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I Think Back to That Room on the Ranch
This comes from my friend, Matt Page. I’ve never shared this story, but he shared it with me. He said he wanted to tell me about an instance he had back when he was just a boy that taught him the power of prayer.
Matt said:
“I came from a long line of farmers. My dads family grew up with sugar beets and tomatoes in Davis County, and my moms family was, and still is, dairy farmers and ranchers in a small central Utah town.”
As a boy, Matt said he loved hanging out with his uncles on their farms and ranches. It was one of his favorite things to do. He loved being there.
“To me, moving sprinkler lines and feeding stock and milking cows wasn’t work at all. It was heaven.”
The summer he turned 12, Matt said he came up with a great idea. He asked his mom and dad if he could go and spend the summer on his uncle Lloyd’s ranch. His parents talked it over. Permission was granted that Matt could go and spend the summer working as a ranch hand for the princely sum of 50 bucks a month, plus room and board.
His aunt and uncle and cousins were wonderful. The work was hard, but it was enjoyable. Plus his aunt was a wonderful cook and there was loads of good food.
“But then the sun would go down. And my 12 year old heart would break. I missed my mom. I missed my dad. Heck, I even missed all three of my annoying younger sisters.
“Night after night, I would cry myself to sleep, hoping that I wouldn’t wake anyone else in that big ranch house. And come morning, I’d roll out of bed and things would be fine. But at night. The agony would return.
“I told no one. And finally, after enduring that nightly agony for about a month, I could take it no more. Crying, I dropped down on my knees beside my bed. ‘Heavenly Father, I need help. I can’t do this anymore. Can you please, please, please send my dad to get me? I want to go home.’”
Matt would later say, even now, “I don’t know that I ever said a more fervent prayer.” That very night, 225 miles away, his dad tossed and turned in the bed.
His mother asked what was wrong, and Matt’s father replied: “Something’s wrong with Matt, I need to go get him.”
His mother reassured him that if something was wrong, “Uncle Lloyd or Aunt Delaine would have called. He’s fine. Go to sleep.”
Matt’s dad went back to bed, but he still couldn’t sleep. He just knew he needed to go help Matt.
The next day was Sunday.
“We’d finished the chores, and I was playing a board game with one of my cousins, waiting for church to start. I glanced out the window as a car pulled up in front of the house. It was my dad. At first, I was embarrassed. When Dad came in, Aunt Delaine asked him, ‘Why are you here?’ ‘I don’t know,’ my dad said. And everyone turned and looked at me.
“Tears filled my eyes as I told the story. I was afraid that what I had done would hurt my aunt and uncle’s feelings, that they would think I didn’t love them.”
But when he finished, Aunt Delaine came over and gave Matt the biggest hug he could remember. She said, “you remember this day, you remember how much we love you, how much your dad loves you, and most of all, how much God loves you.”
And Matt said, “It’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten.”
In the summers when he was 15 or 16, he went back to the ranch. And stayed in that same room. He wasn’t homesick then, being a little older. “My heart was full of gratitude for what I had learned in that room.”
Matt admitted, “God doesn’t always answer prayers quite that directly. We all know that. I’m thankful for that. We don’t always know what’s best for us. He does. And He gives us the answers that are best for us.”
I love the way Matt concluded the story:
“Don’t ever tell me, there is no God. Or that He doesn’t love us. Or He doesn’t hear and answer prayers. I learned that that’s not true when I was 12. And it’s been proven to be many times since and always I think back to that room on the ranch and how it felt to learn firsthand of God’s love for me and the power of prayer.”
