God Is In the Details...(for Lara)

This blog is a small story about my very random life, how people intersect, and kindred spirits.

Last night I got an email from Kenny. Kenny is four years younger than me, and grew up with my brother. I babysat him a couple of times when I was a teenager and he and his younger sister weren't quite there. Kenny and my brother have been beer drinking hooligans together since forever(remind me to tell random head injury stories later).
A few years ago (three or four?) Kenny got saved. I hadn't spoken to him in awhile. He was, after all, a hooligan, and I was too busy studying the bible to associate with hooligans. :p kenny called me up and asked me about a bible study, because he really wanted to get involved in one, so I took him to mine. It was kind of cool. Kenny, like us, also lost his sister in a car accident.
Kenny is now married and lives in Montana, and I don't get to see or talk to him as much as I would like, but he is still 'little brother' and that is nice.

In 2001 I went to Montana to work with Youth With A Mission. Three months into my time there I got a lovely roommate named Erin, 19, from Recluse (Gilette) Wyoming. Five months prior to my relocation to Montana, my sister had passed away. I was ok, but a bit messy. I cried...a lot. Erin was...amazing. She was like a very understanding younger sister, with tons of grace, who shared my love for all things tea, coffee, and books. We spent many Saturday mornings together eating biscotti, or roaming book stores. Over the course of our time together, I got to talk to Erin's mother, Anita, over the phone several times. She is a kick, who shares our love of tea and literature, made us candles that smelled of bergamot, and sent more biscotti for our consumption. =)

Last night I read Lara's blog. I am always venting on my own blog...I don't comment a lot on other peoples. Firstly, I don't want to sound trite. There are other reasons, but I don't like to pretend to give advice to people who's ins and outs I really don't know. To me, that reeks with the stench of ingenuiness.
Lara and I have been reading each others blogs for a little while now however. She has commented on several of mine, words that have lent to my understanding of her and her situation. When I read her blog yesterday I wanted to respond, but it was late, and I was already looking at 4 1/2 hours of sleep before I had to get up for work. I didn't want it to be rushed, so I decided to wait till today.
Also last night, I got an email from Kenny, which he sent out to everyone, letting us know that he was going to have a phone interview today with a coal company based out of: Gilette, Wyoming. I emailed him back to ponder the freakish chances that might send him to the one horse town of my former roommate's family.

This morning I got a message from Kenny, asking me for information on my friend. When I got home from work I called Anita. We hadn't spoken in three years. Erin is currently somewhere in Australia. She was very glad to hear from me, and said that they had often talked about me and wondered what I was up to. I told her that I had often wondered about her and her bergamot candles. :p
After covering the topic of my call, which was Kenny, and his finding a place to stay during his summer job (he did get it!) in Gilette, we proceeded to talk for TWO HOURS!!! We had this really long conversation about God, emotions, circumstances, and a variety of similarities in our lives that led me back to Lara.

The thing is, we are all different, but some of us are similar to each other. We all feel things, but some people bear the burden of feeling things a little too deeply. Other people have their own similarities. I commiserated over my own similarities with Anita, and wondered if Lara's might not be the same. I am not whining, or complaining. I would not choose to be anyone other than myself, despite how hard I feel it is to be me. (;P) Okay, well, there are definitely days that I would rather be some kind of heroic business woman who is totally organized and not waylaid by emotion, but generally..... =)
I am used to this skin, and would rather keep it than trade it for the great unknown.
One thing is very important however;
run in's with the tribe of Joseph.

Did I snag any Anne of Green Gables fans just then? In a couple of her books L.M. Montgomery uses the phrase to mean, essentially, "kindred spirits." "They are of the tribe of Joseph," she would say.
Once in awhile you need to find somebody, who just gets it. Not someone who tries to comfort you, or someone who is super kind to you, or someone who will be there to distract you, but someone who is with you; Who can be there, right in the pain without cringing and turning away. It's hard to listen to people talk about their pain sometimes. It is harder to sit there, and let them be in it. We have a natural tendency to want to "fix," and also to avoid discomfort. Unfortunately, pain too must run it's course. How amazing it is, to sit there and hurt, and not be alone in your pain. I don't know if this makes sense to anyone else, but it makes a heck of a lot to me.
That's what I was thinking last night when I read Lara's blog. That, you know, I didn't have any wise words of comfort. I couldn't make it better. I couldn't make it go away faster. I wasn't going to attempt to distract her. I was going to let her be in pain. Still read her blog, still sit there and feel the words that she is saying, and not have to go somewhere else. Just be there with her, in it. In spirit anyway, since we live far apart and are connected only by this bloggy blog world.

Anita reminded me of this. She encouraged me that I am not alone in the way I feel. She said; there are other people like us. Some people might not get it, but some people out there, some people get it. That makes me feel....better somehow. Connected. Like there is a purpose...a greater plan if you will.

All of this to say, that God is in the details. Anita informed me that a big snow storm is going on in Wyoming, and that if not for that, I would never have caught her at home. So he caused me to meet and love Erin, and in turn her mother, so that four years down the road, Kenny would have a connection, and possibly a place to stay, and new friends, by my making a phone call that would remind me I am not the only one who feels the way I do, cause me to make a connection myself, and give me something even better to share with Lara.
Kenny says that very random and coincidental things seem to happen in my life, and I agree. It reminds me that God is up there, hasn't forgotten about me, and sometimes does extraordinary things, just so that we can have an encouraging message.
If all of my lives circumstances, brought me to that phone call...what other things must be lurking just around the corner? What greater purposes must there be??

Yay for God being big! And Yay for Lara, and me, and Anita, and whoever else can relate to being in pain a little too often.