Andrea's column: What do you think?

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Someone posed a question on Facebook recently. “Is it divine intervention,” she asked, “or just coincidence?” I think she was referring to when something good happens but whatever the context, I didn’t have an answer.

Her query stayed in the back of my mind, though, and was front and center last week. It was a day that had started out windy, went to blustery and ended up with gusts that could blow me out of my shoes.

I had a doctor’s appointment scheduled for three o’clock that afternoon but as the wind picked up in the morning, I became anxious and called my husband at work. He said it was supposed to rain, too.

That was all I needed. I canceled the visit and left a message for clinic support. When a nurse called, I explained my health issue and that I hoped, because of the wind and rain, I could be helped over the phone. Without seeing me, she said, neither she nor the doctor could diagnose my problem.

My first time slot was gone but another, 45 minutes later, opened up as we talked. “I’ll take it,” I said, as I watched the wind pick up bird feeders on the deck and lift them nearly off their hooks.

By the time my husband and I left the doctor’s office and took the elevator up to the building’s lobby, the cleaning crew was at work. The rug near the door had been rolled up so I asked the young man sweeping the floor if we could straighten it out.

“Here, here, I’ll do it,” he said, rushing over to fix it. He held open the inside door for us and when my husband said something about retrieving the car, the young man motioned to a nearby bench where I could sit and wait.

As my husband drove up, the young man opened the outside door and held it steady for us as the wind whipped against it. Did we need help getting to the car? he wondered. We thanked him. My husband reached into his pocket, pulled out a ten dollar bill, and handed it to our new friend saying, “Buy dinner for yourself.”

The man refused the money. My husband tried again. The man wished us God’s blessings. From the passenger seat, I told him we had been blessed by having him in our path that day. With that, he went to the other side of our vehicle and told my husband, “If you go to church, put the money in the basket.”

Our paths would not have crossed if I hadn’t changed the time of my appointment. If the wind hadn’t been so strong, we would have parked closer to the doctor’s office — at the back of the building on the lower level — not outside the upper floor where he was cleaning.

Two days later, I finished the first draft of this column and checked Facebook. While I was writing, a friend had shared this thought, “Sometimes, I just look up, smile and say, ‘I know that was you, God. Thanks.’” Again, the question: coincidence or divine intervention?

Tags: opinion, rosemount, commentaries