About a year ago, Mitzi was on a quest to find the house her father built that she lived in during her high school years. Her Dad built the house she lives in now and a few others in her neighborhood. He passed away back in 1998, so when she’s missing him, she likes to walk around and see these houses because she feels connected to him then. But this older house was in another neighborhood across town and she hadn’t been there in years.
She couldn’t remember the address of the old house, unfortunately. We drove around the neighborhood for about 45 minutes one day. Her sister suggested we “look for the one with the circular driveway.” (75% of the houses in the neighborhood had circular driveways ????). Then she suggested we look for the one that had their handprints at the end of the driveway. We didn’t have time for that. So we gave up.
The next day it was pouring, so we stayed at home and decided to look through Mitzi’s photo albums. We happened to come across her (partially-filled out) baby book. Among the souvenirs we found was a ponytail of her blonde hair and, randomly, her certificate from passing Driver’s Ed when she was in high school…and it had her old address on it! What are the odds?!! There really were so few things in this baby book as it was, so to find that certificate from high school was uncanny.
The next day, before we set out to go take a gander at the house, I was reading to Mitzi from this book about ways to stay happy. The chapter we read from that morning randomly included the action step to visit the lonely. That someone not too far from where we live was saying a prayer for someone to visit him and lift him out of his loneliness. We got to Mitzi’s old neighborhood and she boldly walked up to the front door of the house and knocked. Eventually, a man answered, and after her short explanation about her Dad building the house, he proceeded to tell us all about the upgrades he had made to it. He had been watching Andy Griffith alone while his grandkids played in the pool out back. He was very chatty and listened patiently as Mitzi excitedly worked to get her story out about finding her Driver’s Ed certificate. He let us peek inside and Mitzi immediately recalled many stories that made them both smile as she happily recounted them to him.
I’m not sure if that man was the lonely person from our Happiness book action step for that day, but it sure did seem like a neat coincidence. And he sure did get a kick out of the fact that he got to hear about the life of his house before he had it. All of the little ways that God orchestrated Mitzi getting to reconnect with that house (and, in a way, her father) were just yet another indication of His love for all of us…❤️
