 |
Nov.
2004 |
 |
God-incidences:
Once you start looking, they’re everywhere |
| |
|
|
I met my husband because of a spinning pencil.
Bill was 22, a new college graduate recently moved back
to Milwaukee. After a summer of living with his parents,
a high school friend convinced him it was time to move
out. The pages of apartment rentals in the Sunday paper
seemed daunting to the guys, so Bill spun a pencil and
announced that wherever it ended up pointing to, they
would live.
The point stopped on an ad for the apartment across the
hall from where my college roommate and I were moving
in.
Meetings and beginnings are fascinating to me. Looking
back on Bill and me moving in across from one another,
I know now there could not have been a better way that
we could have met and started dating. I got to know Bill
as we picked up our mail together; as we talked in the
hall with our keys in the locks, not opening our doors.
I took note of the environmental posters and the cross
on his living room wall. He was glad to see I had a high
quality bike. Bill’s subtle humor and thoughtful
personality came through quietly and gradually. If I
had met him while out with friends, I might not have
slowed down enough to learn who he was.
Thirteen years, one marriage, two sons and three foster
children later, I think about the Holy Spirit present
in that pencil spin. While I’m cautious about using
the phrase, “It was meant to be,” I do believe
God offers us opportunities through the people with whom
we come in contact. God nudges us to meet those who could
help us grow and learn or who could benefit from something
we might be able to teach. Whether we seize the opportunity
or not is where free will comes in. Yet, even as I hesitate
to say, “It was meant to be,” it seems that
sometimes, it is.
We received our third foster child last week. The other
two have been returned to family members. For the sake
of confidentiality, I will call this new arrival Christa.
She is 14 months old, Latina and beautiful.
Christa has been in foster care for more than a year,
since she was two days old. Social Services called us
a month ago to tell us about her situation. She was with
a wonderful foster family, the social worker explained,
but it was looking like there was a chance her birth
parents’ rights would be terminated. Because of
this possibility, Christa needed to be moved to a foster
home where the parents were open to adoption, should
this become necessary. Her current foster parents were
in their 50s and adopting baby Christa was not an option — they
had grown biological children and an adopted 13-year-old.
Bill and I said that we were interested and set up a
time to meet.
The night before we were to meet Christa for the first
time, I went to my monthly book club meeting.
I had not told the group about the potential foster child
yet, and as we stood around drinking wine and chatting,
Kris, a mom of two, turned to me and said, “I thought
of you the other day. The grandmother of a girl on my
son’s soccer team is a foster mother, and her foster
baby needs to be moved. I told her I knew the perfect
family — yours, but she said social services already
picked out a family.”
Something about the situation made me ask some follow-up
questions. Was the woman white? Yes. Did she have a 13-year-old
African American son? Yes. Was the baby about a year
old and of Puerto Rican descent? Yes.
In a metro area of more than a million people, someone
from my eight-person book club had met our soon-to-be
foster daughter — had sat next to her at soccer
games — and was telling me this 12 hours before
I was due to meet her for the first time.
“She’s darling,” Kris said, as we realized
it had to be the same family. “You’ll love
her. Her foster mother’s name is Judy.”
Over the past month, as we have transitioned Christa
to our home, there have been other profound coincidences — spinning
pencil moments — that have made both her foster
mother, Judy, and Bill and me pause.
Judy’s best friend, another foster mom, turns out
to be the foster mother Bill and I invited over three
years ago when we were first considering foster care — we
had received her name from a friend of a friend. Listening
to her story inspired us to sign up for the certification
classes. We had not seen her since, but Judy sees her
a few times a week.
Christa’s physical therapist, we learned, is Julie,
a good friend of mine from college. Julie was working
with Christa one week, and when she heard the description
of the family Christa would be moving to, she recognized
it as ours.
Christa shares a birth date with my friend’s brother
who recently died unexpectedly.
Judy told me her pastor doesn’t believe in coincidences — he
calls them God-incidences, or incidences of God. My friend
Amy calls them signs, and says once you start looking
for them, they’re everywhere.
To me, they will always be spinning pencil moments. A
flash of the divine in the ordinary. A whisper from God,
who is standing closer to us than we dare to hope; closer
than we have the courage to believe. Spinning pencil
moments. Not lightning bolts or thunder claps, just quiet
reminders the grace of God is here. Is everywhere. Welcome
Christa.
(Scobey-Polacheck and her husband, Bill, have two
sons, Jacob and Liam. The family belongs to SS. Peter
and Paul
Parish, Milwaukee, and St. Monica Parish, Whitefish Bay.
Scobey-Polacheck welcomes dialog regarding her column.
E-mail her at <ascobey@hotmail.com>.) |
|
