The Thanksgiving Gift

Years ago I was a young single mother with very little money and I was having a particularly low funding time. We had food. But we were eating alot of macaroni and cheese and hotdogs because they were cheap. I was on the local sheriff edepartment's car-kill deer list. When a deer was hit by a car, if the driver didn't want it and it didn't look too bad (mangled) the sherrif's department would call the next person on the list and ask them if they wanted to come and get it. I'd already turned down two deer, because both were in the middle of the night and I would've had to wake my kids up and take them with me. Weeks went by and it was looking like I'd blown my opportunity to get a free deer from the sheriff's department.
In mid November, my brothers asked me if I was going to go deer hunting with them. I declined, saying I was on the car-kill list, so I'd get one that way, even though I really didn't believe it then. The truth was, I just couldn't afford the expense of going hunting just then. I also couldn't afford to take off from work.
The day before Thanksgiving I was visiting at a friend's house. I had one of my sons with me. It started to snow lightly and I thought we'd better get headed home. Almost home we came upon a freshly killed deer lying beside the road. It was super fresh because there were broken plastic pieces from a signal light cover laying beside the deer, on top of the snow! Yippee!
This was before I had a cell phone, so we hurried home to call the sheriff's department to ask them if the driver had called to ask for the deer. (The driver of the car that hits the deer gets the first opportunity to claim it.) No, they hadn't called to ask for it. They told me to bring it on over and they would tag it for me.
It was a nice doe, approximately 180 lbs. Yes, a REALLY nice doe. It had been clipped in the head, so none of the meat was damaged at all! A winters worth of meat for my small family! Yippee!! Yahoo! Yeehah! We were very excited.
My son and I tried to lift it onto the tailgate of my truck. To no avail. It was too heavy and he was too young. He didn't have his man-strength yet. We hefted and pushed and lifted and braced ourselves and grunted and tried everything we could think of to pick that doe up. It was just too heavy.
I contemplated running home to call and say please, please, PLEASE can I gut it first? to the deputy at the sheriff's department. You're NOT supposed to. It has to be tagged first. I thought they would tell me no. And I was also afraid that after all the work I'd already put into lifting, and all the plans and joy I had about the bounty, would be for naught if some guy came along and just grabbed it and threw it in his truck and took it home. So I wouldn't leave it to go ask. Even though it would have been much lighter. We kept trying. My son said he wished he were older (so that he'd be stronger).
I decided, maybe I could coax it into the passenger side front door, (yes, I AM a redneck!!) because it wasn't so high off the ground as the tailgate was. We had already expended our energy in frustration and we couldn't lift in through the door either. We stopped to take a break. I really wanted it. I considered it a gift from the Universe. And I didn't want to walk away. But we had tried everything physically possible and our muscles were hurting we'd try so hard. So I had to accept that we could NOT get it and we were going to have to give up.
I prayed silently. I said, Ok, you gave me this beautiful deer that will feed my family and make things so good for us, but we can't get it. If this is my deer and you want me to take it, please send somebody to help.
I decided to give it one last whirl. I tied an old speaker wire around its neck and I stood on the passenger seat of my truck and reefed on it for all I was worth while my son pushed from the ground. We couldn't quite get it in. It was dead weight and it was damn heavy. But while I was otherwise distracted, the first vehicle we'd seen in over an hour came and pulled in behind us!
Three big strapping healthy-looking fine young men hopped out. I got down from the seat and went around to talk to them. They stopped because they thought I was lifting a person in! I explained how I'd called the sheriff's department and they were going to tag it for me, but my son and I couldn't lift it, if they could just help me..
"You want it in the back?" one of them asked me. Yes!
Two of those fine young men swung that deer right into the back of my truck like it was a bag of feed, just as nice as pie! I was SO thankful!! I offered them money, they wouldn't take it. My son and I started heading for the county seat to get it tagged. We were victorious! We weren't even a minute down the road when my son said, "I prayed for someone to help us, and then they came." I said, "Me too."
WOW!!!!
He didn't know I'd been praying. I'd been smoking a cigarrette and silently asking for help. I didn't know he'd been praying. How amazing that we'd both just gotten around to asking for help, and then it came. It was miraculous.
I spent the next day, Thanksgiving, cutting up and packaging the wonderful deer.