I have what many would consider the luxury of working in an office only ½ mile from my house. That makes my daily commute about 3 minutes by car on a bad day. But in the summertime it often means a leisurely ten minute walk. With the uncharacteristic early spring weather we’ve had in March and the recent spike in gas prices, I’ve been contemplating an early start to my annual transition from car tires on the street to shoe soles on the sidewalk. The threat of rain and the few days where I’ve had appointments or appearances away from the office outside a reasonable walking distance have kept me from making that transportation transition until today.

Walking is often a spiritual experience for me. Rushing off in the car to  get to work or school, or to the bank and post office, or any other errand is often so hectic and stressful. When I take the time to slow down and walk somewhere — as compared to the regular rat race rut — a peaceful calm feeling is profoundly evident. Driving the final three blocks of my morning commute to work, I rarely see much other than the two traffic lights and the flashing SCHOOL 20 MPH sign before turning into the driveway to my office. But in walking those final three blocks, I see and smell the trees and flowers; I see and smell newly applied mulch to a front garden; I see evidence of squirrel activity in the buckeye trees; I see individual house numbers; I hear dogs barking and children laughing as I walk past a school or two.

When I commute to work on foot, I sometimes pop in earbuds and listen to some music or listen to a short news report podcast. Other times, I leave my ears naked to the world and its natural noises. But naked ears or not, the morning foot commute is always a time for me and my thoughts to get reacquainted. This morning was no different.

I had a lot of things (people) on my mind today. For those who have experienced the death of a close family member, you can understand the deep sadness and sense of loss that such separation can bring. For those who have friends or “past friends” who experience the death of a close family member, you can understand the sorrow or sadness that accompanies hearing that news. This is not nearly as life changing for us as it is for the immediate family members. It many cases it is not life changing at all. There may not be any tears or internalized sense of loss, but there is a melancholic reflection and genuine sympathy for the surviving person you know (or knew) and a feeling of sadness for the family.

The past week has been rife with such occurrences for me. The City of Sandusky is remembering the loss of police officer Andrew Dunn who was violently taken away from his wife and young boys one year ago on March 19, 2011. As you would expect, and justifiably so — the first anniversary of such a tragic event brought forth a number of reflections in local news media and brought the tragedy back to the forefront in the minds of those who do not live with the tragedy every single day.

In addition to the first anniversary of Andy’s death, I’ve seen what seems like an unusual number of “deaths once removed” for lack of a better phrase over the span of about 4 days.

On March 16th, Leo Buffone, the 96 year old father of my former co-worker in college passed away. I did not know him, but his daughter was similar to a second mom in the workplace during my first real job. Fifteen years after I left that job, I still get a birthday card from her almost every year in the mail.

On March 17th, Michael Leoni, the eldest son of my parents’ next door neighbor to the north passed away from cancer. His own father died from cancer nearly 20 years ago — not long after my dad’s own throat cancer scare.

On March 18th, Jack Jenkins, the son-in-law of my parents’ former next door neighbors to the south passed away. When my dad was laid off from his job in the early 80′s, our neighbor pulled some strings and got my dad a part time job delivering fish takeout at Jack’s restaurant. I also started out in the cub scouts with Jack’s son Todd — with his wife Dotty as our den mother.

March 18th and March 19th took Eugene Garay and Donald Sinclair, respectively. The fathers of two of my high school classmates. I didn’t know either of these men and have not spoken to the children they left behind in years. But through the wonders of Facebook, I still see from time to time the things going on in their lives that they feel are worthy enough to share — even if not directly — with me.

On March 19th, a good friend Betty Kurtz left us. I first met Betty in the spring of 2001 when a parish retreat at Sts. Peter & Paul arbitrarily (but not by mere coincidence) put us together at the same table for a weekend. We shared a few faith stories and experiences that weekend and a lot of hugs. A few years later, when I began dating my wife (who I met through another parish retreat), I learned that she was in a weekly bible study group that met at Betty’s house. Betty belonged to a different Sandusky parish, so we did not see her regularly at weekend Mass, but we each had the opportunity to share with her in different ways.

When Linda and I got married, it was Betty who sewed together the black elastic garter and stitched on the gold STEELERS lettering that Linda wore for me to find during that wedding reception ritual.

<IMAGE PLACEHOLDER> (I have a photo of the garter, but can’t find it at the moment)

After a long illness took Betty away from her house for various surgeries and recoveries, she finally returned home earlier this month and seemed well on her way to recovery. That recovery came to a sudden end late Sunday evening and she went to her final home early Monday morning. Tuesday evening, as Linda and I contemplated our schedules for the rest of this week, we decided to skip our weekly Lenten ritual of Wednesday evening soup and prayer at our church to make sure that we were able to attend Betty’s calling hours at the funeral home without feeling rushed trying to do both.

We then prayed a rosary together for Betty. Although we regularly attend weekend Mass and are both involved in different parish ministries throughout the week, regular praying of the rosary has not been something we have done together. Through my recent regular listening to Annunciation Radio, I discovered the daily evening broadcast of The Rosary is a Place which is a fantastic way to get back in the practice when you’ve fallen away from the devotion of praying the rosary.

So this morning, I had a number of people to reflect upon during my foot commute to the office. That didn’t consciously factor in to my decision to walk to work today for the first time this year, but it did give me more of an opportunity to reflect.

If you’ve read the old posts in the blog, maybe you recall Pennies from Heaven. It may just be superstition — call it what you will. But today, about 2 or 3 minutes into my walk I spied a penny about a dozen feet ahead of me at the intersection of the sidewalk and a driveway. Naturally, I stopped to pick it up. After examining it, I discovered that it was a Canadian penny. Was it just coincidence for me to find a penny with an Elizabeth on the face?

Betty, if you can hear me: Message received!

Julie; Anna Marie; Jean & Karen; Dotty & Todd; Steve & Jamie; Amy: I can’t even remember the last time I talked to any of you in person and don’t know where some of you are even at these days. But let me take a moment now to remind you [and all others in your families, as well as ANYONE else who has ever lost a close loved one]: Don’t forget to look all around you every day for signs from and reminders of your recently passed loved ones. They are there. Maybe you don’t believe in the idea of pennies from heaven, but I believe it was no coincidence I found the penny that I did this morning. It was finding that particular penny that inspired me to write these thoughts today.

Maybe you aren’t looking for pennies.  Maybe instead you are called to watch for the smile or unique expression on the face of your child, grandchild, or niece/nephew that gives you a quick flash of your lost loved one. Maybe it is a favorite saying or phrase that they often used in life that you hear repeated by a stranger, or a favorite story or joke being retold again. Maybe it is a familiar smell or sound that triggers a memory from long ago that you shared from that special someone now passed on.  Don’t fall into the trap of mis-labeling those moments of recognition as mere coincidences.  There ARE NO coincidences with God!

A friend from my college days writes and sings some of the most beautiful Christian music you will ever have the chance to hear. In writing this post, I am reminded of his song We’ll be Together Again. You can read the lyrics here, and although I am not certain, I believe you can buy the individual song here at iTunes.  Take a listen and take it to heart.

They all live on in each one of us!

Praise God!!!

Earlier this week my dad turned 80 years old.  I am now 40 myself so I guess you could say I am half the man he is.

The past month has been pretty rough on dad.  He was hospitalized just a few days into the New Year with pneumonia. It wasn’t his first bout with pneumonia recently as he was also hospitalized in late June with it.  In June he was diagnosed with COPD and has been on oxygen treatments since then with doctor’s orders to stay away from anyone with colds or other easily transmittable/airborne infections.

It turns out that his recent bout with pneumonia arose because he has been aspirating everything he eats and drinks into his lungs (a long delayed side effect from his throat cancer surgery 20 years ago which claimed a portion of his vocal cord and caused some swallowing issues).  Although undetected at the time, I suspect his June pneumonia may also have been related to this.

Because he was now unable to swallow without taking fluid directly into his lungs, the doctors advised that he have surgery to install a feeding tube directly into his stomach.  For the past month, he has not taken any food or drink orally — even his daily medications have to go in through the feeding tube.  Dad was released from the hospital in mid-January and has been getting along, for better or worse, at home with mom.  He was not able to celebrate his 80th birthday with any cake or ice cream, but he has kept his sense of humor as best he can.  I talked to him on the phone on his birthday and told him it was 80 years ago that the doctor cut his umbilical cord, and here he was 80 years later with the damn thing back in again!

The doctors told him that once he was a bit more recovered and feeling stronger, they would refer him to a therapist to work with his throat muscles and try to “re-learn” how to swallow correctly.  If that therapy proves successful, he may be able to have the feeding tube removed and eventually have his birthday cake.

I got an e-mail from mom earlier this week informing me that they finally got the therapy arranged and he was due for his first session on Friday morning (today).

Switching gears slightly, you may recall from my last post that I discussed my radio listening habits. Over the past month or so, my “listening percentages” have changed somewhat.  Depending on the day and the events, I still listen to AM talk radio and Pittsburgh sports talk radio, but I’ve been increasingly listening to Annunciation Radio.  My car radio is tuned to WHRQ.  On my [less than half a mile/less than 5 minute] commute to work this morning, I heard the radio announcer mention today being the feast days of St. Blaise and St. Ansgar.  My heart leapt in my chest when I heard that!  I confess that I do not always keep myself aware of the specific feast days and had forgotten the feast of St. Blaise.

For those unfamiliar with St. Blaise and who don’t have the time to click through the above link, he is the patron saint against throat ailments. At Masses on his feast day, many Catholic Churches offer a blessing of the throats of parishioners.

As soon as I got to work this morning, I called mom to tell her. With everything else going on and his inability to go to Mass around so many other people who might have infections — I wondered if the feast of St. Blaise had escaped their attention as well.  After talking with her, she decided to contact their priest and see if they might be able to have a special private blessing of throats later today.

While it by no means guarantees that the therapy will be successful, it certainly cannot hurt!

Saint Blaise, pray for us that we may not suffer from illnesses of the throat and pray that all who are suffering be healed by God’s love. Amen.

Was it coincidence that the first day of dad’s throat therapy just happened to coincide with the feast of St. Blaise?  Was it just coincidence that I happened to have my car radio tuned in to Catholic radio?  Was it just coincidence that the radio program happened to remind listeners of the feast of St. Blaise during the small fraction of time that I was in the car driving my half mile to work?

I know that the answer to each of those questions is a resounding NO! — do you?

Praise God!!!

My younger daughter recently had a birthday. The first of many milestones, she now has a full five years under her belt.  I mentioned before that she was born on the same date that I proposed to my wife. She also shares her birthday with a very good friend of mine.  Oscar was in our wedding six years ago and, in turn, I was in his wedding a few years later.  We  were both part of the bible study group I’ve written about previously and Oscar is the one who put together the Three Steps to the Fountain site I’ve mentioned before as well.

After Oscar and his bride wed, he moved to her fair city about half an hour away.  We keep in touch with occasional e-mails and Facebook check-ins.  But busy lives, evolving families, and additional miles made it difficult to continue our regular weekly meetings, so I hadn’t seen a great deal of Oscar over the past couple years.  But I always remember his birthday when my little one’s comes along.

To celebrate my daughter’s birthday this year, my wife decided to make some cupcakes for her to take to pre-school.  We decided to celebrate her birthday as a family with a trip to see The Lion King in 3D at the local theater on Sunday.  Later that evening, we went to the grocery store to get the cupcake mix and frosting and planned to go to the local ice cream parlor afterward as another birthday treat.  We don’t usually carry a lot of cash, but this ice cream store only takes cash.  So the plan was for my wife to get some cash back at the grocery store checkout with her debit card.  On this particular occasion, I left my wallet at home.

One thing my wife forgot, since we always transact as credit rather than debit, was that she needed a PIN# to authorize the cash back.  Her new debit card issued a new PIN# when it recently renewed and she had not yet updated it to her familiar PIN#.  She could not remember her PIN# and could not get any cash back.  So in order to get our birthday ice cream, we had to drive back home to get my ATM card, drive to the bank ATM to withdraw cash, and then drive to the ice cream shop — adding another 10-15 minutes on to the trip.  I almost suggested we go to a favorite soft serve ice cream shop that was closer and wouldn’t require cash.  But we went through with the original plan with the additional stops.

When we finally made it to our destination with cash in hand, someone sitting at the sheltered patio waved in my direction as I got out of the car.  It was Oscar and his wife, with his mother, sister, and brother-in-law.  He was in town to celebrate his birthday with them and they had decided to go to the local ice cream parlor for some birthday ice cream.

Had I brought my wallet from the start or had my wife remembered her new PIN#, we very likely could have missed them.  Had I suggested the alternate location, we most certainly would have missed them.  But through the circumstances as they were, we had a nice unexpected visit with an old friend to end our special day.

Praise God!

I got a call from my mother this afternoon.  Everyone else in the house was asleep and I was laying down browsing around on the computer.  I’ve been using a freeware bible study program called eSword for a time and I just upgraded to a new version release which completely revamped the process.  It required a reinstall of all the other free addons and I was having trouble with a few of them until I finally figured it out yesterday.  In the process, I found a users’ group web site for the program.  So today while everyone else was sleeping, I went back to the user group and created an account.  I was just looking around and stumbled upon some amateur videos giving instruction on using eSword.  I was in the middle of the second video when the phone rang.

Mom told me that a cousin of mine, who was six months younger than me, hadn’t shown up for work this morning and was later found dead in his home. It is still too early to know the cause, but he just commented on Facebook last night that he had been out running 20 miles and on his run was stung by a bee.  He was an avid runner, but I wonder if he had a bee allergy that he wasn’t aware of.  I suppose we will find out eventually.

Joe and I were baptized together as young babies.  I just kept thinking to myself that he made it home first.

After getting my bearings back and talking the situation over with my wife, I eventually settled back down to what I was doing before mom called.  I was much more reserved and contemplative, but I thought about the prayer journal portion of the eSword program and decided that I could make good use of it and do some additional prayer and bible review in the process.

I then went back to the video I was watching.  It wasn’t until I started the second video again and tried to find where I had left off that I experienced a powerful God Incidence.  The exact moment when my mom called with the sad news, the instructor in the video was demonstrating the search feature of eSword.  His term search = Heaven.  Because of the shock of the news, I didn’t recognize the connection until after I went back to it.  Could it just have been coincidence that the user in the video “found” heaven in his electronic bible search at the exact moment that I heard the news of my cousin’s passing?

I don’t believe it to be coincidence.  I believe it to be a message from Joe that he was finally home and found heaven.  Congratulations on finishing that last marathon, Joe!  I hope to reach the same finish line myself and be with you again one day.

Praise God!

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About seven or eight years ago I was introduced to a nice restaurant in the area.  Just south of the Ohio Turnpike is an old Victorian style house that was converted years ago into a beautiful restaurant.  A friend of mine introduced me to the Homestead Inn one year during Lent.  We had a large group going to Norwalk to attend a community production of the Passion Play.  Being a Friday during Lent, I had the salmon and it was easily the best I had ever tasted.

The Homestead Inn wasn’t a franchise restaurant or a fast food chain.  It had tablecloths and linen napkins, but it was not an astronomically expensive place either.  It was a nice place to take a date or to take friends or family visiting from out of town.  I did all three.

My parents enjoyed Homestead Inn on one visit.  Some friends of theirs from the neighborhood back home also had a good meal there when they made a trip up to the lake.  I took my wife there on one of our early dates and that may have sealed the deal for me.

In 2006, the Homestead Inn closed down after years of business.  I had not gone there often – probably less than ten times, but it was always a nice change of pace from the strip of franchise restaurants in Sandusky.  I was disappointed and hoped that someone else would open the place back up, but after a few years of being vacant that seemed unlikely.

In early March of 2009, a co-worker of mine mentioned that the Homestead was going to reopen under new ownership very soon.  I was excited to hear the news and actually called my wife at work to let her know that one of our early dating spots was coming back into business.

Wanting to get a little more information on the details, I tried to search the local newspaper’s web site for the story.  Initially I was unsuccessful, but I eventually found the information in the online version of the Norwalk paper.  Imagine my surprise when I saw the names of the two new investors opening up the restaurant!

One was none other than “Brandon” (listed in the article as being from the Cleveland area) who was the subject of my earlier November 10, 2008 blog post!  After that God-Incidence when I met up with Brandon in the Cleveland Justice Center underbelly, I hadn’t heard back from him after I giving him my business card.

I wasn’t certain that it was the same person, but decided two God-Incidences in less than six months was a greater sign.  So I did a search online and found an e-mail address that likely belonged to Brandon and asked him if he and the new restauranteur were the same “Brandon” that I knew.  He replied to my e-mail with his phone number and I called him in early April.

It turns out he had misplaced my card back in September and wasn’t able to reach me, but had just located it earlier that week in his office – and then he got this e-mail from me out of the blue!

We chatted for a bit and talked about the restaurant business.  A few weeks later, I was able to take my wife there again for a fine meal and catch up a little bit more with an old friend.  My schedule and family keep me pretty busy.  Brandon’s work and family keep him busy also as he makes the commute each day to the restaurant from the Cleveland area.

I’ve only had the opportunity to stop in that one time, but what an ironic God-Incidence to first hear that old an favorite was going to re-open, and then find out that it was being re-opened by an old friend of mine with no connection to the local area. . . an old friend that was the subject of another amazing God-Incidence just months before!

If you are ever in the North Central Ohio area and need a place to eat a nice meal, find the Homestead Inn on route 250 just south of the Ohio Turnpike and ask your waitress to tell Brandon that Tom sent you!

Praise God!

As I mentioned in the Family Ties post, I am interested in genealogy and family connections are something very dear to me.  Unfortunately, I’m not able to get back home as often as I used to. I did manage to get back home for Easter this year in April.  My mom had an Easter Egg hunt planned for all the grandchildren and I knew my two-and-a-half year old would have a thrill with that.

As I was packing our bags for the trip home, I searched through the video camera bag for a blank video tape to record the egg hunt.  I looked in all four compartments and took out the camera and power cords, but all I found were a few old tapes already with other footage recorded.  So I decided that I would just buy a blank tape down there after we got to grandma’s house.

That evening before the egg hunt started, I asked my sister if she wanted to go to the store with me to get a video tape.  She agreed and asked me which store I wanted to go to.  Since she was driving, I told her to just pick whatever was convenient, I didn’t care.  So we went to the local Kroger which was the closest place to find what we needed.  I decided to just buy a single tape rather than the multipack since I didn’t want to spend ALL of my mad money.

While we were there, we just happened to run into a cousin who was buying egg coloring supplies for his daughter.  (A few minutes later, my sister saw a former co-worker of hers from when she worked in the area five years before whom she had been very close with).

I talked quite a while with my cousin Matt about his Easter plans and so forth.  This is the same cousin I had another chance meeting with in the summer of 2007.  Before 2007, I probably hadn’t seen Matt since the mid 1980’s – very easily 20 years or more.  I’d seen his parents on an irregular basis at family gatherings, but usually Matt and always seemed to miss each other.

Flashback to July of 2007: My wife and our older child took a train trip to the Atlantic Coast for a vacation.  Rather than catch the 2:00 a.m. Amtrak in Sandusky, we went home and caught a more reasonable 7:00 a.m. train in Pittsburgh.  My dad dropped us off and helped with our bags then left us to wait for our train.  As we waited, a tall guy that I didn’t recognize at all approached me.

I had the normal internal reaction of being approached by an unrecognized person in a public place where I wouldn’t expect anyone to actually know me.  I thought to myself, “Who the heck is this guy and what could he possibly want?”  He called me by name, apparently unsure if he had the right guy.  After a second or two he said his name and it all clicked.  It was Matt!  Of course I didn’t recognize him since I hadn’t seen him in 20+ years when we were both kids!

It turns out, Matt wouldn’t have recognized me if he hadn’t seen my dad helping us with our bags.  Matt and his wife were going to D.C. for a conference and had a train departing at almost the same time as ours.

Flash forward to Easter weekend 2009:  Matt and I briefly discussed the last chance meeting at the train station in Pittsburgh!  We had seen each other again after the train God-Incidence at his parents’ home in 2008 when we were visiting and his dad offered to give our little girl a pony ride.  Matt and his dad have a veterinary practice together.

So Matt and I talked a bit more in the aisle at Kroger, while my sister chatted with her former co-worker.  That night I filmed a raucous Easter Egg hunt.  As I put the video camera back into the camera bag, I found a brand new blank videotape right there in plain sight still in the wrapper.  It had to have been there the entire time.

Praise God!

This, along with the next two posts, were God-Incidences that I fully intended to post earlier, but time and writer’s procrastination got the best of me.  After my near miss yesterday morning driving my car, I felt compelled to write and post that God-Incidence right away.  Even though that put these next three out of sequence on the blog, it doesn’t diminish their impact.

On October 26, 2008, I returned to the site of my Cursillo for a reunion of sorts called Ultreya.  There were many past Cursistas there, both men and women.  A few days before the Ultreya, I got a phone call from one of the leaders from my weekend.  He asked me if I would be willing to give a witness of my experience of the weekend and the aftermath.  I agreed.

At the time, I hadn’t yet given thought to the creation of this blog, but at some point over those next few days of reviewing my experience, I recalled the discussion at our table of No Coincidences with God.  I was also still amazed with my experience of running into Brandon just after my Cursillo weekend.  I knew that I had to share that with the group, but I also began to wonder if I should try to share my experiences with a wider audience.

So what started out as brainstorming for ideas to share with a roomful of people, turned into a full fledged blogging idea.  I have Ron to thank for inspiring me to create this blog through asking me to speak to the group.  So if any of my comments or insight in this blog inspires any of its readers to take closer notice of or share their own God-Incidences with others, they have Ron to thank for it, not me.

At Ultreya two of us were invited to share with the larger group, myself, and Pat who had just lived the women’s Cursillo weekend about two weeks after mine.  Pat spoke first and gave an emotional witness that brought many in the room to tears.  I have often envied those who are able to move others to tears by their words as well as those who are able to be moved to tears themselves.  I fall into neither circle.  (For another compelling display of the abundant blessings in those tremendous gifts, watch this short video of Jim Valvano giving his famous Don’t Ever Give Up speech at the 1993 Espy Awards).

When Pat finished her witness it was my turn.  I basically told the story that you can read in my November 10, 2008 blog post.  In fact, the post itself is just a revision of the notes I used for my witness.  While I didn’t move anyone to tears, I did manage to touch a number of people and make them think about their own experiences.  I also found the God-Incidence term.

When I was finished, Pat came over to speak with me.  She told me that there was another God-Incidence that I wasn’t even aware of.  Her maiden name is Lucas and she hinted that there might be some connection there.  You would think that I would push aside any doubt, given the detail of my witness, but even after talking for twenty minutes about there being no coincidences with God, I still chalked the common name up to coincidence.

My reasoning was reasonable (or so I thought).  Although my last name is Lucas, that is an Americanized spelling from the old Slovak spelling.  I have great interest in genealogy, but have very little information on my own surname beyond my grandfather who was born in the old country.  The LUCAS name is actually pretty common in Ohio and elsewhere, but most that I have ever encountered are of English descent and have used that spelling for generations.  And as far as I knew, there weren’t any cousins living in this area of Ohio.  (Only to find out later from my parents that my grandfather did spend some time in the Cleveland area with close friends or family early in his life).

So when Pat informed me of her maiden name, I simply assumed she was one of the many unrelated Lucas clans originating from England or elsewhere.  But something made me go back over to her later and ask her about her ethnic background.  I learned that she was of Slovak descent and that her ancestors spelled the name differently (VERY close to how my own grandfather spelled his name).

We chatted for a good while.  We weren’t able to find an immediate connection, but I still have to wonder if that wasn’t the biggest God-Incidence of all.  Another of Pat’s relatives was the family historian, but she was very ill at the time.  I didn’t want to press the issue being sensitive to her healthy recovery.  I hope that wasn’t a mistake as I saw an obituary a few months later for a Lucas in the area.  Recalling that Pat’s family historian was gravely ill in October, I hoped that this wasn’t her.

I need to send her another note to see if there is someone I can talk to about potential family ties.  Even if I’ve lost my chance, I am now open to the reality that I may find other distant family out there where I once believed to be a brick wall.

Praise God!

With the recent economic downturn coupled with rising gas prices, the recent warm weather, and my quest to drop a few pounds for the summer, I’ve started walking to work each day with a bag lunch in hand.  I still drive the little one to day care (that’s too far for her to walk), then take my car back home and walk to the office.  The only times now that I drive to work are days when the weatherman forecasts heavy rain or days when I am scheduled to appear in a court more than a few blocks walk from the office.  This has only happened twice in three weeks, the second of those days being today.

Today also happens to be my older daughter’s 18th birthday.  She has been saving her money to buy a car of her own so she can drive to and from work without the need for a ride.  I’m sure she has plans to drive other places when she isn’t scheduled to work with some of her new found freedom.

We’ve been used car hunting for the past week and found a few around town to look into further.  One car in particular seems to have a great price considering the appearance, age, and mileage of the car – which made us wonder what, if anything, is wrong with it.  I think we are going to run the VIN # for a car fax report.

I was thinking about this after dropping the young one off at day care this morning.  As I drove back to my office I wondered what my own car’s car fax report would say, considering it was rear ended by a garbage truck just one month short of ten years ago.  As I am thinking this thought, driving along the main downtown Sandusky street, I see a red car at a stop sign ahead to my left.  I was in complete and total shock to see this stopped car pull forward and through the intersection at the same moment I was entering the intersection.  I had no stop sign.

Out of sheer instinct, I slammed on my brakes and turned hard to the right into the crossing street.  I knew it was futile and I was going to slam into this other vehicle.  The “slow motion in real time” mode kicked in big time as I saw our cars closing in on each other inch by inch.  I heard my tires screech as they fought against the pavement and when I finally came to a halt, there we were – two cars stopped parallel to each other about two feet apart – each car struggling to catch its breath.  As it is wont to do when I approach an intersection or stoplight and slow down without giving it any gas, my car actually stalled out in the process.  Usually if that happens rounding a 90° turn, I lose my power steering and it becomes a Herculean task to get cooperation from my front tires to make even a slight angled turn.

As I sat there for a moment, the woman driver of the other car called out to me saying she didn’t see me and apologized two or three times.  The little boy in the back right side child safety seat – probably about the same age as my own little girl – just stared wide eyed out his window at me.  I responded to the other driver saying it was okay – happy that nobody was hurt.

After I got my bearings and turned myself around to get back out onto the street, I called my wife to tell her that I almost just killed a child.  I told her that I didn’t know how I kept from slamming into that other car.  I told her that if I had hit the other car, the impact would have been right where the little boy sat.  Even if his child safety seat was top of the line, he would have been hurt to some degree or worse.  I literally told my wife, “I SHOULD have hit him.”  Not meaning that I wanted to hit him or wished that I hit him, but just that I couldn’t explain how I managed to not hit him.  In the real time slow motion of the incident, I was able to think to myself at least a dozen times it seemed: “I’m going to hit that car!”

My wife said that somebody’s or some bodies’ guardian angel(s) were working diligently this morning.  She was right.

After I got to work, within about ten minutes or so, I received a phone call from the local court.  My court appearance for that afternoon had been canceled and would be re-scheduled for a later date.  Had I known that before this morning, I wouldn’t have been driving to work today.  That would have been a horrible coincidence had I been unable to avoid the other car and injured – or worse, killed that little wide eyed boy.  But if I hadn’t been driving to work this morning, perhaps someone else coming along paying less attention would have hit this same car at that intersection.

That’s pure speculation, I know.  No one can say what would or wouldn’t have happened had I walked to work today.  But it sure does seem strange to get a phone call less than 20 minutes after this near miss which otherwise would have kept me and my guardian angel away from that wide eyed little boy had I gotten the call 30 minutes earlier.

As it was, I don’t think any of the events of this morning were coincidence.  I DO believe that they were a God-Incidence.

Praise God!

(As I had feared, I have had a few other God-Incidences since my last post before today, but I neglected to write them up right away and the days have turned into weeks, which have turned into months.  The incident this morning had a tremendous impact on me and I needed to write something right away.  They may be posted out of chronological order, but I will have a few more God-Incidences here in the near future of past events).