Could this be?

You know how sometimes a scene from your past crystallizes in your head...and you are not even sure what sparked it? For some reason, lately I have been picturing my mother getting on a horse for the first time. I had a high-school friend who was drop-dead gorgeous, and as nice as she was pretty. Diana. Anyway, Diana lived about 3 miles from me on top of a small mountain and she had horses. My Mom had once told me that one of her unfulfilled desires was to ride a horse. She had never been on a horse.

So I told Diana, and if I recall correctly, she rode her horse from the top of the mountain down to our house along busy roads. She and the horse waited at the curb. I brought my mom outside and we helped her on the horse. She sat there, a little tight-lipped and white-faced.

"I'd like to get down now," she said, "That's enough."
"Are you sure?" asked Diana, "Don't you want me to lead the horse around a little?"
"Oh no," said my mother, "This is all I wanted to do. It is very high up on a horse, isn't it?"
We helped my mom down, and I suppose Diana then rode the horse home. I don't quite remember that part.

Honestly, I wonder if it is all a dream. I don't remember any other details, but I can hear my mom's voice as if it was yesterday saying, "It's very high up on a horse, isn't it?"

So I had been thinking of Diana, remembering snippets of my friendship with her. We lost touch right after high-school. I always liked her and wished I had kept in touch. Yesterday, a stranger asked to friend me on Facebook. I get a lot of that since I am an author, and readers will often ask to "friend" me. I try to steer them to my author page, but sometimes just get lazy and friend them on my personal page. Anyway, I "friended" this stranger, and then went to her Facebook page. She had a picture of herself with a dog so I figured it was one of my dog book fans. I gazed at her picture, thinking, I know this person. I glanced at some of her other posts and friends, and saw the last name of my old high-school friend from about 40 years ago! It was Diana, Diana of the mountaintop horses!

I don't know how she found me, but I was so happy she had. Funny how God brought that about, isn't it? He's always surprising me like that. Things I never prayed for, and didn't know I wanted, until they miraculously materialized. And then I realized my soul must have been asking for that very thing...it was obvious in retrospect.

It should not surprise me, what God does and how unusually He does it. I mean, who would think the savior of the world would be announced by a star shimmering in the sky? Or that He would be born in a humble manger by a frightened, unwed teen? Nothing God does should ever surprise me given how inscrutable His ways have always been.

I couldn't wait to catch up with my old friend Diana. We messaged back and forth, and she didn't remember specifically the horse episode, but told me it surely could be true since she used to ride down the mountain to my house all the time. She told me she didn't have to ride on busy roads, however. The mountain was covered with fields and trails. Nowadays, that mountain is covered with neighborhoods instead. Slowly, the world I remembered is disappearing, along with my memory. How gracious of God to bring a small bit of it back to me, a small star of wonder that flickered a moment in my universe.
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Psalm 136:7 

To him who made the great lights, for his steadfast love endures forever;

Matthew 2:2 

Saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

Psalm 8:3 

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 

For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

John 16:13 

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.

2 Kings 7:2 

Then the captain on whose hand the king leaned said to the man of God, “If the Lord himself should make windows in heaven, could this thing be?”