Sometimes I have to be reminded that God is present in my life every day and that he really does listen to me. This last week God hit me over the head with the proverbial two-by-four.

“Hey, Cindy, I am here for you, even in the small stuff.” But, I am ahead of myself. Here is some background information.

My youngest daughter is getting married April 15. As you can imagine, there has been a flurry of activity, especially in the last two months. I had imagined that as the mother of the bride, I would be asked about the details and involved in the planning. Much to my surprise, my daughter, her older sister and her fiancé have done almost all of the planning. One morning, after making one of my “poor me” comments to my husband, I was sitting at my home computer, waiting for it to wake up (it is dial

up.) Sitting right next to the computer was a book I have been reading. The book is “Traveling Mercies, Some Thoughts on Faith,” by Anne Lamott. I felt a strong impulse to open the book. I opened it to the spot where I had left off. Lamott described what she went through when the doctors thought her 7-year-old son might have cancer. She described her prayers, her false courage in front of her son and the agony of waiting for test results. Fortunately, her son was OK.

Boy did that hit me. I thought about how lucky I was to have a daughter who has found a strong, steady and loving fiancé. I was also flooded with gratitude for how much my daughter has matured. She has developed a strong spirituality and has come out of some difficult growing up years with a sense of direction, purpose and a hopeful outlook on life. All of a sudden, my self-centered attitude vanished. Instead, I was glad to be a part of my daughter’s new life and to enjoy the upcoming wedding.

I am convinced that the strong impulse to pick up Lamott’s book was the work of the Holy Spirit. God needed to get my attention and there it was. And if that was not enough, I found this statement in Phillip Yancey’s book, “Prayer.”

“A Rabbi taught that experiences of God can never be planned or achieved. They are spontaneous moments of grace, almost accidental. His student asked, ‘Rabbi, if God- realization is just accidental, why do we work so hard doing all these spiritual practices?’ The Rabbi replied, ‘To be as accident prone as possible.’”

God is always present; sometimes we have to trip right over him to find that out.