Wrong Number, Or Was It?

This is a weird one, ya'll...

My children and I were trying to get out of the house today. I had promised them all week to go swimming. We don't have ANYWHERE to go swimming. No pool, friends with pools have not invited us to swim, no apartment friends - nowhere. They, the kids, have been begging me ALL week. Today was Friday. I decided that I was gonna take the babysitting money I made and take them to NRH2O. They love it and they deserved it after the wait and promises.

We could not find IJ's Incredibles beach towel anywhere. It is new, it is cute and I have never seen it leave the house. Our neighbor across the street's name is Vicki. She had the little ones over eight days ago to play on the slip and slide. I was at work and McKenna remembered that IJ took his towel over there. I quickly scrolled down the caller ID on my phone and pressed "talk" when I got to Vicki's name. A young voice answered the phone, well younger than Vicki's, and I asked if it was Courtney (Vicki's daughter). It wasn't. After about 30 seconds of "Vicki?" "yes, this is Vicki", "Is this Vicki's house", "Does Courtney live here", "who's calling", "I'm sorry" blah, blah, blah... The person on the phone was Vicki, but it wasn't the Vicki I was trying to call. The Vicki on the phone asked if our daughter's knew each other. We were trying to figure out how I had her number and knew her name. It was very bizarre. She remembered that she had called a "346" number recently and it was the wrong number and that's how her number was on my caller ID.

Her asking me about my daughter caused me to ask about hers. You know how I am, very chatty. This started the whole conversation which was one of the most interesting, sad, moving, beautiful things that has ever happened to me!

I don't know how but we started talking about our daughters - mind you - this person is a stranger to me! She sounded very sweet and we spoke easily to one another. The next thing you know she is telling me how her children are in Houston with their father for the summer and how much she missed them. Without getting into private material - the next thing I knew I was asking if I could pray for her! We spoke for 35 minutes! We quickly shared Disneyland stories, our children's ages, things about our husbands, things about my father and her ex husband so on, and so on! It was so unbelievably strange and wonderful at the same time. The whole time we were talking I felt the Lord tell me to talk to her more. I felt sadness and loneliness. She then told me about how she was missing her kids so much. And that today she found in her purse a letter her daughter wrote to her in her seven year old language with drawn pictures and the like. She said that she had been missing her children so much today and was so worried about them. She was so sad. Can you imagine not having your children for an entire summer?

My heart went out to her. I am leaving out a lot because some is private but there were absolutely unbelievable similarities in our lives. We bonded and decided that we wanted to meet. We were both amazed at the how the "wrong number" turned out to be the "right number". God's hand was so in this, all over this. We both blessed each other. I have thought about her for the rest of the day and could not even sleep and had to get this off my chest. I am glad I had blog to do this.

We exchanged phone numbers and email addresses and plan to get together for lunch next week. Was this the wrong number? I don't think in any way whatsoever it was. Isn't that the weirdest yet neatest thing?