Jill

So, to continue the story of Jill, here are a few things we discovered that still blows my mind.  She was back in Euless briefly for junior high but a different junior high than I attended.  Her oldest, a son, lives in Hurst near us with his wife and twins.  Her husband was born and raised in Simi Valley, CA where we lived for 3 years and had our first child.  She and her husband now live in Tacoma, WA just 3 or 4 miles from where we lived in Steilacoom for one year way back when my husband re-joined the Army.  She and her family had lived in Oklahoma for years (just hours from her son and me) and just recently sold that house to her daughter and family.  She met her Army husband in Germany while she was a senior in high school.  They married right after her graduation.  She has a boy and two girls, all older than our kids if I remember right.

We probably were in Simi Valley at the same time at some point since her in-laws still lived there when we did.  She said they visited a lot back then.  They have both since passed away.  No doubt she comes into our area very often via DFW Airport to see her grandbabies in Hurst and her daughter in Oklahoma who now has a boy, another grandbaby to visit.

And then we are in the same field.  She is the guru for Pierce County Library Sytem in Washington and is in charge of all things Polaris.  I am in a single building library but I am also in charge of Polaris.

I think what is most interesting is that God knew all this but our paths never crossed where it was logical, Simi Valley, for instance or Hurst, Texas.  He made it so that there was no other way to explain our meeting but Him.  Syracuse, New York?  Who would have thought?  God had ordained this meeting so that all honor, praise and glory was given to Him where it belongs.  And we do give it all to Him!

Back to the meeting in Syracuse.  I left for the airport that Saturday afternoon and Jill stayed on for some additional training the next week with Polaris.  We had exchanged email addresses and Monday morning one of us wrote the other.  Don't remember who wrote to who.  But I do remember that we were still discovering so many things about each other that she was quite emotional.  At one point she said to me, "Becky, I have to quit doing this until I get home cause the trainer can see me crying and he thinks something is wrong."  Or something to that effect.

As we continued to communicate, we just would get overwhelmed with how unlikely it was that we would ever meet again, much less in the circumstances we did.  She told our story on a local radio station and I called in our "friend" story on a Christian station here.  It just amazes us still how God works.  He must have had a lot of fun getting us back together.

So now when we go to PUG, we share a room and stay up every night for hours talking.  We still have so much in common, like military husbands, grown children, and grandchildren.  We have empty nests now to commisserate over.  This year the meeting is in Dallas.  I think I will room with her at the hotel so we can talk late into the night.  She will spend one night with us in Hurst and actually visit the twins and their parents for a while too.  She is making a week of it.  God is good, all the time!