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Lisa Simmons ponders how an internet search led her to pray for the soul of a stranger.

I was cruising the internet looking for blogs on prayer and knitting and crocheting the other day because I love to use crocheting to keep my mind on prayers. Maybe that doesn't make sense to anyone else, but if my hands aren't busy, I fidget and cannot concentrate.

Anyway, I ran across a beautiful blog post connecting prayer with the act of knitting and it was the only one I found who didn't automatically link it to a prayer shawl. Those are nice, of course, but not what I was looking for.

The author of this blog was Catholic and so spoke my language about how knitting and crocheting can calm our spirits to open us up to genuine prayer. Yay, a like-minded soul sister! I tried to find more on her blog, but alas there were only a few entries. I looked at the dates and realized the blog was several years old, another disappointment because I hope to connect with this wonderful writer. I found her home page and slowly began putting pieces together … she had written several years ago that she began blogging to get her mind off her cancer which was bad. Oh no … I frantically searched the rest of the blog and realized she had already passed.

It was weird how hard that realization hit me and how tears instantly sprang to my eyes. I didn't know this woman, but reading her words and finding out she had already departed from this life just hurt.

I then wondered how come. How come, Lord, did I begin looking for some like-minded prayer soul and find out she is no longer here? Was it meant to inspire me to pray for her or the family she had here on earth? Were they needing the prayer of a stranger?

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Was I meant to be inspired to pray for her or the family she had here on earth? Were they needing the prayer of a stranger? #catholicmom

I have a cousin who used to call these moments "God winks": when God reaches down and takes your hand and the hand of another total stranger and has them meet in the most unlikely circumstances. It reminds me that we are all connected to each other if by nothing else, than by God Himself.

I don't believe such things just happen as coincidence. There have been many of these types of situations that have happened to me in my life: someone calls at just the moment I needed to talk, I was urged to call or message someone at just the right moment they needed it. You meet someone in the store that you pour your heart out to … these cannot just be nature's random meetings. I believe they have meaning.

So today I am praying for this woman, and only her first name was on the blog, so I don't even know her last name or her family's name, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is I was moved to pray for her and for her family. And I will.

I can only hope that someday someone will come across something I've written and pray for my family too. We all need each other's prayers and sometimes it takes God “winking” to get us together.

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Copyright 2021 Lisa Simmons
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