Time is of the essence

I thought about this entry because of a situation that recently happened by where I used to live. There were two men coming home from shul and due to the storm, a tree fell on top of them instantly ending their lives. Someone posted an e-mail about this to our listserv and talked about how if they had left two minutes earlier or later, they might still be alive. It's scary and sad to think about, but the message was about how we should treat people because we never know what Hashem's plan is for us from day to day.

Friday, June 22, 2007
It's all about timing...
Current mood: content
Category: Life

I was reflecting on this concept yesterday but didn't have a chance to write about it till now.
Yesterday morning, my husband took my cell phone (along with his own cell phone) to work with him. So I missed my alarm (teaches me a lesson for relying too heavily on my cell for everything) and was late getting Eitan to day care. On my way back to the car, someone stopped me because they wanted to ask me about the temple I attend. Had I gone earlier, like at my usual time, I would not have run into this person and would not have been able to tell them how much I like our temple. (The embarrassing thing was that I thought his son was a girl. I'm always the one correcting people who think Eitan is a girl. Oops!)
That got me thinking of some other situations that had an impact on my life, all because of timing.

1. Had I not been talking to one guy outside a bar on February 3, 2002, I would have not met my husband. One of my friends is partially responsible because she got kicked out of the bar and we all had to leave. We were deciding what to do next and I mentioned that I couldn't stay out too late because I had to bowl the next morning. What are the odds that the one person to overhear that would be the person that introduced me to my husband?

2. When we moved to NJ, it was all due to good timing that I met one of my close friends here. After the week I met her, I didn't see her again in temple for about a month or so. Had I not been at temple that week, it would have been a while before we met. So it's very fortunate that we moved the week we did.

3. A few years ago, my husband was leaving a shopping center and was getting ready to turn onto the main road. He had an itch on his hand and scratched it before proceeding with the turn. Before he made the turn, a truck sped through the light at the last second. Had he not had that itch, a truck would have hit him.

So yes, it's all about timing....

Feel free to post your own situations like this, as blog replies.

Follow up: The guy who asked me about our shul never ended up joining. And this happened about a week before we got the call from the shul president's wife that started all the trouble with our rental schedule. He's not the president anymore and I know they're trying to make some changes. Recently some friends told me that they are planning to move to the NY/NJ area and I encouraged them to check out our previous shul. So I don't harbor hard feelings toward it now. It just wasn't the right fit for our family but it might be the right fit for other families. Anyway, this blog is about timing, not about shuls. I just thought the timing of this post was ironic in some ways.

I still encourage anyone who wants to post about their own timing situations to do so in the comments section or in their own blogs. :)