Frank McIntyre over at Times and Seasons did an interesting post on his great, great-great, and great-great-great grandparents. I read the posts carefully in case I should be related to anyone. I wasn’t. Oh, darn.

But it reminded me of this really cool thing that happened to me. Well, it happened to my great-great grandma and I only recently became aware of it.

I had a pile of family history compiled by my great aunt which I had only barely perused a long time ago. Looking for something one day, I came upon a history of my great great grandma, Sarah Rogerson Lister. She and her family were in the Martin handcart company. They all survived the journey and settled in southern Utah.

When the book about the Martin and Willie companies came out, I was delighted to see her listed. Her brother, Josiah, kept a journal of their trip and some of his recollections are at the church history center.

I see my best friend, who lives about a mile from me, maybe four times a year. We live in different wards, our lives are busy and we just don’t get together. We talk about once a month on the phone and just pick right up where we left off. When I committed myself to the psyche unit, she’s the one I called to go clean up my bedroom in case anybody should see the mess.

I called her last month about something and we were chatting and I said, “Oh! Guess what? My great-great grandma was in the Martin Handcart Company! And she’s in that new book that’s out!”

She was quiet for a moment, then she said, “Arlene, my great great grandpa was in the rescue company. His name was Ethan Hanks.”

Now, I lived all over the place growing up. This friend and I met 29 years ago when I moved to Utah, quite by coincidence when she bought a trailer I was selling. We just clicked from the first moment we met. She is like a sister to me and actually we quite resemble each other.

I believe this is more than a coincidence. I know I’ve shared this before, but this quote by CS Lewis bears repeating:

In friendship… we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years difference in the dates of our birth, a few more miles between certain houses, a choice of one university instead of another… the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting — any one of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly, no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” can truly be saying to every group of Christian friends, “You have not chosen one another, but I have chosen you for one another.” The friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauty of others.

Isn’t that just totally cool?

PS, sorry, fellow MM bloggers for hogging all the blogging.