One night, I was feeling a bit lonely, so I prayed to a good friend who passed away in 2009, saying, "I miss you and I love you! I really need to feel your presence." A couple of days later, I was trying to leave work a little early because I'd worked through lunch, and was tired. A co-worker stopped by my office and delayed my leaving for about 10 minutes. I was a bit annoyed by it but let it go.

I have a pretty long commute - 30 miles one way. About halfway home I had a blowout and had to pull over onto the shoulder of the highway. I got out of the car to look at the tire, just as a pickup pulled onto the shoulder in front of me. It was my next-door neighbor! He "just happened" to have a full-size floor jack in the back of his pickup, and he changed the tire and got me back on the road less than five minutes after I got the flat.

Fifteen minutes later when I got home, I saw that another neighbor (who "just happens" to work at a tire repair shop) was in our driveway in his company truck, getting ready to leave. He saw me coming down the road, so waited for me to pull into the driveway. That's how he noticed I had the little "doughnut" spare on the right rear of my car, so he got out of his truck and grabbed my flat tire to see if it was repairable.

If my co-worker hadn't stopped by just to chat, the timing would have been wrong. If the flat hadn't happened on a bridge, causing me to slow down and delay pulling over until I was in a safer location, I wouldn't have gotten out of my car at the precise moment that my neighbor was driving by. If he'd just seen a white Corolla sitting on the side of the road, he might have passed on by, not realizing it was someone he knew. And if I hadn't gotten the spare put on so quickly, our other neighbor, the tire man, would have already gone home.

Without all these perfectly timed events, I would still have gotten the tire fixed, but it would have taken longer and I would have felt like I was struggling along by myself. But when things aligned in such an amazing way, I knew it was an answer to my prayer. I whispered a "thank you" to my spirit helpers in Heaven who orchestrated the whole thing. I'd gotten a gentle reminder that those in Heaven are listening, and if I am aware enough, I can hear their reply.

Glenda Williams

Posted 4/13/2011