A few days ago, I left St. Louis where I had been visiting friends and family and was making my way across Kansas toward my home in Colorado. Stopping in Hays, I logged in to Facebook for a minute to read what friends may have posted.  Not far down in my feed was a post by my late husband’s cousin-in-law, saying that she and her husband were staying the night in Hays on their own way back home.  Hays is a small town.  While the post also stated that they didn’t have cell phone service in the area, it didn’t take me long to drive through a couple of hotel parking lots to figure out where they were staying.  Yes, this could be considered rather stalker-like on my part, but I thought it was just too big of a coincidence to pass up.  Connecting with family or friends after a lengthy and lonely drive across a state that has been proven to be flatter than a pancake is a reminder that even when we are apart from the ones we care about, they are all still here…..in the same sphere…..and that even if it seems unlikely that we could run into them, it can happen.  It’s a reminder that the world is not as large as we sometimes think…..and that great distances are nothing where some seemingly invisible fate is involved.  Even if you don’t believe in fate, experiences like this show us that unlikely and unexpected things do happen.  We can run into people we know in unlikely and unexpected places. In fact, it happens all of the time.  My mother has bumped into friends while vacationing in Mexico.  I agreed to meet a complete stranger in Las Vegas for a concert, only to find out that he lived in Colorado where I was in the process of moving.  I’m sure you’ve had your own experiences.  My point is, with such experiences, it stands to reason that we can also run into people we don’t yet know in unlikely and unexpected places….people who may be the very ones we’ve been waiting our whole lives to meet and who come into our lives to stay.  This means that you can walk into a store you’ve walked into a hundred times before not expecting to see or meet anyone new or anyone who totally and completely knocks the socks off your feet, but you do meet someone.  Or perhaps, it means that you’re use to seeing many people you don’t know and who you may be attracted to, but you never manage to talk to any of them, until the day that you’re struggling for a few cents in change and that good-looking guy you already noticed behind you pays it and strikes up a conversation.  Does this seem unlikely?  It doesn’t matter if it does.  It can happen.  I’ve just explained how I know and you know that it can happen.   So, why are you still doubting?