Connections

Facebook, with all its downsides and foibles, really does connect people. I've established communication with friends from my days of kindergarten back in Berea, Ohio. One friend is in Turkey, for goodness sake! It's amazing what technology is doing--both good and bad--for modern life.

Last week, someone's post blew me away. Laurie is the daughter of a good friend, and she and I are Facebook Friends. She posted an amazing photo taken from the front of a ferry boat leaving Charlevoix, Michigan, heading towards Beaver Island. If you've read my novel, Route to Survival, you know Beaver Island is a remote island in the middle of northern Lake Michigan.

I thought very few people knew about this lovely spot but here was Laurie, heading off for a visit with three family members who are year-round residents of the place. Can you imagine my excitement? Wow, is all I could say.

What a small world, what a coincidence, what a Godwink!

I began thinking about how Laurie and I are connected and what a convoluted Friend Tree (not Family Tree) illustrates our connection:

• My husband and I know her dad, Jack, through three friend groups: one from Chicago, one from Ohio and now Arizona (Munds Park, to be exact), and one from Minnesota.
• Years ago, my husband, Bob, golfed with Jack and a mutual friend who knew Bob when he was a little kid in Chicago.
• Friends from my childhood (Ohio then AZ) met Jack in northern AZ and became good friends.
• The Minnesota people knew him from attending the same church in AZ many years ago.
• Jack's children grew up as close friends to the Chicago family, who relocated to AZ, whose children babysat our children. They became lifelong friends of our family as well as Jack's.

Where does Laurie come in? I've met her in person a few times at family celebrations for her dad, who is in his nineties. I've remotely followed her family through the years in visits with her dad. Are you confused?

If I were to draw this out it wouldn't be a tree but rather a large vine with many shoots going off in different directions. And then at the top, would be Beaver Island.

I have another friend from Michigan who summers on the island and even pastored a church there for a few years. I bet he knows Laurie's relatives who live there. Small world, coincidence? No, it's a Godwink and I'm grateful. It makes me smile.

Thanks for the photo, Laurie. To see her post on my FB Timeline, click here: www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008150919932