when running errands i try to find a nearby activity to do with asher. sometimes it ends up just being a loop around the grocery store. but for him, eating that bakery cookie and hoarding entirely too many blueberry samples from the produce section, it is heavenly.
without realizing it i have developed an extra sense of all things little whopper. we investigate construction sounds at the park, we chase down garbage trucks on our runs or we visit friends with dogs unannounced.
a few weeks ago as we drove slowly through a different neighborhood, i scanned the side streets hoping to find a little park. i wound my way from one neighborhood to the next. neighborhoods i’d never driven through in almost four years of living here. i decided we’d just drive to ravensdale park. christian plays soccer there every saturday and we hadn’t been yet. i picked up my speed a bit and was about to exit to the main road when i glimpsed a park structure to my left.
there’s a park, i should stop. i thought, quickly followed by, no let’s just head to ravensdale.
i was now passed the street of the park, but something, forcibly, made me turn my steering wheel. it was a bizarre sensation as i made that u-turn.
once out of the car, asher immediately began scooping up the gravel in handfuls and relocating it to the very wet unused slide.
i noted there were three moms there with various boys playing some kind of tackle tag. two moms seemed to be together and were seated on a park bench. the other was off a ways, with a toddler about asher’s age. i kept looking at her. i felt a need to talk to her but she was on her phone. once the bench moms left, i felt prompted more urgently to talk to the third mother.
though she seemed familiar i did not know her. asher helped make the introduction by attempting to carry off her son’s tricycle. we chatted while my son chased hers into the woods behind the park. and then her son innocently shared a private detail about their family.
i’m so sorry, i quickly said. and then i asked if she was lds. and she was.
we visited for an hour before parting ways. i packed asher into our car and we drove away from that park i had initially overlooked.
i realized after the fact that the series of events which brought me to that spot, at that exact time were not random but orchestrated by the Spirit.
the Spirit who takes directions from a Loving Father, who knows us individually and hears our broken cries, and sometimes sends us to comfort, or listen, or rescue… even when we almost miss the turn.
………………………….
come, we that love the lord
i was bound for mexico. 