Lest you might have surmised from reading this blog that I live a small, insignificant or boring life…well, you couldn’t be more wrong. Well, you might be bored living my slow life. My little mind finds infinite ways to entertain myself. Yesterday afternoon I made a quick run down to the local grocery store a mile from here, just to pick up a few ingredients for dinner and the weekend. I had the most surreal experience. I’ve had this kind of thing happen before, but not recently, so it really stood out.

It was mid-afternoon on a Saturday. Tourist season is over so the parking lot of the store was almost empty. I parked easily and slowly meandered in…and just at the exact moment I walked through the door, a woman came out of nowhere and met me – shoulder to shoulder – and we pressed up against one another to get through the narrow opening of the door. I, of course, automatically said, “excuse me,” thinking perhaps I had somehow stepped in front of her. I almost stepped on her.

But I hadn’t. She’d come from behind me. And then the weirdness started. I swore she walked around me when I stopped for a cart. But as I approached the produce department on my very specific quest for a lemon, there she was! Stopped, with a cart, studying the lemons. I waited patiently for her to move on.

We smiled at one another and continued on our merry way. But I could not lose her. My merry way was her merry way. I had about ten? maybe 12? items on my list to buy. Did she have the exact same list?!

TWICE I said, “pardon me, go ahead…” and waited for her to walk ahead. Otherwise our carts would have hit. Mind you, there didn’t seem to be anyone else shopping in the store at the time. I rounded the last aisle I would need to visit and made a beeline for the checkout. There was one – one – lane open. And as I put the first couple of items up on the conveyor belt, up she walked, crowded up behind me and began unloading her groceries up against mine. I had to insert my arm between our items and place the little stick down on the belt to differentiate them. Then as I walked away from the checkout I smiled at her and she said, and I quote: “have a nice day.”

I laughed out loud! Actually, I laughed all the way home. This is what my son calls “matrix traffic.”

He believes the traffic you suddenly encounter out of nowhere didn’t actually exist before you began moving. In this simulation where we are living our lives (that I have called life on the Holodeck), the matrix invents ways to slow you down or divert your path. I have always laughed and thought his viewpoint to be a bit of a conspiracy theory. But yesterday, I realized that this phenomena has occurred often throughout my life.

I was reminded of one such incident that happened decades ago. I was alone, driving home through Detroit late at night and my car stalled. I’d run out of gas – I had just realized that the gas gage wasn’t working on my car and I would have to get that checked first thing in the morning. I glided onto the shoulder of the freeway just at the entrance to a weigh station. The weigh station, built to check large semi-haulers are within legal limits, was not open. Or even lit up. I think I was in my early to mid twenties, long before the invention of cell phones. No one knew where I was.

I sat there a few minutes trying to decide what to do. And then a car pulled up behind me. I would have relished a police car at that moment, but this appeared to be a common SUV. An elderly man stepped out and walked up to my window. “Hello. What is your trouble? We have run out of gas. I’m going to walk up to the weigh station to use the pay phone and call for help.”

I was trembling. I informed him that I, too, had apparently run out of gas. He told me to sit tight. Not that I had any choice.

A few minutes later he returned – literally out of the mist – and informed me that his son was on his way from a nearby suburb and would bring two gallon containers of gasoline. They would then follow me to the next exit with a gas station and make sure I was safe. He then told me that his wife was in the car with a thermos of hot coffee if I would like to join them. And I did! I mean, if this were the unfolding of a Stephen King novel, I wasn’t getting away anyway. I might as well die drinking coffee.

We sat conversing and sipping coffee while their son put gas in both our tanks and started my car. They then followed me to the next exit and down the road a half mile or so of flat farm country to the gas station. I had scraped together a few dollars to afford a gallon or two of fresh gas. I was right behind him in line as we paid the cashier, and had kept just enough money in my pocket to repay him for the gallon of gas they had so kindly gifted me. And when I walked out the door seconds behind him, they were gone. I literally walked out past the gas tanks to look – there were no taillights in the distance. And I knew: they were angels.

Now, were these angels real? Absolutely. Solid as a rock; that I didn’t doubt. Had I just had a surreal, otherworldly experience? Yep.

Many such things have happened since. (Although I have never run out of gas again!) I don’t doubt my experiences any longer. I’m not hallucinating. I’ve never been more sober than in the middle of one of these occurrences. I trust them. When you pray for divine intervention, you’d best accept it however it shows up.

So I told my son about the woman in the grocery store and we laughed and laughed. Exact right place, exact right time. She was my matrix traffic and I hers. There isn’t anything sinister going on. What I call God and he calls the Matrix might be very different in concept and purpose. But it’s always a sign to slow down and notice. To me, at least, it’s always a blessing. Don’t tell me I don’t live in a magical world. And you are right here with me.