Angel Mail Delivery?

For the past few months, I've been featuring the stained-glass windows from my church in Sunday blog posts, but that can't go on forever, as the number of windows in that venerable old building is finite, of course. Hm-m.......what to do next.......I don't know........we'll see. However, July 13......today.......has special significance for me, and this post will explain why.

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First of all, let me say that I just looked at my St. James Calendar of the Christian Year and discovered that July 13 is the day that the Eastern Christian Church remembers the Archangel Gabriel. I'm excited about that because my story here possibly has an angel involved, or possibly not.......I guess we'll just never know.

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My mom had one sibling, a sister, who I will refer to as "Aunt Lou", in this post. Aunt Lou passed on on All Saints' Day, November 1, 2000, after a short illness, at age 61. Aunt Lou's was born on today's date, July 13, in 1939.

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Aunt Lou never married, or had any children; she was a registered nurse, working many years in a hospital psychiatric unit. Maybe she was bit off-beat, compared to my mom's way of living, anyway. Aunt Lou smoked, drank alot of pop, and liquor, on occasion. She bleached and teased her hair, painted her fingernails, and wore plenty of jewelry and make-up. She was a fan of the Supremes, Dionne Warwick, and Barbra Streisand, and would travel occasionally to go to concerts. My mom was a fan of Tennessee Ernie Ford and church hymns and songs like "Mockingbird Hill", and "It Is No Secret". She didn't like rock music, and didn't let her kids drink much pop. When I was young, it was fun to snoop through Aunt Lou's celebrity magazines and record album collection, of which we certainly had none at home.

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Through the years, as my siblings and I were growing up, whenever our birthdays rolled around, Aunt Lou showed up with a card and gift. Sometimes, my mom would cringe at the items we received.......jewelry, jewelry boxes, radios, tape players, etc.,.......things that mom thought were not quite appropriate for us, perhaps.

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When I later had children of my own, Aunt Lou showered them with gifts, too, and would often show up randomly with pizza or a bucket of fried chicken. She always made sure I had a coffeemaker, too. She liked coffee!

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As stated above, Aunt Lou passed on in late fall of 2000. Subsequently, as the years and family birthdays came and went, we all missed receiving receiving cards, gifts, and visits from Aunt Lou.

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One hot, muggy afternoon in July, 2004, I was relieved to exit the kitchen after lunch to walk down the lane to pick up the mail. On the way back, I glanced through the letters........one was a notecard-sized envelope addressed in my mom's lovely handwriting. A note from Mom......that's always nice. Once back in the house, I opened it up and was surprised to find she was thanking me for the gifts I gave her on Mother's Day.......a whole two months previous!! Thank-you notes are important to my mom, and she normally sends them very promptly. The card is shown framed in the photo above, with lovely lilacs on its cover.

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Puzzled, I examined the envelope and found it had NO postmark on it! Just a little smudge of ink where the postmark should have been. How odd. Glancing at the calendar, it suddenly dawned on me that today was July 13, Aunt Lou's birthday!! What a strange little coincidence.......that my mom's very late Mother's Day note would arrive here on her late sister's birthday!!

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I picked up the phone and immediately called my mom and told her what I had just received in the mail. She was perplexed; she said she had put the thank-you note in the mail a couple days after Mother's Day! I said, "Mom......do you realize what today is?" She was quiet for a few seconds, then gasped, "It's Lou's birthday!! Oh, that's strange!"

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So, I was left to wonder and ponder: Where was that thank-you note for two months??! In a crevice at the Cedar Falls Post Office?? How exactly does something like this happen? Was it just random coincidence?? Perhaps. Perhaps not. This incident was a major factor in prompting my interest in reading about meaningful coincidence, which I learned, to my surprise, is a phenomenon that's been noticed and studied around the world since way before the time of Christ, including in ancient Greece and China, and probably elsewhere, but not recorded.

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I could say that God caused the thank-you note incident to happen (and, of course, God DID cause it, because God causes everything)......that it was miracle.......but what would we conclude the purpose of the miracle to be, for it seemed to be quite limited in scope, affecting only me, basically. LCMS Lutherans aren't much into talking about unusual things like that, anyway, and I would rather approach it from a scientific angle, anyway. If you check on Amazon or at Barnes & Noble, you'll find many books about coincidence. I try to stick with authors who approach the subject scientifically, to avoid new age mumbo-jumbo. In everyday life, it is a reality that meaningful coincidences occur, and I believe it is God at work. Being mindful of and attentive to this reality makes each day exciting, I think! SOMETHING special is going on out there!!

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Then again.......after just learning that July 13 is the messenger Archangel Gabriel's Day, as well as Aunt Lou's birthday........I'm wondering if maybe the thank-you note was delivered by Angel Postal Service!!

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The Fenton glass angel shown in the photo was one of the last birthday gifts I received from Aunt Lou.......in her hands the angel is clasping a glass stone of June's birthstone color, Alexandrite lavendar! The same color as the lilacs on the card!! Maybe Aunt Lou was sending me a message, through the timely/untimely Mother's Day thank-you note, saying, "You were like a daughter to me." The last time I saw Aunt Lou alive, during her sudden, final illness, she was struggling on a respirator and unable to speak, but her eyes were wide open as my daughter and I held her hand and told her we loved her. Sometimes, I wonder if our loved ones who have passed on are still around us, just in a different form, and using entirely different means to communicate.......clever and symbolic ways, usually beyond our ken.

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