God in the Coincidences - Part 1 of 2

Sometimes I think the universe is like a giant pinball machine, and we are the balls propelled by the hand of God releasing the spring. Straight on our way we speed, eventually to collide with an experience, a coincidence, a happening that modifies our trajectory forever. We bounce back and forth, crashing into pivotal moments that alter our path.  Some call those moments chance, others serendipity. But maybe just maybe, they aren't coincidence at all. Maybe they are experiences of God. ~Bunny Cox

I can’t say I loved my daughter Tara more than I love her younger brother and sister, but I can say I loved her the hardest. My struggle to keep her safe began when she walked at seven and a half months. From the moment Tara became mobile, her constant mode was motion. Her perpetual state of mind was curiosity.  I learned early that any hope of circumventing unwanted consequences or curbing her spontaneity would require lightening fast reflexes, unshakable endurance, and perhaps even an ability to predict the future. Trying to curtail Tara's adventurous spirit could push a perfectly sane mother over the edge. 


Tara frequently ignored my warnings, preferring to discover for herself if my words were worth heeding.  The time-out chair was merely the price she was willing to pay to satisfy her curiosity, and more than once her explorations required professional intervention.   

“What happened?” a doctor asked four-year-old Tara as he stitched a nasty gash over her right eyebrow. Tears puddled in her blue eyes and splashed down her checks. “I was just tippy-toeing down the stairs,” she said, confessing her foray into forbidden territory.

“What were you doing this time?” asked the same doctor a year later while putting four stitches under her left eyebrow. “Just jumpin',” she replied, understating her death-defying leap when she heard me coming to put her in bed -- again -- and her subsequent collision with the metal headboard of her big girl bed.    

And her explanation as to why a button was barely visible up her six-year-old nose? She demonstrated by smelling her pinched thumb and forefinger while the doctor waited with six-inch long tweezers. “Just sniffin’,” she said.

There was no middle-of-the road with Tara. Life was either exhilarating and fun, or exhausting and sometimes heart-breaking. The only thing that changed as she got older was the price of her curiosity and experimentation.  At nineteen, Tara announced she was addicted to alcohol and thought it best she go to treatment. 

In typical Tara fashion, she did the unexpected, at least in the world of addiction and recovery.  She analyzed her problem, called the counselors for advice about how to get me on board to attend family week, and voluntarily entered a six-week, in-house recovery program.  It was not the first or the last time confidence in her inner compass and her courage would lead the rest of us in the right direction. That’s the way it was with Tara, you never knew where you were going to end up when she was driving. 

Oddly, the alcoholism diagnosis wasn’t all bad news. It shed light on Tara's thorny teenage behavior.  A counselor explained the smoldering wound of abandonment by her biological father had burst into flame. It helped in understanding the “whys,” but it didn’t make living with the “therefores” any easier. Perhaps only someone with firsthand experience can fully understand the physical, emotional, and spiritual energy required when loving someone who battles addiction, especially when that someone is a cherished child. Loving that hard can make a mother very, very tired.  

“Get thee to Al-Anon!” was the gist of advice I received from a friend, herself a recovering alcoholic, who told me of the program designed to help family members of alcoholics. I think Tara put her up to it.  My friend must have sensed my profound weariness in the silence that followed.  

“I can tell you need rest and would just like to withdraw for a little while. That’s understandable,” she said. “Go to Al-Anon. They can teach you how to withdraw with love.”

The phrase “withdraw with love” intrigued me for a while. It captured my attention long enough to check the newspaper for listings of Al-Anon meetings, but not long enough to override my resistance. Tara was my firstborn--the child of my youth.  I loved her beyond life itself. I was immensely proud of her recovery, but I was weary—too weary I thought to go to Al-Anon.

A year passed before I bumped full force into a coincidence that literally stopped me in my tracks and  changed the way I view the happenstances of life. Some would say it was an accidental happening. Others might suggest God tired of waiting for me to come around and decided to step in. Whatever the explanation, it had great power and forever changed my relationship with God.  It was the first time I accepted the possibility that perhaps we can see God working in coincidences of our lives. 

It is said every experience builds upon another and that nothing in life is wasted. I didn't know how important the lesson of that day would become.  It would be the lifeline I would cling to when Tara died.  

It was the day I learned--"I am not alone."  

. . .to be continued in next Thursday's post "God In the Coincidence - part 2". 

Reflection:

1 Corinthians 13: 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.8 Love never ends. . . 13 So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:4  Love is patient . . .

"There is always more that holds us together than what seeks to tear us apart"-- Bishop Kee Sloan

"Faith is not simply a patience that passively suffers until the storm is past.  Rather, it is a spirit that bears things -- with resignations, yes, but above all, with blazing, serene hope." Corazon Aquino

--Is there someone who needs my love and patience?  What is my prayer for them? What is my prayer for me?


--Have there been happenings in my life that seem to be more than coincidence? What were they?