Eric and The Coinkydinks?

                I’ve locked my keys in my car (actually it was my mom’s mini-van) three times in my life that I can remember.  The first time I was with my girlfriend (my wife now) at the restaurant her mother worked at and my dad had to drive 15 miles down to Santo to open the door for me.  The other two times were kind of weird though.  The second time I was at work (Braum’s) in Weatherford waiting for my shift to start.  I was in college at the time and I was finished with my classes for that day, but didn’t want to drive all the way back to Mineral Wells (about 30 minutes away).  I locked my car with the key inside along with my uniform and well, that sucked.  It just so happened though that my manager had a locksmith out there working on the safe and while he was there he opened the door for me at no charge(I gave him a free ice cream cone though, please don’t tell Mr. Braum).  I guess it was probably just a coincidence, right?  The third time was also in Weatherford,  I was on my way to fort worth to get fitted for a tuxedo for my wedding and I stopped at the post office for something(can’t remember what though).  I left the key sitting right on the console island thing in between the front seats (what the hell?!?!).  So I’m standing there cussing at myself and I look up and see a locksmith truck sitting two cars over.  I called the number on the side of the truck and the guy answered from inside the post office (cell phones are a beautiful thing).  He came out and unlocked the car, also for free.  I know that if I had had to call these guys out to me it would have cost at least $30 and even though they were already there they had every right to charge me anyway.  They didn’t though and for that they are awesome in my book (I mean if I had a book).

                I know a lot of people who might try to read more into this than what is probably there.  How are we supposed to know when it’s just coincidence or when it’s actually God helping out?  When we interpret every good thing that happens to us as God the outside world looks at us like we are irrational illogical weirdoes.  I believe that God is there watching, but maybe sometimes people just use their God given free will to decide to do good things just because they are the right things to do.

                I’ve always felt like I was somehow being watched out for and I’ve had an overall feeling that everything was going to turn out okay.  I know I’ve had a very blessed life as far as good parents, friends, family, school, and even jobs are concerned.  Every now and then I’ll do something out of the ordinary for me (I am a creature of habit) and something good will come from it.  It’s usually something small but it’s always enough for me to stop and take notice.  I’ll run it through my head and question why I broke my routine and if the reward was because of that or would it have happened anyway.  I can’t really think of any specific example of this occurring right now but I know it has happened to me many many times throughout my life.  These random feelings that everything is going to be alright have come to me less and less over the years and they almost completely went away when my daughter was born.  That’s when I got scared (I’ve always been scared, but this was more than ever before).  Do you know how many things can go wrong with a child? I’m going to say approximately somewhere between 1 and 100 billion different things.  When Amira was about 2 she was standing at the window of our trailer holding onto the windowsill and the open window closed on her fingers.  Now this is not a regular wooden window frame that would have smashed her fingers.  It was a metal frame inside of a metal track so that it would seal.  It probably should have chopped her tiny fingers off.  It didn’t, she was fine.  I, on the other hand, was hysterical.  I called my mom freaking out and she and Nancy came over to see how she was and there didn’t seem to be any permanent damage.  Maybe that was a miracle and maybe I just overestimated the strength of the window.  Who knows?

                My point is that there are a million different things that happen to all of us every day and I just don’t know how I’m supposed to interpret them.  I like the feeling that everything is going to be alright but lately it’s been replaced with a hopelessness that everything is going to end.  Which is a happy thought for some of you so there you go.

Eric Anderson