Gramma's Things: a Confirmation that God is in Control

This is a story that happened to me in the last week which is confirmation to me that God is in control of all things.

In November of 2012 my mother passed away at the age of 94.  For many years she said that she did not want a funeral or a memorial when she died.  She always said that if people didn't come to visit her when she was alive, she didn't want them to come and see her when she was dead.  She also wanted to be cremated.  So on December 1 which was the day arranged because some of us had to travel a goodly distance,  the immediate family met at her apartment.  This was my brother and his two daughters, my husband and myself, my son and his little family, and my daughter and her two children.   My brother brought  my mother's ashes, and we spent quite a bit of time looking through all her photographs that went back to the late 1930's.  After that all of her expensive jewelry was divided between her grandchildren, as were a goodly sum of silver dollars.  As the day progressed, other of her possessions  went to anyone who wanted them as her apartment was going to be sold and there was a lot of her things that needed to be disposed of.  One item my daughter kept asking about was my mother's little leather purse that seemed to have disappeared.  She kept saying "where is gramma's purse, where is gramma's purse".. My daughter and my mother were very close while my relationship with my daughter has not been good.  As a matter of fact, I have not seen her since this meeting.

Later on, after my daughter had left, my husband found the purse on a hanger with a coat hung over it.  
Time passed, and I did not go back to the apartment again until April. My husband and I were to meet my brother at my mother's apartment and pack things up in preparation for the apartment going up for sale.  We came home with many, many boxes and all of her clothing.   I gave the clothing away to a neighbour who is the same size my mother was, but I kept a cardigan sweater which still smelled of Gramma, and so began the box entitled "Gramma's Things".

I wanted to give my daughter special memories of her Gramma, so I put the sweater at the bottom of a box, put her prayer journal (which was a diary from 1991) on top of that. Next I put the little leather purse she had asked about and inside the little purse  I put two broaches, a gold locket, and a diamond and ruby ring wrapped in paper towel and sealed in a ziploc bag.  I also put some photographs of Gramma in the purse, one of them of her and my daughter taken at my son's wedding in 2000. At the top of the box were crocheted dish cloths that my mother had made in abundance. 



I had hoped my daughter would come over to Vancouver Island where we live, but she did not, so a little over a week ago I decided to mail the package to her.  I did not know the address, but the area.  In the upper left corner of where the return address is, I wrote "Gramma's things" and our address.  My husband found what we thought was the correct address for my daughter and the package was mailed.  The tracking notice said it was delivered  a couple of days later.  Day by day went by and I didn't hear anything from my daughter but I was not surprised.  But one thing I was worried about was that I had read the prayer journal when I first got it when Gramma died, and I had forgotten that she said some things that my daughter would not like to hear. I wished that I had not included it in the box.

Yesterday my husband went to our mailbox to get the mail and inside was a card to pick up a box called "Gramma's Things"..  I couldn't believe it,  my heart dropped and I couldn't believe that my daughter would not want Gramma's precious belongings.  My husband went to pick it up and it was in the same condition we had sent it in, unopened.  It said on the package that the parcel was returned but not why.   So my husband and I began to wonder about the address.   A second search turned up a different address, with a familiar sounding street name.  Also, we used her phone number to find the first address and the number my husband used was one number off.    So it wasn't that she didn't want the package, she didn't receive the package.
Now my shock at the thought of her sending it back was turned to joy because I could take that prayer journal out.  And the miracle is that the person to whom the package was delivered was honest enough to turn it into the post office because it was the wrong address.  They could have been dishonest and opened it and kept the diamond and ruby ring which was a 50th anniversary present to my mother, and her little purse that meant so much to my daughter, would have been lost forever.

So now the box called Gramma's Things is back in our home and re-addressed to the proper address.  I am not mailing it until next Monday because I don't want it to be caught up in the weekend mail.
And I know that God was in control of all of this, bringing the box unopened back to me so I could take that prayer journal diary out so that my daughter would not be upset by what she would read, but that hopefully she will be very happy at what she will receive.

vcg/September 2015