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Thursday, September 1, 2011

What a coincidence!

Thinking about Thursday

My husband and I recently spent an evening watching

 You can check out a great summary of the plot in this video:
*MAJOR SPOILER WARNING! *





The movie deals with the idea that some of life is fate and some of what we think of as coincidence is actually us being redirected by onto our "path".

So, today, I am thinking about coincidences in my life.

  • When I was nine years old, my mother and I moved from a small town in west Texas to a small suburb of Joplin, Missouri. On the first day in my new school, I noticed one of the boys in my fourth grade class looked strangely familiar. That's because I already knew him. He lived in the suburb of Joplin, but spent summers with his grandparents in the small town in west Texas. I recognized  him from my Sunday School class. We didn't grow up and get married or anything. In fact, we weren't even close friends. But, I've always sort of wondered why that happened.  The towns are close to 500 miles apart and neither was exactly a booming place. So, why was this same little boy in my life at both places?
  • I did most of my growing up just outside of Oklahoma City. Shortly after I moved to Texas, I returned to OKC one weekend for a Bachelorette party. I was driving down I-35, when my parents (who lived 30 miles outside of OKC and didn't know when I was coming to town) pulled onto the highway in front me. I called them on my cell phone and told my dad to look in his rearview mirror. We had a 15 minute impromptu visit in a gas station parking lot. That still fascinates me to this day. Everything that had to be timed exactly right for us to cross paths at that precise moment. It boggles my mind. But, was it a coincidence? Or for some reason, was I supposed to see my parents that day?
  • By far the most important was meeting my husband. We met at a church we were both visiting for the first time. I knew the one person who had invited me. He didn't know anyone. I introduced myself to him because 1.) he was really cute and 2.) I didn't want to sit alone through the bible study class. (He would tell you I picked him up which I deny, but that is a story for another day :) ) We went to lunch immediately after church and have basically been together ever since.   
      If we hadn't met that day, we may never had met.     Because  of various circumstances, I would not have been back to that same church (if I had decided to go back) for at least a month. It was a large church with multiple services.He was out visiting new churches, who knows if he would have come back to that church or that service.


What coincidences have you had in your life?  Have they led you on a certain path? Or just made you stop and think, "Hmm"? 

5 comments:

Paul Anthony Shortt said...

I think about this sort of thing quite a lot. My wife was adopted. In fact her parents had to fight to get her, due to their age. We met in college, but I originally had wanted to go to a different one, but didn't quite do well enough in my exams to make it to my first choice.

I do wonder, if she had been adopted by different people, and if I had gone to my first choice college, would we have ever met?

In fact, given that the contest which won me the contract for my book was pointed out to me by a mutual friend we both met in college, if I'd gotten my first choice, I may not only have never met my wife, but I may have never been published.

Jessica R. Patch said...

I don't think of them so much as coincidents as God's hand guiding my life.

I met my husband in college, but we didn't meet on campus. We met at a (cringe) tele-marketing job. Originally, I had planned on going to the sister school, and I almost turned down the job, but it was that or selling plasma and I don't like needles! :)

My husband helped a guy in Memphis who broke down. He walked into Hubby's place of business and he made sure he had a place to stay and a way to get fixed. About six months later, we were walking down the sidewalk in Rhode Island (there to see family and my husband was the pastor marrying them) and a guy looks at DH and says, "Hey I know you."

Um, I doubt that.

But it was the guy who my hub helped back in Memphis 6 months earlier and he told him how much it had meant to him that he helped. He knew God was taking care of him by using my husband. We're still blown away over that.

Michelle said...

I met my husband online, we were email penpals back when the internet was still new. I almost delete his first email cause I already had 80 pen pals at the time, and wasn't sure if I wanted anymore.

Loree Huebner said...

I'm with Jessica on this one...I too feel it's God's hand guiding us down a certain path.

Nice post!

Dawn Alexander said...

Wow, these have been so much fun to read. Yes, it is God pointing us in the right direction. I always wonder if we have some kind of parallel life. You know, another us living the life we would have if we made the other choices. Hmm, something to thing about.