For many years, Ivy Olson privately pondered what came to be known as The Miracle, keeping it in a safe place in her heart. "I was afraid that if I shared it, people would say it was just a dream," she said. What other explanation could there be?
But the event was real. Ivy never doubted it because it transformed not only the life she was leading at the time, but her entire future as well. How could a mere illusion have such an effect?
Ivy grew up as the daughter of Seventh-day Adventist missionaries. She spent her teens in a boarding school and went to nursing school in San Diego. Shortly after graduation, she married Michael, also a Seventh-day Adventist. "The sect was very strict," Ivy said. No dancing, no movies, no parties, and so on. The young couple obeyed all the rules, shielding themselves as much as possible from what they regarded as the sinful world around them. But after the birth of their second son, Ivy became restless. Her life was so rigid, so restricted; all she did was work in a doctor's office and then go home. She longed for friends, for new experiences, for laughter and fun. "I tried to explain this to Michael, but he felt other people weren't to be trusted." Michael was furious when she began bringing home library books that presented worldviews different from their own. Yet she lacked the self-confidence to challenge him.
Then one day Ivy passed a movie theater where The Sound of Music was playing. She had never seen a movie. But how she longed to, especially one like this! She had heard that the story was inspiring, the music enough to move one to tears. "Can we go?" she asked Michael that evening.
He was horrified. "Absolutely not. You know the rules."
The rules. Ivy couldn't imagine a God so harsh that he would prohibit the pleasure of music. For hadn't he created it?
And so she went alone. "Sitting there in the theater, swept up in the experience, I faced the fact that I no longer believed in the faith of my youth," she said. But what could she do? Leaving would open her up to ostracism by the entire religious community, even by her own parents. Yet staying would involve living a lie.
During the next several months, Ivy tried to share her concern with Michael, but he could not accept her questioning. Finally one day she packed up the boys and some possessions in her car. Perhaps if she got away for a while and thought things over, everything would become clear. Michael followed her to the curb. "If you drive away now," he told her quietly, "don't ever come back."
Ivy looked at him. She wanted nothing more than to save her shaky marriage. But she had tried so hard to make herself into a person whom Michael-and the church-would find acceptable. Obeying the rules and regulations. Hoping to be loved. Obviously, she had failed. With trembling fingers, she turned the key in the ignition, and drove down the street.
"The first several months were extremely difficult," Ivy said. "I found a little apartment near the beach. It had one bedroom, but we had no furniture, so we all slept on the floor together." Michael occasionally sent money and visited the boys, but he didn't contest the divorce. Then he had an accident and was unable to make child-support payments. Ivy's parents, away in the mission field and upset over her decision, offered no help. Everything-rent, food, and clothing-was now Ivy's responsibility.
Ivy's kindly physician-boss was the only one who knew of her situation. Occasionally he "happened" to have an extra piece of furniture that he thought she might use. But her financial struggle was exhausting. "By the time I paid for day care and all the bills, the only thing left to skimp on was food." Yet how could she let her growing boys go hungry? Ivy applied for food stamps, but the clerk told her she earned two dollars above the cut-off point and wasn't eligible. She fled the welfare office, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Worse was her loneliness. She longed for a friend, someone who might provide some interesting conversation or encouragement. How was she going to handle this huge load? Was life ever going to be better? Would there be a time when she wasn't so frightened or weary? Perhaps if she reached out, joined a group, even met some tenants in her building ... But her lifelong detachment from social situations had left scars. Who, she wondered, would be interested in knowing her, in seeing what a mess she had made of her life?
As Thanksgiving neared that year, life got even harder. No one was going to invite her and the boys for a holiday dinner, Ivy realized, because they had no friends, and no one knew about their situation. On Thanksgiving morning she awakened, aware that she had only three hot dogs and three buns in the refrigerator. There was no money, and payday wasn't until next week.
It was the lowest Ivy had felt. "I put on a brave face-the same face I'd been wearing all this time-packed up the boys and the food, and went to the park. We laughed and played ball, ran barefoot through the grass, and cooked our hot dogs on a grilL" But as the trio walked home, one of the boys looked up at Ivy.
"I'm still hungry, Mom," he announced.
"Me too," his brother echoed. "Do we have anything else to eat?"
Ivy's heart sank. They were approaching the stairs to their apartment, and the night suddenly loomed long and discouraging. What was she going to do?
Just then the door to basement apartment number 3 opened, and an elderly lady came out. "Oh, I'm glad I caught you, Ivy," she said, beaming. "I was going to ask you and the children to Thanksgiving dinner, but you were out when I knocked on your door earlier."
"Thanksgiving dinner?" Ivy's older son asked hopefully. "Turkey and dressing and pumpkin pie." The lady smiled at him. "Mom! Can we?"
Ivy was staring at the little woman. Who was she? Ivy had never seen her before. True, her days were long and difficult, but shouldn't she recognize a neighbor who lived below her, especially since the woman knew her name? Ivy's natural shyness rose. "I-thank you, but-" She began to turn away.
"Oh, Mommy, please can't we have dinner here?" the younger boy begged. The aroma of roasting turkey wafted out the apartment door.
Ivy looked at her sons. How could she say no to them? "I have your favorite potato salad too, honey," the elderly lady said, smiling again at Ivy. Her favorite-it seemed as if it had been years since she had tasted it. The scents and the warmth, but especially the neighbor's friendliness, touched her heart.
"Thank you," Ivy said quietly and followed her eager children into the apartment. It was nicely furnished, with soft welcoming light and a table set beautifully for four. The lady had planned on their company. How odd.
Dinner was ready, and almost in a daze Ivy sat down to the most wonderful meal she had eaten in years, perhaps ever. There was turkey, yes, and stuffing, vegetables, soft rolls, and that special potato salad. But most of all, love. The apartment seemed to be filled with it. It was as if they had dropped into a story, like the ones she often read to the boys, a make-believe scene full of joy and wonder, with their very own grandmother in charge of everything.
"This is marvelous," Ivy said, sighing contentedly as she buttered her third roll. "But I'm surprised I haven't seen you around, Miss ... ?"
"Oh, I pop in and out." Their hostess beamed again. "How are you and the doctor getting along?"
"Very well," Ivy answered. "I like my job, but I do get lonely sometimes. Well, you live alone-you probably understand what it's like when no one's there." She could hardly believe she was talking this freely about things that had hurt her so deeply for so long.
"Oh, honey," the woman said, leaning closer. "I'm never alone, and neither are you."
"I'm not?" Ivy blinked.
"Of course not. And don't be afraid to ask for help-everyone needs it now and then. More stuffing, boys? No? Then how about dessert?"
They left the basement apartment weighted down with containers of extra food, yet Ivy almost floated up the stairs. She was filled with vigor, a completely different person from the forlorn woman of a few hours ago. She could do it, she knew. She could hold her little family together, no matter how difficult it might be. She was a "honey," someone special, someone worth talking to and caring about, and life held great promise for her. The lady-Ivy hadn't even gotten her name-had somehow shown her all that and more.
The following morning Ivy bounced down the stairs and headed for number 3. She had emptied and washed the plastic containers that had held all those wonderful leftovers, and wanted to return them. She knocked on the door. No one answered. Ivy knocked again. Strange. It was so early.
Where had the lady gone?
What if she was ill? Ivy stood on tiptoe and peeked through the window. What she saw sent tingles down her spine.
The apartment was vacant-no nice furniture, no lamps or rugs or even curtains, nothing but dust looking as if it hadn't been disturbed in months. Stunned, Ivy checked the apartment number. Yes, number 3, the same apartment she and the boys had entered last night. But where was the little table, the pretty napkins? What happened to the dishes and the food-and the wonderful lady?
The apartment manager lived on the same level, just around the corner. Ivy knocked on his door. "Apartment number 3," she said when he came to the door, "do you know the woman who lives there?"
The manager frowned. "Nobody lives there."
"But my children and I had Thanksgiving dinner there yesterday." He shook his head. "Couldn't have. It's been empty for months." Impossible. And yet, hadn't there been clues? Her "favorite"
potato salad, the questions about her employer-little things she should have noticed, if she had wanted to question them? Ivy headed up the stairs, her mind racing. She had lived through a miracle. For a few hours, she had been graced with a love so intense, so wholesome and unconditional, that it could only have come from one Source. And she would never forget it.
Seven years later, Ivy went to Hawaii to visit a friend, met the pastor of a Lutheran church, fell in love, and married him. There she got involved in a variety of church ministries. In 1989, there was a building boom in Honolulu, and many families in the congregation, unable to pay their skyrocketing rents, suddenly became homeless. "I looked at them, at their bewilderment, their confusion and sense of hopelessness-and I saw myself years ago," Ivy said. She had never told anyone, not even her husband, about her experience that Thanksgiving Day. But one evening at a church board meeting, one of the members asked, "Before we adjourn, is there any new mission business?"
Ivy put up her hand. "I'd like to tell you all a story," she began. Ivy went on to found and direct the Angel Network, a self-help group for people in need in the Honolulu area. "We give them practical help," she once explained, "as well as the tools to become selfsufficient. We try to show them that someone is paying attention to them, that they are 'honeys,' even if that's hard to believe right now."
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