Light Notes: Pink connected the strangers, but then they found there was more
Pink connected us on the beach back then. A coincidental meeting on a sun-kissed stretch of vacant Texas sand, a place where the memory still gives my heart pause.
As I studied the newly arrived text, my pulse quickened. Could this be the same Melissa I’d prayed for continually since 2013, her name written inside a tiny seashell as a daily reminder?
Looking back, my pleas for her healing had felt unanswered, my hope wavering as months passed … and then years. But within a few moments of the musical text alert, I learned of God’s grace and this young mother’s cancer journey since the Sunday afternoon our lives intersected. “When you saw us at the beach, it was one of those days we were doing ‘Mommy and Son-day’ I called it,” Melissa Lopez said as we talked on the phone, recalling their special playtime on nearby South Padre Island with then 8-year-old Eddie. “It was cool how you came up to my son and I, and how I had the bright pink on my t-shirt. Then you commented that you had a car with that same design on the hood.” Just a chance meeting of two strangers? Or was there more? What she said next reaffirmed what I had believed about that day, as well.
“It was God-sent,” the 33-yearold mother of three said, her voice catching at the memory.
Melissa’s words resonated, taking me back to the winter getaway more than six years ago when my husband and I needed a brief respite from the Pacific Northwest chill. Tucked safely into our hotel after our flight and then anxious to explore in the sunshine, we’d driven our rental car along a twolane roadway that skirted the long arm of Gulf Coast beach. Without too much thought, we had randomly parked our SUV roadside to venture beyond the sand dunes. It looked like a perfect place to meander in flip-flops and wiggle our toes in the brisk surf.