I was working the 3-to-11 shift at Miners Hospital in Spangler, Pennsylvania, when a patient I was feeding asked, “Why don’t you have a little pin on like the other nurses?”
“I do,” I said, reaching to show him the golden, wreath-shaped R.N. pin on my collar—one of my proudest possessions. It had been given to me when I graduated from nursing school in Altoona, and it stood for years of hard work and study. But now, when I looked down, the pin was gone.
I knew I had pinned it to my uniform just before I left the house. I looked everywhere for it. A colleague and I searched through all the linens and bedside equipment but found nothing. I even took a mop and dusted under the beds. At home I turned the place upside down. No pin. Of course I could replace it, but a substitute would never mean as much. That night, as I lay in bed, I prayed that the Lord would help me find it.
Soon I was asleep. In the deep of night I had a dream. I dreamed that I got out of bed, put on my duster and slippers, and ran downstairs and out the door to a puddle of water in front of the house. And in this puddle was my pin.
The next morning I awoke disappointed. “It was only a dream,” I muttered to myself. “A worthless dream.” But as my head cleared, I seemed to hear a voice saying, No, it’s more than a dream. Go. See.
I put on my duster and slippers and walked out to the road in front of our house, and there found a puddle of brown, dirty water. Hesitating for a moment, I reached in. In a moment I held in my hand an answered prayer.
