Meeting a Boy:
Last night, my niece Serai starred as Annie Oakley in a Ft. Smith production of "Annie Get Your Gun." During intermission, something happened that makes me wonder it was "the norm" for me, or something more.
A little boy behind us, a few seats down, looked directly at me and introduced himself. I told him hello. He never stopped talking, and rarely stopped looking directly at me, opening up and talking about whatever was on his mind.
His family members behind me--whom I would discover were his grandparents--kindly assured me that he "never meets a stranger."
But the little boy wasn't talking to anyone else. There were four of us in a row: Me, Psalm, Desi, and Heather, and I was the farthest from him. Psalm usually gets all of the attention with kids when they see her and she them. But not this time. When I introduced ourselves, including Psalm, he asked me her name twice so he could tell his mother Psalm's name. But he kept looking at me.
He had an honest, open face. He was aware, alert, smiling, talkative and friendly. In some ways, he reminded me of my Aunt Sue's grandchildren, Levi and his brother.
The little boy introduced me to his entire family--they nearly took up every seat on the back row and had come to see the boy's cousin in the show--and the entire family was warm, kind, obviously Christians. I spoke easily with all of them.
The people sitting directly behind me were the boy's grandparents, and when the boy was taken to the restroom, I didn't notice so much that he was limping--I thought, like many kids, he was just clumsily, excitedly trying to navigate in between relatives legs and the seats in front of him.
But when they were gone, his grandmother told me that the little boy has a deteriorating hip/leg bone which made it very difficult for him to walk and move. They've been taking him to Little Rock to the Children's Hospital there. He will have to have a total hip replacement surgery.
They were quite open about this, and I spoke with them candidly about this, their retirement from 16 years in the chicken business, and their Sunday, after church, luncheons together. They were great, sweet, honest, hard-working people who were clearly Christians.
When the boy came back, he spoke with me again--just me. I told him he's so good at meeting people that he should be a politician, "a good one!" I noted.
His mom told me that they thought he would be a politician or a pastor.
I wouldn't be surprised.
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Destiny or DESTINY?
These days, I don't believe that anything happens by accident.
As I watched this boy communicate, and realized he was speaking directly to me and no one else, and my interaction with him was not awkward but, rather, flowed naturally and good-naturedly, I ascertained quickly that this was a divine appointment. Things like this don't "just happen."
I try to drop everything and pay attention to the moment when "unusual" things like this transpire before my eyes. I feel like I'm either supposed to be there for someone else--waiting for that opportune moment to pray for someone or advise them or speak love or hope or truth into their situation--or I feel like God is going to speak to me directly about something. Or both.
For the first few minutes, I listened to the boy. I couldn't help thinking, "Did he just need someone to talk to? But why me? Why me?" What a fine boy. He looked healthy, seemed good-natured, happy. As he talked, I saw his family, looked at him, then them, one by one, trying to let them know that I was a friendly face. Again, "Psalm is right next to me; why isn't he speaking to her? Why me? God, what is my purpose here? To listen? To validate his voice? To encourage him?"
I KNEW, though, that I was living in a moment of DESTINY when his grandparents spoke these words "Little Rock Children's Hospital." At that phrase, I realized all at once that THIS was connected to THAT other experience of mine. The one in Dallas.
On a family vacation last year in Dallas, I was sitting in a waiting area, totally minding my own business, when a little boy came over to me, closer and closer and closer, talking to me. I had been taken aback by the entire situation--the child left his family and came closer, closer, nearly sitting in my lap. He just talked to me, like I was Santa or something. Like he was drawn to me. I had just talked to him, like I'd known him forever. It had been awkward because, then, I felt like something was happening that I didn't quite understand. And, after the child left me there in Dallas, Stephen told me that his mother had finally called him over to give him cancer treatments. I hadn't even seen that, honestly. I had no idea.
I blogged about it, too. Knowing that that moment in Dallas was SOMETHING, some part of destiny.
But now? Well, now I'm wondering if it has more to do with DESTINY, my DESTINY.
The little boy in Dallas? A year and a half ago. Then the Ft. Smith boy. I do not think this to be coincidence.
I feel like I have just received two major puzzle pieces to my life destiny.
Ultimately, I turn to the Word of God as my finishing thought for this second experience: Luke 2:19: "But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart."
And that's exactly what I will do. Prayerfully ponder these things.
Amen.
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