Pieces Falling

Just before Christmas a package arrived postmarked from Oklahoma. The sender was a new friend who had first contacted me a month earlier. The package contained many handmade items: a small goose–feathered tree, origami folded stars, old Christmas cards made into tiny boxes, and two small cardboard houses for my daughters with a twenty–dollar bill tucked inside each one.

But what made the whole thing so memorable was the way she signed the note. She had signed it: A concerned Grama in Oklahoma.

As soon as I saw her words, I teared up. It felt like a hug through time. I knew it was a gift to me, a nod from God.

Later, she would tell me that she’d felt a strong urge to sign the note that way, even though she didn’t know why. In fact, she admitted, she’d felt ridiculous doing it. But she was convinced she was supposed to write those words.

When I explained that my grandparents, in heaven now for many years, were from Oklahoma, it suddenly made sense to her.

She knew that she had, indeed, heard from God.

I knew it, too.