this is around 5 hours away. fred wants to be the best father he can be, supporting his child, spending time with him, and generally fathering. therefore he drives back to his hometown every weekend to take weekend custody of his son and then he drives back to point for school to go to uwsp on monday mornings.

so he sent a message to me asking if tapestry could pray for him. he wasn’t sure how everyone would respond but he really wanted people praying that he would be a good father to his son. i passed it along he got more than he asked for … in a good way.

the next day i received a phone call from someone asking for fred’s address so they could send him a gas card to help with all the travel. this quickly moved from a gas card to a gas card baby shower. fred came over to pam and my house thinking he was coming for supper and was surprised with a male oriented baby shower (brats, root beer, etc). some groups might have responded in judgment but tapestry responded with an awesome night of grace and love. it was a terrific night.

yesterday i received the following message from fred:

I cannot express how much the congregation of Tapestry means to me. As much as I appreciate the many gifts, I appreciate something else much more: friendship/family. People who are already counting pennies giving up money because I needed it, brings tears to my eyes. When I told my parents, my mother was crying and I was fighting the tears at the party. I am proud and thank God for each and everyone from Tapestry. I LOVE YOU ALL!!