day 16: Saturday's denied impulse buy

I have been missing moments and neglecting to document the crazy coincidences of the past days.
I have to rewind and share my regret about a crazy, crazy not-coincidence from the weekend.

Saturday, we attended wedding #5 of the summer :) Background to thicken the plot is just: I did not know a person at the wedding, we had to drive about an hour and Ed was going to play the bag pipes but didn't. It was one of Ed's neighborhood  growing up friends.  I totally forgot to get a gift card/card for the wedding, which is unlike me because I usually have cards/gifts waiting in advance but I'm slipping lately. So we had to go to Target in between the wedding and the reception, which wasn't convenient at all. We finally get to Target and we're frantically reading cards. There was not much time to properly card hunt since driving took so looooong. We were digging through wedding cards and for whatever reason, I was compelled by the loss of pet cards. The inner dialogue starting going a million miles an hour.
'Amy, focus on the task. Get a wedding card, fast.'
         'I should get a pet sympathy card. I don't have one of those in my collection.'
'Stop buying things you don't need. Pick a wedding card and go!'
          'Quick grab a pet loss card and put it in your purse.'
'Ed will think I'm a weirdo... "Here's a card for the wedding and I thought I should just get a 'Sorry, you lost your pet card.' just because...
          'Who cares?! Ed knows you are crazy. He likes it. Buy a pet card. You need a PET CARD!!"
'You are a card hoarder! Stop it!'
          'Get a pet card. Someone needs it. You'll use it.'

I put down the pet cards. I bought a nice wedding card, grabbed a gift card and a sprite and got back in the car in record time.

We get to the wedding and I sit down happily at a table full of strangers. I LOVE strangers.
Ed is always dumbfounded at the amount of time it takes for strangers to become my friends. I LOVED our table. We sat outside by lake and it rained. We introduced ourselves, made awkward jokes, told stories about our family memories (which are always easier to tell to strangers with alcohol), we found common interests, told about recent divorces, job changes, child births, etc. Then there it was. This dear, darling woman who I felt like I already knew with happy, reddish spiky hair and a rather quiet husband almost cried talking about how she just lost her dog.
My heart sunk.

  .....'See, I told you!'

ArrrHHHH!!! 

I could have reached down in my purse and afterwards handed her an awesome card!!! I could have said, God told me I needed to get this card because He knew I would be meeting you. He knows that your heart is broken. He loves you and knows you loved your dog. His heart is sad cause yours is sad. And here, I got you this card. And I secretly believe dogs are in heaven and maybe they even have voices up there. And when we get there they will tell us how they loved us and have been waiting up there for us.


That would have been crazy, but crazy wonderful. She would have never forgot that. Few things in life compare to how sad it can be to lose a pet. Just try not to cry through that episode of the 'Wonder Years'
I just was kicking myself all the way home from the wedding.

Why is it that I hear God's voice so clearly for weird little things like that, but not big things?? Why don't I just do those things instead of argue like a lunatic with the God whisper voice? I should know by now that what I think is a weird little thing is not weird or little at all. That would have been a huge, amazing thing if I did that at the wedding to a complete stranger.

Even weirder... my dear little guinea pig is struggling to breathe downstairs right now as I write this. I've had her since Mother's day when Ed and I were dating. I've called her Mama Bear. It is just sooooo sad. I know God knows every little sparrow that falls... I want to go pet her during her last little breaths but I just can't bear it. Suffering. God can't bear it either.