Synchronicity. Meaningful coincidences. There are no accidents. Everything happens for a reason. There is a bigger plan.
We tell ourselves the events occurring in our lives are connected by meaning. Maybe they are; maybe they aren’t. As I’ve said before, I prefer to believe they are. Things make a bit more sense that way. Not much. Only a bit.
But I’ll take it.
While caring for a seriously ill child, a song spontaneously played on my iPhone, randomly selected by iTunes as a suitable children’s song. Thanks to technology, we can easily stream comforting music. Music, to serve as a pleasant backdrop in a room full of loud monitors, amidst the drone of an oxygen concentrator and the intermittent blasts of suctioning equipment. To drown out those misplaced medical noises in a child’s bedroom, otherwise full of lovingly placed stuffed toys and princess paraphernalia. Why should a pre-schooler have to listen to that, rather than dreamy lullaby versions of Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and Chopin’s Prelude 20 in C Minor, while drifting into another realm where – I am certain – she is reigning as the princess she is, breathing and moving easily? Playing. Laughing. Smiling. Living.
Unfortunately, her mother – a lovely young woman herself – knows that her daughter will never grow into the lovely young woman she was meant to become one day. Just as my own child, David, did not grow into the lovely young man he should now be. In that other realm – where genetics and oxygen are meaningless, and princesses don’t suffer – she will. She has. But here, in this realm – our unfair, inequitable, unjust dominion of indiscriminately colliding atoms – she has been dealt the worst cards of all from an even worse deck.
Or has she?
She doesn’t need pity. There is dignity and purpose and importance in her existence. We are not all here on earth for the same reason, are we? Your job here is different than mine. Different than hers. Different than that of every single other person who’s ever lived.
Her job is to be a princess. And princesses need no pity. Princesses bestow gifts of charity and assistance upon their subjects. Sometimes, their subjects are their nurses, and the gifts come in the form of an angelic child, dozing contentedly and breathing easily in her own bed after a particularly trying day. In her own house, with her family who love her beyond all measure. While her mother kisses her and tells me her daughter will bring messages to those who’ve already left this realm, this song plays by chance – and I remember what I already know. There is no chance in life, but there is charity. There are angels on earth, and some of them are princesses.
Only a boy named David
Only a little sling
Only a boy named David
But he could pray and sing
Only a boy named David
Only a rippling brook
Only a boy named David
But five little stones he took.
And one little stone went in the sling
And the sling went round and round
And one little stone went in the sling
And the sling went round and round
And round and round
And round and round
And round and round and round
And one little prayer went up to God
And the giant came tumbling down.
I never in my life heard that song before yesterday.
Thank you, Princess.