I don't believe in coincidence

Five years ago I started a Facebook group for moms who have a cadet at West Point. It's grown a bit and now has 2000+ members. The information shared in the group led to Debbie and me writing The Mom's Guide to Surviving West Point. Old news, for many...but that leads to why I don't believe in coincidence. Over a year ago, Facebook came out with a new feature allowing you to "pin" a post to the top of a group page. You could make sure everyone saw an important notice. You could pin up to three posts. What they didn't tell you was that you must "unpin" the post before you delete it, or it counted against your three and you could not pin any new ones. You cannot unpin a deleted post. The last several months have been very frustrating as the admin team on the group (ok, it's grown, so now we have 15 moms who help with the group) tried unsuccessfully to contact facebook to fix this glitch. We wrote on the help page dozens of times. Nada. Last month, one of the moms in the group shared that her son's summer assignment was an internship at Facebook. We begged her to have him check into this...at least tell a real person in California our concerns and see if it could be addressed. The cadet started his internship last week and yesterday the problem was fixed. Yes, a West Point cadet fixed Facebook. Coincidence?

Why I can't understand you....

Thirty-two years ago I was at Step Sing at Samford University to see a current boyfriend's club perform. The group before his did a beautiful song in sign language. I thought that I would like to learn that. In fact, I thought it might be fun to teach deaf children. So, at the University of Montevallo I earned a degree in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders (aka deaf education). I list the other because it's a degree very heavy in the science of deafness. I studied hearing science, anatomy of hearing, audiology, sign language, etc. After graduating, I taught a few years then stayed home when the kiddies came along. When I went back to work in the early 2000s, I didn't re-enter the deaf ed field, as my sign language skills were pretty rough. Instead, I teach middle school language arts to fairly "regular" students. But then,  started to lose my hearing. At first it was only a smidge noticeable...no big deal. About five years ago, it became a real problem. I started wearing hearing aids and visiting the audiologist yearly....and read those audiograms that showed my hearing plummeting. Most people only learn to read an audiogram when hearing loss starts. I'd been doing it for years. My hearing loss was progressive and fast. By March of this year, I was profoundly deaf. My hearing aid gave me very little help. I was beyond frustrated trying to understand and communicate (and so were the people who had to repeat everything three times). On July 3 I was implanted with a bionic device known as a cochlear implant. It is a miracle of modern science and will allow me to hear again. It will not be the same as before--stayed tuned for a follow up blog to see just how well I am hearing. Activation is Friday! In the meantime, I've been studying sign language again and have been able to attend some events with an interpreter. What a joy to have that information stream flowing without struggling to lip read! I had no idea at 18 that this would be my life at 50. Coincidence?

Every day things happen in our lives....often things that we shake our fist at God and scream (or at least wonder), "Why???" And yet, here it is...stated clearly and succinctly: Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Now, here you are reading this today. Coincidence?