What God Had Up His Sleeve

You know how exciting it is to give a really cool gift to your children? It's so fun to think about how their face will look when they see what they got--especially when that something is totally unexpected. That's one of the things I like about Christmas.

Well, turns out God has been working on a very cool surprise for two of his children as well.

But before I tell you about that....let's go back in time, shall we? When I was in 8th grade my church youth group drove to San Antonio and attended a retreat at a church there. When I walked up to the registration table, I noticed the girl sitting there was left handed like me. And, we've been friends ever since.

We spent that weekend together and became pen pals. Real, actual pen pals with pen and paper and envelopes and stamps and the whole thing. We wrote our way through 8th grade, and all of high school and college (spotty during college but we were so busy being cool you know! HA!). We saw each other in person maybe twice a year; summer camp, retreats, things like that.

I was in her wedding, right after my own and soon afterward we both got e-mail and we continued being pen pals, thankfully with a keyboard this time. I saw her a few years after our weddings for one evening when she was in town for a friend's wedding. Other than that, we have just written. We've written our way through our school schedules, guys we liked, my parents are driving me crazy....all the way through pregnancies, miscarriages, baby names, new jobs, moves, potty training, and learning to be godly wives....we've written our way through it all.

But we have never lived in the same city. And since we got married, we haven't even lived in the same state. So it came to pass that 11 years went by without us seeing each other. I've looked up the price of plane tickets to her state and closed the door on that thought real quick!

But God delights in blessing His children.

And so it came to pass that I glanced at Facebook one day and noticed her husband's status line indicated they were in Texas. Specifically, they were 2 hours away from where I was going to be after Thanksgiving. And I KNOW God was smiling as it dawned on us that we just might actually get to see each other live and in person again! That our kids just might get to meet each other (and we to meet each other's kids!) Our Heavenly Father must have felt like I do when I have a really great surprise for my children.

I couldn't sleep for two nights I was so excited. And guess what? We really didn't have much "catching up" to do at all. She's more caught up on my life than some of my friends I see all the time! Truth is, we've stayed caught up really well. So it was just a nice day at McDonald's for some old friends....

and some new ones.

And what it really was, was an unexpected blessing from a very loving Father.