This is just too good of a story not to tell. It’s a story about how God answers the unasked prayers we never think to pray in shocking ways. I’m still grinning.
The story starts a week ago on my birthday. I was meeting up with my mom to celebrate when she told me about a phone call several weeks prior with her own mother who told her about a second or third cousin who was having a book signing at the local Borders Bookstore. Neither of them attended the signing but my mom did look his book up online though she couldn’t remember his name when she related this all to me. She did tell me it was a Christian book about addiction and depression. I thought about calling Borders to find out who this cousin was; I loved the idea of having another Christian author in the family. However, as it turned out, I didn’t have to make that call.
When my Grandmother called later in the evening to wish me a happy birthday, she also told me about the book signing and she had a name: Doug Bolton. When I heard it, I thought to myself, “I know that name from somewhere. How do I know that name?” First chance I had, I looked him up on my computer starting with my e-mail first and sure enough, there he was.
Years ago I contacted a man to ask to be taken off a mailing list of an Oregon State University alumni newsletter. He noticed the reference to my books in the signature of my e-mail and as he was also a writer, we started corresponding once in a while over the years about our books but never met in person, though we live in the same town.
After learning of our connection, I e-mailed him immediately asking if we could meet for coffee and checked with my grandmother to make sure I knew just how we were related. He is my grandfather’s cousin which makes us third cousins.
So today, I found a picture of my grandpa and brought it with me to show him. I hadn’t said anything yet as I wanted to tell him we were family, not just friends, in person. We started talking about our books and found we have a lot in common already; he was brought up in a Quaker family, in a meeting that used to be in the neighborhood where I now live, where my great-grandparents lived, but a meeting that no longer exists. You can imagine my surprise right there but when I showed him his cousin’s picture and told Doug I was Gib’s granddaughter, he was stunned. I am sure he will be absorbing that news for days to come. It took me a while to get over the shock myself that I was related to one of my friends.
One of the most incredible things for me about this whole story is I know so little about my grandpa’s family though I have been told by many I look just like the Woods. My grandpa, mom, aunt, and I share an uncanny resemblance and when my great-great uncles saw me at my great-aunt’s funeral several years back, they took one look at me and said, “You look like our mother.” So our “family look” runs very strong from one generation to the next and I got it. When Doug found out we were related, he said I looked a lot like his mom, who as it turns out, is still living in an assisted living home in South Salem. You know I will be visiting.
I feel so grateful God let us know of our connection, that we’re family. As I said before in my post about our Hoggatt family reunion this summer, I didn’t have a lot of contact with blood family beyond my grandparents growing up and was told little so knowing my more distant cousins and great-aunts and uncles means so much to me. I love knowing where I’ve come from and I love now having the opportunity to know much more about my grandpa’s life and his family whom I so closely resemble. It’s the prayer I never thought to pray. I am so grateful God gives us what we need even when we don’t realize we need it. He is so good to us.
Since I usually have a point to what I write on here, more than, “Isn’t this an awesome story?”, the moral of this tale is, “Be kind to everyone you meet. You never to whom you are related. (In our souls, we are all related, sometimes the relationship is just more obvious.)”
As an epilogue, Doug and I will now be working on doing events and signings together, probably in the spring. Meanwhile, on December 10th, I am going to support him at his next signing at Eola Hills Winery which, with all the additional music and artists, should be quite an event. The invitation is below. You are all invited to come.
This is his website: http://dougbolton.com/