It's a Small World, After All

Awkward introductions and the miracle of connection

It was a dark and stormy night, and in retrospect, I really should have stayed home. Rain blew sideways on a chilly wind, beating against the windows of the house, and since it was January, the sun had long-since set by the time we finished dinner. I wanted to curl under a blanket with a book but had a vital mission to complete as soon as possible: deliver an invitation to my soon-to-be-six-year-old daughter’s birthday party to one of the friends who wasn’t in her class at school. My husband was out of town, so I bundled our three daughters up and hurried into the night. You might think I could have waited till the next day, but I had promised Skyler I would get it done that day at the very latest, and I like to keep my word to my kids whenever reasonable. Besides, it wasn’t far.¹

Our friend’s house was on a narrow street with no light shining on that particular part. I parked my minivan and dashed through the rain to the front door. We had met at the Y in a tumbling class our daughters were taking. Skyler’s middle name was the same as her friend’s first name, and her mom and I struck up a conversation about it one day. Then the mom happened to share that she was from Missouri.

“Oh!” I said. “My granddad was from Missouri!” 

It turned out that she was from a tiny town next to the one my granddad grew up in, and her husband was actually my distant cousin! I had never met him since he, like Matt, was also in the Navy and frequently deployed, but I knew from recent conversations that he was home right then. When I approached the house, I could see them all seated at dinner, so instead of ringing the doorbell and interrupting a rare family meal to deliver the invitation, I quietly slid the envelope under the door. 

Mission accomplished, I hopped back into the driver’s seat to head home and maneuvered the vehicle into a three-point turn. Unfortunately, the nasty combination of pitch darkness, foul weather, and no back-up camera made it very difficult to see. There was suddenly a terrible crashing sound from behind the minivan. Immediately, I slammed the car into “park” and jumped out to inspect the wreckage, hand to my mouth in expectation of some horrific discovery. At that exact moment, my heretofore long-lost relative threw open the door and sprinted outside. My victim, his mailbox, leaned heavily to the side on its almost-uprooted wooden post, though thankfully everything was still intact. 

“I’m so, so sorry!” I called out, squinting against the rain. “I was just trying to leave a birthday party invitation for your daughter–my daughter Skyler is turning six, and they’re friends–and I was backing up and couldn’t see…” 

My relative now put a hand to his chest, relieved that the damage wasn’t worse. “It’s okay! Really! Don’t even worry about it,” he said. “It just sounded bad.” 

I nodded.“Yeah! It sounded terrible! I nearly had a heart attack! By the way, I’m Joy.” I stuck out my hand. “I’m your third cousin once removed.”² 

I’ve long been fascinated by the concept of “Six degrees of separation,” the idea that we are all connected by six degrees or less. Sometimes, as through social media I watch my friends or relatives travel, I see some of them, who don’t know each other at all but both know me, in the same place at the same time. I’ve imagined conversations starting up over something random–a sunset, a chipmunk on a trail, an interesting outfit another visitor is wearing–and suddenly they realize their connection.

And actually, this is exactly what happened to me a year ago. I woke up to messages from two of my friends, one I’d met when I lived in Spain twenty years ago, and the other was a neighbor in Hawaii nine years ago. They ended up sitting on a plane right next to each other! The former neighbor mentioned that she had lived in Korea (though that wasn’t even when we met!), and the friend from Spain asked if she knew me. 

So I was delighted when, a couple weeks ago, Lilly ran into my room, waving her phone and telling me that two of her friends from totally different “eras” of her life–one who lived in Arkansas and another who had lived in Korea–appeared to be standing almost right next to each other at a recent Taylor Swift concert. “How crazy would it be,” she said, “if they somehow got to talking and realized that they both know me?” 

I loved the thought!

But here’s a story that’s crazier still. It was Christmas Day the year we lived in Seoul, when my two oldest daughters couldn’t visit because of the quarantine restrictions, and my heart was feeling especially tender. There was an Indian restaurant that we all loved, and because Matt knows Indian food always soothes my soul, we went for Christmas dinner late that afternoon. As soon as we sat down, I heard someone speaking Bengali. Hearing my first language spoken is like an old but sweetly familiar song to my heart, one of those where you hear the melody and then remember the words and find yourself singing along. I turned and saw that there was only one other table occupied just then, where two women, a teenage girl, and two men sat. 

“Matt!” I whispered, leaning across the table. “Those people over there! They’re speaking Bengali! I have to go talk to them!” 

As annoying and awkward as it may have been, I pushed my chair back and crossed the restaurant. In Bengali, I asked, “Are you from Bangladesh?” They were surprised, then delighted, and we started talking. They asked how I knew Bengali, and I told them I was born there and spent most of my first ten years in the country. 

“Where were you born?” they asked.

“Oh well,” They couldn’t possibly know, I thought to myself, “it’s just this really small missionary hospital near the border of India,” I replied. “Close to Chittagong.”

“Where?” one of the women persisted, so I told her the name. This hospital was tiny. But when I said it, the woman clapped her hands over her mouth and gasped.

“I was born there too!” 

What are the odds? No, seriously. What. Are. The. ODDS?!?! In a city of eleven million people, in a country different from the one we were born in, we—two women who came into this world in the same rural hospital seven years apart—sat at tables right next to each other?!?! How does this happen?!? 

And also: how easy would it have been to miss this? 

I’ve said before that I believe sometimes the most profound truths are tucked into children’s literature and movies. The last time I read The Long Winter³ by Laura Ingalls Wilder, I was haunted by the words:

But even after Laura was warm she lay awake listening to the wind’s wild tune and thinking of each little house in town, alone in the whirling snow with not even a light from the next house shining through. And the little town was alone on the wide prairie.”  

How eerily relatable, even if we aren’t living through a harsh 19th century winter! So much lately has created deep division and seemingly impassable moats around our hearts. We keep our bitterness swirling around us, as from behind our screens and within our walls, we hurl insults and hatred at each other.  Or sometimes, though much tamer, we use excuses that feel perfectly legitimate: “I don’t want to annoy anyone.” “I’m an introvert.” “My family has always been reserved.” But then we wonder why we always feel so lonely.

This past weekend, as my kids watched Lego Movie 2 (not for the first time), I heard Emmet say, “It’s easy to harden your heart. To open it? That’s the hardest thing to do.” I’ve been rolling this idea around in my head ever since. Even as I write this, I think about some people I’ve found deeply irritating just in the past week. Is it really worth my time and effort to keep trying to connect? Wouldn’t it be better to stay in my comfortable quiet? 

But then I remember the delight I felt the morning I woke up to those two messages, knowing my friends had randomly met each other and thought of me. I recall that Christmas, when the world felt far too big, and God in His kindness showed me just how amazingly small it is. And if I hadn’t dared to talk to the people at the other table, if I had stayed nestled in my own comfort, coddling my fear of the awkward, I would have completely missed out on the gift.

So I’ll do my best to keep my heart open: asking questions, risking awkward introductions, seeking out threads to pull and find the myriad ways we are all woven together. Because what I can tell you for sure today is that when we discover those precious connections, they make the world that much more miraculous. 

I’d love if you shared some of your stories of crazy coincidences and connections in the comments!

A couple quick links:

-Related to this post, I have seen/ deeply enjoyed the Barbie movie, and if you’re wondering why, I thought this write-up was excellent. It reminded me of my feelings while attending the Top Gun: Maverick movie premiere in Seoul. After a year of feeling extremely separated from my Korean friends and neighbors because of all the restrictions and fear during the pandemic, that experience was such a healing balm. At one point, the movie’s promoters passed out black aviator sunglasses. It was oddly moving to watch everyone work together to share these simple, cheap toys. I gave some to a little boy, and others made sure my kids had them. This article does such a good job of expressing what I felt experienced that day.

-I’ve been reading/ loving Suleika Jaouad’s The Isolation Journals. (If you haven’t read it yet, her memoir Between Two Kingdoms is excellent and how I found her Substack.) In fact, what I’ve written here was inspired by her recent post, (co-written with her husband, musician Jon Batiste) on “glorious awkwardness” and what it taught me. I highly recommend downloading the Substack app so you can be part of her weekly Chats where everyone shares “one small joy”. It’s delightful. Other good stuff on Substack: Sarah Bahiraei’s One Foot on Both captures so beautifully the “both/and” joys and heartaches of living overseas. I’ve also really been enjoying Bec Fergie’s The Sunday Morning Snuggle.

-Marc Scibilia’s one of my favorite musicians. His newest release Mindy is so, so good. Check out Bittersweet, and let me know if your eyes are still dry after the beautiful song is over.

1. Just to manage expectations, I want to be clear that this was before smartphones. I’ve been mothering for a while now. I honestly can’t think of the last time I used paper invitations for a kid’s birthday party, but it may have been then (14 years ago).

2. You may be inclined to think this was my most awkward introduction ever. I would argue that it wasn’t.

3. I’ve read the series aloud to my kids every four years or so.