Lydia.

When I was seventeen years old there was a Government Scheme called Work Experience, really it was a sort of a lie to get the unemployed numbers of the list down and make it appear that many were in work when really they were not. The Work Experience, was what I was on when I was working at the Civic Centre. They all lasted about six weeks, you had your certificate to say you had completed it. Thinking you could then try and work in that field was another matter. The Employer would always say, “Six weeks is not experience.” Then the Job Centre would send you on another and another.

I was in an open office, doing basic things like getting the post, the other Workers teas and coffees, doing some work on the computers, photocopying, that sort of things. I loved it but the woman over me, called Helen, we just clashed! Sometimes I meet people in life and that's just it. There was no other way to explain it, we just couldn't get on! So with just 2 weeks to go before the end of my Work Experience I was banished out of her sight to the basement! I was beyond hurt!

How could Helen have been so mean. Upstairs was open plan and noisy down here was deathly quiet. Here any enquiries they needed upstairs for the council houses, the two very old ladies and a young girls worked. I didn't even know down here existed and now here I was and I was gutted!

I soon found out the young eighteen year old was called Lydia. We sat opposite each other on one table and on the other side of the room the two old ladies sat. Now to me, Lydia was perfect! She had lovely hair, an amazing figure and she was was very pretty. Yet I noticed a few days after I'd been there, that she looked sad. I asked her what was wrong, and this is what she told me.

Lydia had started her monthly period when she was thirteen and it had then stopped from the the age of fourteen until today, she still hadn't have a period. I thought she was lucky! But clearly there was something wrong. She said, with tears in her eye, “In three weeks time I will be going into hospital, so they can explore and try and find out what is wrong, she wasn't looking forward to it.” I then remembered the story I had read the very same morning from the Bible about the woman who had an haemorrhage for twelve years and she had spend all her money on the Doctors help but she had only got worse. Jesus was in a crowed place and she said to herself. “If only I can touch the hem of His Garment I know I will be healed” She did just that and she was instantly healed. I told this to Lydia who said she didn't believe in God or anything religious. So as I was sat facing the high up window, all I could see outside was a thin trunk of a little tree, the rest was just concrete. I said, “I believe He made all things, that little tree there, He caused it to grow with the sun and the rain,” I went on, “I believe He made the sun, moon and stars.” She said she still didn't believe, fair enough I thought, then I said to her, “I will ask Him for a miracle. I will go home and I will ask Him to start her period, just like how he stopped that woman’s bleeding, if He answers then would He be the Real God to you?” Lydia said, “If my period starts in the next few days, then, I will 100% agree that what I told her about is from the Real God, who made the sun, moon stars and allowed that little thin trunk tree to grow.” I also told her if nothing happened and her period didn't start in the next few days then, there is no God. She agreed to that too.

I went home and I told my Mum, and together we prayed for Lydia.

I was in one of the isles, look for a council house when Lydia came up to me and said, with a smile and tears in her eyes, “My period started today!” I asked her if she had thanked God, she said, “Yes.” I stood with her there and thanked Him too. He had done it it two days! Job done!

The following morning, Lydia came to me and said she had been to her Doctors the evening before and he had said to her, “Her period would have started anyway!” I was shocked, with all the sleepless nights she had been through in the years gone by and worry, and she so quickly allowed the Doctor to take that miracle away? Me been me, I went home and told Mum, I also told her I was going to ask God to stop her period again! But Mum said, “God isn't like that, He had blessed her with her period, if she chose not to believe Him ever again then that is up to her, He will still be faithful to her.” So as Mum is more of a lamb than me, and she thinks before she puts her foot in her mouth like I often do, I calmed myself and let her think what she wanted.

A few days later my six weeks was up and I had to leave. It flew by and to think I didn't want to go down there, and yet His timing was perfect! He sent me down there for Lydia. His Job was done!

I had often wondered, if God had carried on with his miracle, had He remembered to be faithful to Lydia, I didn't know. Until one day ten years later I suddenly met Lydia on a car park, she was with a small group of her friends I didn't know any of them and I was with three of mine, both my friends knew some of her friends and they were all talking, then I said to Lydia, “Is everything still OK? She knew what I meant, she smiled and said, “Yes” I knew what she meant.