His Mysterious Ways

Sometimes things happen in our lives that follow a wonderfully twisted path.

This particular instance begins with a great friend I have who lives in New York. We met on a list for goats, of all things. My email (tardis@..) caught her eye because she and her husband used to watch Dr. Who so they recognized a fellow fan. (The Doctor’s time machine is called a T.A.R.D.I.S.) From that beginning, we’ve been friends for years.

She also has trouble with neuropathy, especially in her hands. It’s a special treat to get an email from her since it’s so hard for her to type. She sent me one last week commenting on the pictures in this blog of Ellie learning to sit up, and how great that is, and how she’d seen a neat item in the news about little girls with cerebral palsy taking ballet, and that there was a book about it and she thought Muhammad Ali’s daughter had something to do with it. I figured if she went to the trouble to tell me about it, I needed to follow through and find out more.

So I searched. I found the book, Ballerina Dreams on Amazon, but no connection there to Laila Ali.

So I searched some more. After much poking around, I ended up on a blog called, “Spanglish Gringo”, at an entry about Dancing with the Stars, which Laila Ali was on last season. I’ll hereby confess we’re Dancing with the Stars fans at our house, so that intrigued me

Now understand, that was the ONLY connection I thought we had when I first landed on his website. I couldn’t see we had much in common. Besides the obvious difference of gender, I noted the following:

I live in the country. He lives in Los Angeles. In fact, I live on a farm. He’s in an urban environment that is totally foreign to me. His home has bars on the windows. We have screened windows we open in nice weather.

He’s steeped in a multi-ethnic culture. I have little opportunity for cross-cultural contact.

His family came to America on the Elizabeth some 20-30 years after the Mayflower. I haven’t a clue about my ancestry that far back

And whereas my kids are grown up, he’s just starting a family. In fact, I’m a grandmother, and he’s a relatively new dad. (So obviously, he’s also much younger than I am.)

But still, there was just something about the blog that piqued my interest. I noticed the cross hanging round his neck, and that he has a ministry in Los Angeles. Aha, a fellow believer, something in common after all. I decided to check out the blog and learn more.

Mind you, there are 3 years of archives, but I figured I’d just hit the highlights. Ended up I did much more than that, and spent yesterday afternoon reading the entire blog from beginning to end. Okay, I’ll confess I skimmed over some entries on sports and other things that don’t interest me so much, but that left a whole lot that was totally fascinating. I enjoyed reading about his ministry, his wife, and their families. He has some great quotes on the blog, and a lot of thought-provoking material.

Then I got to the entries about their struggle to adopt, the meetings with the adoption agency and social workers, putting together their portfolio for prospective mothers, and the hope of finding “their” child. That really resonated since Richard and Chrystie have been thinking about adoption, and through them I’ve learned more about the difficulties that entails.

It was great to read about their joy when they got a beautiful little girl. And she really is a little charmer. Her pictures in the “Friday Foto Fix” entries are one of the highlights of the blog. Off hand, I can only think of one other little girl that tops her! (Sorry guys, I’m a wee bit biased on this one!)

I kept reading and then, then! Then the posts about the problems their Isa was experiencing, the delays in development, the tests, and the upshot being here was another couple with a beautiful little girl whose MRI showed she had a stroke before she was born. Yes, like our little Ellie, their little girl has Cerebral Palsy. Reading the posts leading up to the diagnosis, and subsequent posts talking about her therapy and ongoing health problems, well, it sure hit home.

Now I don’t pretend to have the intimate knowledge about caring for a child with cerebral palsy that this couple now has, and Richard and Chrystie have. I’m just a grandmother of such a child, and I live far, far away. But it would seem we have much more in common that I first imagined.

Scott and Veronica of "Spanglish Gringo" fame, and our own Richard and Chrystie – I hope you all continue to nourish your marriages and spiritual growth, as you will no doubt have many times you’ll need to lean on each other and the Lord to meet the challenges of parenting special needs children. I pray that their Isabel and our Ellie will astonish us all with the things they learn and accomplish as their brains make new connections to make up for those lost because of strokes.

And I’m thankful for His Mysterious Ways, leading us places we would never think to go, helping enlighten and comfort us when we least expect it.