Coincidence or a love letter from God?
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Coincidence or a love letter from God?
How often do we use the word ‘coincidence’ in our day-to-day life? I know that I have, that was until I realised that a seeming coincidence is much more that I was giving it credit for, and that, in truth, there are no such things as coincidences.
It was easy for me to attribute many of my life’s experiences to coincidences, but I began to realise that this is just a throwaway line, a lack of responsibility and a lack of realisation of what is actually happening in my life. I realised that I was attributing the designation of a coincidence to experiences in my life to not accept, with deep reverence, that there is a divine plan that was laid out before me, that God and heaven were always communicating with me and as such I began to take more notice of those moments that I could have said were a coincidence. And there were many.
I realised that God was always walking beside me, as he does with all of us. I also realised that the constant barrage of thoughts in my head often made it difficult to hear what God was communicating, and as such, those moments of what could be deemed coincidences were moments where the thoughts were stopped and God’s delicate communication could be heard.
I then began to realise that if I didn’t take notice of these profound moments, I was literally throwing a letter from God into the bin, saying that it was worthless. What I have also come to realise is that God never stops communicating with us. I can throw his communication into the bin over and over again yet, in my experience, God continues to deliver the same message, albeit in different ways, but the same message will be delivered, until we respond.
A couple of moments of deep reverence for God and what we are a part of as a human being was registered recently. I could have looked at these as being coincidences, as I would have in the past, but I know that they were not, instead they were a call to realise just how everything we do in this world matters.
While I was at university studying paramedicine, I completed an assignment that was based on a trial taking place in Ottawa, Canada where community paramedics were put into housing units of the lower socioeconomic area of Ottawa and how this was making a significant difference to the health of the people that lived in these units.
Recently – and seven years after completing this assignment – I attended a paramedic conference, and one of the people that I met amongst a group of 250 people, was the person that is responsible for training all the Paramedics for the Ottawa emergency services. I spoke with this man for about half an hour at the conference and I asked about the Community Paramedicine Trial, which I had based my assignment on, and if it was still in progress. He said that it was, and that it had continued to be very beneficial to the residents in the housing units, with marked differences noted in their health and wellbeing. But the funding to keep the program running was difficult to obtain.
After speaking with this man, it felt like we had known each other for ever, such was the ease in how we connected and conversed together, and I got the sense that it was no mistake that of all the many people at this conference, it was this man that came into my space. We had connected so deeply for such a short time, but I realised that there was more going on behind the scenes in our conversation than either he or I will ever know of. Through our deep connection in that moment, God was delivering a package, not just a letter this time, but a package of movements that neither myself nor this man I was speaking with can know with our minds. Nonetheless, a package of love, that will be precipitated into this world, either by thoughts that will come to one, or both of us, to do or change something that we are doing. Or others may come into our lives that can support with the delivery of the package, to ensure that what was ignited in our conversation is brought into this world to support all of us. How this ‘plays out’ in our human reality matters not, it is simply the knowing that God is with us, constantly bringing people together in life, to bring about the changes that are required to ultimately support others in their lives.
This conference was quite profound for me, as I also had another experience that showed me that how we react or respond in life does affect and support others. I was doing a procedure that was being guided by an emergency department doctor and when I went to do the procedure, I didn’t close the forceps. This doctor grabbed the forceps and cramped them shut. My finger was caught in the forceps, and this movement tore a chunk out of the tip of my finger. It hurt a lot; I did ask her to stop, but she didn’t. There was no real response from this woman, but she did finally let go so that I could extract my finger. All of this happened in moments, and I didn’t freak out or abuse or accuse her. I simply extracted my finger and continued to do the procedure. Once complete I cleaned my blood off the equipment and went to find a bandaid.
Two days later, early in the morning I was waiting in the foyer of the hotel that I was staying at for the courtesy bus to take me to the airport and this same doctor arrived at the foyer. She too was taking the courtesy bus to the airport. Now this was a big hotel foyer, and she could have sat anywhere in the foyer, but she sat down next to me. She did recognise me and asked how my finger was. I replied, saying that it was sore. This doctor had one of her arms in a sling and she had mentioned during the conference that she had fractured her humerus in a mountain biking accident. I could have sat there, said nothing more, and held a resentment towards this woman for hurting my finger. But I did not do this, instead I began a conversation with her. I asked how the accident happened, and she shared the details. She also shared that she had not yet had surgery, as she hadn’t wanted to miss the conference and that she had surgery planned for the coming week. I then asked her how her pain levels were and how she was managing, as I knew that the pain would have been great as the fracture was unstable.
What happened next was extraordinary. This woman’s demeanour changed, she went from a hard, protective, standoffish and demoralising demeanour, which I felt was her normal way of being with others, as this is how she was when the incident had happened with my finger, and dropped into her sweetness. Her eyes changed, her voice changed, and she spoke from her body. All of a sudden, all the should do’s, and need to do’s, and projections that she had made her life to be were stopped and she spoke with frankness of how she was in a lot of pain, and that it had been very difficult for her to manage whilst she was at the conference. In this moment, I know that much healing happened for this woman; she allowed herself to acknowledge what was actually happening for her, in her body. A body that she had obviously been disconnected from, that had been used to move through life but not respected for the preciousness that our bodies are. Observing this, I realised that I have a responsibility to be responsive to impulses from God, always. It was an impulse from God that moved this woman to sit next to me, and it was an impulse from God that prompted me to begin a conversation with her, and that if both of us had ignored this communication, and had not followed our impulses, we would have missed out on this letter from God and the richness that it brought to both of our lives.
I now know, deeply so, that there are no coincidences in life, that every moment is accounted for, and that we are constantly given experiences that have been falsely allocated as coincidences to enhance our lives, and those around us.
God never stops communicating with us. God never leaves our side and will walk with us to the end of days constantly offering to us all our next grand movement. It is up to us whether we hear, see and realise these offerings, or ignore them. Or will we wait until they are offered again; and they will be.
Filed under
Communication, Connection, God, Healing, Pain
