Their purchasing a larger home was quite the story. They knew they wanted more children and they would talk about a large farmhouse quite nearby where they were currently living. One day she made contact with the owners asking if they would consider selling. The owner responded, “We have just been talking about that!”
They bought the farmhouse and sold the smaller home they had been living in on Reggie Road.
Many decades later, she was sitting around the dining table with 8 other neighbors in the 55 and over community where she now lived when small talk took a surprising turn. It all began with the simple question about where you lived. The answers revealed an amazing coincidence.
“We lived off Napier Avenue,” she said. “On Reggie.”
“I lived on Reggie,” he surprised her by adding, “We lived in the first house on the left.”
“We lived in the first house on the left!” she blurted out. “We sold it to some people named Smith.”
John’s last name is Smith. Smith is such a common name.
“That is my parents,” he confirmed.
Piecing the timing together, they were able to piece together his mom and dad had purchased the house from her and he lived there as a youth!
She then shared a funny story about her nephew having returned from Vietnam without knowing they had moved. He came to visit her but no one was home at the time. Her nephew came on in, got a beer out of the fridge and sat down and drank it. When no one came home by the time he had finished the beer he left. Later he found out he had been in the new owners’ home!
It was a fun evening, but it was also a significant time of seeing a deeper structure of the weaving of our lives as a tapestry of togetherness.
The opening and closing stanzas of “Life is but a Weaving” (The Tapestry Poem) by Corrie ten Boom:
My life is but a weaving
Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He weaveth steadily.
He knows, He loves, He cares;
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those
Who leave the choice to Him.
~ Corrie ten Boom