Mary came to church on Sunday.

It’s been a little more than two years since she married Robert and moved away to Kansas. She texts me from time to time to let me know what’s going on in her world. Her texts say married life is great, she has a new job at Walmart, she needs prayer because she’s having surgery.

On Sunday, Mary said she’d wanted to hear my husband preach. She’d been missing his sermons. His delivery. His style. So Mary came to church on Sunday and – right in the middle of the sermon – I spotted her across the sanctuary. She was sitting with the folks who aren’t afraid to say “Amen!” out loud, when something in the message speaks to them.

After church, there was the usual flurry of hand shaking and hugging and baby passing and following up on the details of this and that. Mary stood on the fringes and waited. Even after I’d hugged her and been distracted by someone else who needed to ask me a question, Mary stood there.

In the end, the lights had been turned off in the hallway, and the stragglers were making their way towards the door when Mary and her mom and I stood in the doorway of the sanctuary.

“I’ve been going to a church,” Mary said.

“That’s great,” I answered.

“Some of the things she’s learned there are real cool,” her mom said and I heard something in her mom’s voice that drew me in. It was the sound of a mom who knew her kid was going to be alright. “Yep. Really cool. There’s one thing she told me,” now she turned to look up at Mary. “What’s that thing you keep saying?”

“God does everything.” Mary said.

I had to agree. God does do everything. I nodded my head to let her know I’d heard her and she said it again. “God does everything.”

“Yep. He does.” I said.

And she said it again. “God does everything.” And now I was thinking about how Jesus asked Peter three times: “Peter, do you love me?” Kind of pressing the point, you know? And I wondered if Peter was squirming inside himself as he answered three times. “Yes, Lord. I love you.” I wondered if Peter thought Jesus was making him restate the obvious just to test him. To see if it was really true. To see if Peter really did love Jesus like he said he did.

Did I really believe that God does everything? Or was I just agreeing because it was the easiest thing to do when I had one foot in the sanctuary and the other in a darkened hallway?

I looked at Mary, wondering if she was going to say it again. But instead, she looked me in the eye and said, “All we have to do is let Him.”

And on the inside, I was knocked off my feet.