Going with the flow

It was a weird afternoon. Some might say a day of synchronicity. Or a series of coincidences. Even divine guidance. I call it flow. I was caught up in the direction the flow was taking me, and I let it carry me. Here’s how it happened.

I ordered groceries from the Fresh Market and thought I had asked for four bananas. I live alone, and I’m lucky if I can manage to eat four bananas before they go bad. Five is definitely too many, which is why I have learned to stop at four. Well, apparently, I ordered four bunches of bananas!

What on earth was I going to do with all these already very ripe bananas? It tickled me and I started singing, “Yes, I have some bananas, I have some bananas today…” 

My singing was interrupted by a phone call. It was Julie, Ascension’s Director of Outreach. She was at ACTC, our local assistance ministry, delivering food from the weekly collection on our church parking lot. There was a problem, she told me. Donations have been so abundant that they’ve run out of space to store all the food. “Do you think we could temporarily use some of our space at Ascension for storage?” she asked.

“Sure!” I said. And immediately, it came to me. “Ask Linda if ACTC would like some bananas.”

Why, yes, they would.  And I was off to deliver the bananas.

In the process of all this, I made a purse call on my phone. Not too long after, my dear friend from Ohio, Donna, gave me a call. We hadn’t spoken since the summer and I’d been wanting to talk to her but never seemed to have the time. How did she know? Well, she was the person who received my purse call. Perfect! It was glorious to hear her voice and catch up. Thank you, purse.

After our conversation, I retrieved my daily mail from the porch and added a few more Christmas cards to the precious pile on my coffee table. But wait. One of the cards wasn’t for me. It was addressed to another house on my street. I thought about depositing it back into my box so the mail carrier could return it to the proper place. Then I remembered that I hadn’t taken my morning walk because I didn’t have the time before an early appointment. And suddenly, I was moving my feet on this brisk, sunny day.

When I reached my destination, I slid the card into an empty mailbox. Then I knocked on the door and stepped away from the house. In no time, a woman came to the door. She looked irritated, which frankly is the way I usually look when a strange person comes knocking on my door. Especially during COVID.  

I quickly assured her that I wasn’t there for nefarious reasons. “You had some mail delivered to my house by mistake. It’s in your mailbox.”

The woman reached into the box, looked at the envelope, and her face lit up.  “Oh, thank you so much. This is the one I’ve been waiting for!”

As I headed back home, I noticed that a full moon had already taken its place in the late afternoon sky. It was smiling at me. And I was smiling back.