Paths Crossing

“I need another book,” our pastor’s wife, Clara, said to me last Sunday. I had given her one of my books as a birthday present, and she had previously bought one to give to a friend. “I want to buy one to give to Kaye, our evangelist’s wife,” she said.

“Oh, good!” I said. “Which one do you want, Heartthoughts or Seasons of the Heart?” She said she wanted Hearthoughts, my first book, so I impusively said, “Then let me give her Seasons.”

Our revival had just started that morning, and I had only briefly met Kaye. I saw who I thought was a visitor sitting on a row by a regular family. They had smiled at me with a knowing look when I murmured an inquiry as to whether she were with them, so I approached her with a smile and asked, “Who are you to these people?”

“Nobody!” the pretty lady said disarmingly. I apologized, and then it dawned on me she was the wife of the evangelist. That night I gave her the books, one from me and one from Clara, and she was delighted, saying she loved to read. I told her they were from my blogs, and she said, “Oh, I love to read blogs! What is your blog address?” I said I would write it down for her. It was fun getting to know her when we went out for a snack with the pastors after church.

I found out she had two daughters, and I asked if they lived near her. “Well, they did until recently, then one moved away,” she said. I knew how that felt, and asked where they had moved to, ready to commiserate. “On the other side of town,” she said. I had to smile, a little ironically, since I live nearly a thousand miles from my daughters. “I baby sit, get up at six o’clock and go over and get the kids ready for school every morning,” she told me gaily. Exactly what I used to do, I thought, identifying with her devotion to family.

We got to say a few words over the next few services, and Tuesday night I stood by her in the pew and chatted as the service closed. Wednesday night, the last revival night, I was feeling ill and didn’t go to church. My husband told me she had asked about me and had joined the other ladies in a circle to have prayer for me.

Thursday afternoon I answered the phone to terrible news. On their way to the airport, there had been a head-on collision seriously injuring our pastor, his wife Clara, and the evangelist. Unbelievably, Kaye had died. How could that be? Only a few years younger than me, dating her future husband through high school and struggling through Bible school together as a young couple--all the things I had learned about her in the past few days that made me feel like I knew her. And maybe she knew me, too, a little, through the pages of the books I’m sure she must have taken time to read from. I’m so glad I had the impulse that day to give her one. Impulse? I’m sure now it was the nudging of the Holy Spirit.