As seems to happen from time to time, on this particular Thursday evening, my wife and I found that we had nothing quick and easy to make for dinner.  We had the fixings for dinner menus that take a while to make/bake, but neither of us was interested in playing long term chef that evening, so we decided to pick up something quick and easy to make from the store.

Initially she was going to run by herself to the supermarket to pick something up. Sometimes one or the other of us will go to the store alone; sometimes we both want to go together; and sometimes neither of us want to go, but on this particular occasion time I decided I wanted to go along — even after my wife said she was just going to go herself.

So we packed up our youngster (big sister was at work) and off we went.  As we walked in the door at the grocery store, I immediately turned to get a grocery cart for our daughter to sit/ride in and I heard my wife exclaim to someone behind me: “HI!  How ARE You?!?”   I turned around to see her getting a hug from Fr. Tommy!  He was coming out from the checkout with a few bags of groceries.

My small faith sharing group has been, and will be, frequently mentioned in here.  It initially developed as a result of an unofficial retreat reunion explained here in the orange typeface. Fr. Tommy was one of the three ‘inaugural’ members and acted as our spiritual advisor until his temporary reassignment to a parish in Toledo in 2007. He had also concelebrated our wedding Mass back in 2005 with our parish pastor Fr. Marty. In 2008, he took a permanent new parish assignment in New Washington. I had not seen him for well over a year and he just happened to be in town for a day or two visiting some other people he knew here.

My wife and I had just talked about him that day or the day before as I told her about our conversations at bible study and news of how he was getting along at his new parish. Had we decided not to buy anything new for dinner, or to go somewhere else, or for me to stay home with our daughter = I would have missed him.

Praise God!