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People from our past unveil God’s hidden tapestry
A chance reunion at a mountain church rekindles memories of a childhood friend, revealing how God quietly weaves lives together across decades.
By Greg Asimakoupoulos | FāVS News Columnist
The views expressed in this opinion column are those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of FāVS News.
While vacationing at Lake Chelan recently, I attended St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. That quaint little log church built in 1897 holds special memories for me. For one thing, the former rector Linda Mayer is a friend.
Imagine my surprise some years back to discover that the priest who was delivering the Sunday homily was someone I’d known half a century earlier. Prior to discerning a call to the ministry, Linda had been the bookstore manager at Wenatchee High School when I was a student.
Although now retired, my friend is still involved at St. Andrew’s. I saw her on Pentecost Sunday. We had a lovely visit. I mentioned a couple of teachers from WHS with whom I am still in contact. She mentioned having read my post on Facebook that morning. It was a flashback of something I’d written during COVID that dealt with trusting God.
Beginning to see God’s hand
And then I remembered another connection to Linda I’d forgotten. One of the first people to die in the pandemic in our state was a mutual friend. Andrea Dudley Bowman was an Episcopal priest in Kittitas County who died on Palm Sunday 2020. But “Andi” was more than simply that to me. She was a symbol of life’s tapestry that God is weaving behind the scenes.
When my pastor-father was called to serve a congregation in Marysville in 1957, we moved into a neighborhood with lots of kids our age. As it turned out, our next door neighbor was Marysville’s mayor. Mayor Dudley’s youngest daughter was a girl by the name of Andrea. Because she was six years older than me and eight years older than my little brother, she became our babysitter. Andi also started attending our church. We got along famously.
In 1961 as Andi was about to enter high school, she and her folks moved to Santa Barbara. I lost total contact with her. That is until 2018 when I did some internet research on people in my past. Among others that popped up on Google, I discovered that Andi Dudley was now the Rev. Andrea Dudley Bowman serving a church an hour and a half from where I was living on Mercer Island.
Joy of connecting with an an old friend
I reached out to Andi and arranged to host her for lunch at Covenant Living at the Shores where I was serving as chaplain. For nearly two hours we talked non-stop. We had a lot to catch up on. After all, a lot of life had transpired in the 57 years since we’d last seen each other.
We reflected on how each of us had ended up in the ministry including the twists and turns of life that brought us to that point. I can’t remember what we ordered for lunch, but I will never forget the joy I felt in reconnecting with a long-lost friend.
I shared about my dad’s death in 2008 and my mom’s dementia journey that was nearing an end. Andi told me she had lost five family members to death in the preceding three years. She also confided that she was dealing with some serious health issues. We promised to keep in touch with each other.
Walking through the shadow of death
Several months later Andi alerted me to the fact that she was in the hospital. I stopped to see her. We prayed together. I was hopeful that she was recovering. And then the coronavirus began casting a long shadow over those with compromised respiratory systems.
I wondered why Andi was not responding to my texts and emails. And then someone alerted me to a familiar name in the news. Andi was one of the first COVID deaths in Washington.
Finding Andi’s nephew on Facebook, I reached out for more information and conveyed to Royce the beautiful reunion his aunt and I had recently had. It provided me the opportunity to reflect on how God had been at work in Andi’s life and in mine during the six decades in which we’d had no contact.
And seeing Linda Mayer at St. Andrew’s Church in Chelan recently brought that beautiful memory of Andi back into focus.
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