Picking Prayer and a Painting

I was one the road this morning before 7:00 to get to a liquidation estate sale. I was at the house by 7:10 only to discover I was #35 on the signup list!! DRAT. Almost two hours before the sale even started and I still didn’t make it in the top 20.

I went back to the car to wait and stew a bit. What were my chances of getting anything good? Slim. I stewed some more. And I got a tad annoyed because I know some people come super early and sign up their friends too. And once inside some pickers get downright aggressive. (Stew, stew, stew.)

So I said a quick “picking prayer”…“God, if I’m supposed to find anything special today I pray I will…and that everybody else will just ignore it and it will jump out at me.”

Admittedly this is a weird prayer. Kinda selfish. Should I even be praying like that?  I don’t know. In the end the prayer calmed me down and helped me realize if I’m supposed to find something, I will. And if not, no problem. No need to stew! Or fret. Or worry about unscrupulous and rude pickers.

I got out of my car at 8:15 to stretch my legs and saw my picking friend Diane (who is a wonderful kindred spirt) and we chatted till we had to line up for the 9:00 opening. I got let in the house in the second wave of people (about 5 minutes after it opened) and, alas, most of the rooms were fairly empty and I wasn’t finding much to buy. A cute ’50s black patent leather purse had too much wear. A nice Norwegian wool sweater was stained in several places. Books were not appealing or too high up to reach!

I guess it wasn’t my day to find anything special.

But I hadn’t made it to the other side of the house yet so I headed in that direction. And there it was. On a bed. A painting.

A big, beautiful, signed painting of a Dutch scene in winter.

Dozens of people had been in and out of this room, but the painting had been ignored.  In my mind, this beauty had neon arrows pointing to it!!

I didn’t have to think twice about it. I grabbed it and got it for a great price. As I walked out the front door past a long line of folks still waiting to get into the sale, I heard a man say, “Hey, she got a painting.” So I turned it around to show folks and got several “oohs and aahs” and a “wow, that’s nice” and even a few wistfuls, “I would have bought that!”

Eventually, I’ll sell this, but for now I’ve put it up over our living room mantel to enjoy. 🙂

And did I get divine help on this pick? Hmmm…I’ll be thinking about the answer to that for a while!

Happy hunting!