25th Anniversary Edition: Wasn't 1985 just the other day?

Twenty Five Years.

I can't believe it is already a year ago that I published my most popular post ever, They Gave Us Six Months, a love story about an arranged marriage.

Arranged by God.

I am more in awe than ever of the rightness of that match, and more in love than ever with the man who is still the greatest gift I have ever received from God.

We were engaged, December 8th, 1984. It would have been my dad's 83rd birthday, and I was so sorry he had not had a chance to meet my future husband. On the other hand, under the circumstances, he might have reacted poorly at first...

Did I mention our first date had just been about a month before?

We went to a party at the home of dear friends, and as much as we wanted to, we decided not to tell anyone because, well, they gave us six months, as I said in my post from last year.

Did I mention they meant six months of dating?  That we would get married was not on anyone's radar screen. They thought we would probably kill each other before Christmas.

One of the activities at the party was that everyone wrote down their favorite scripture verse on a strip of paper and put it in a bag, then we shook them all up and passed around the bag and selected one of the strips and read it aloud. Then the person who put it in there had a chance to say what the verse meant to them.

That was easy. I scribbled down Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and he shall direct thy paths."  It was one of the few verses that I had really memorized.

Did I mention I had only been a Christian for about eight months?

Saved that previous Easter Sunday, I was one of those who had a kind of Damascus Road experience - or maybe a Woman at the Well experience - at the age of 29. In any event, it was a powerful transformation. I was so in love with Jesus that He was a continuous tangible Presence. When I got shut into my prayer closet, I didn't leave until I had a response from the Lord, whether it took four minutes or four days. It wouldn't have mattered to me if I had never met anyone or gotten married, and frankly I considered that possibility. Remember, I was from the South, and they had kind of stopped asking my mom "Isn't she married yet?" about five years before.  She had actually stopped asking rather before that.

I was ready to leave Wall Street and go live in Calcutta, or at least Newark, and devote my life to whatever adventure God had for me. I even quit my job, but got talked out of it. I sat Mama down and had a couple of shots of Jack Daniels before I told her that one.

Wait, where was I?

Oh, yes. Passing around the bag of little scripture verses.  So it's finally my turn, and I pull one out of the bag, and it's...

Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and he shall direct thy paths."

In someone else's handwriting. Turned out it was the only one that was in the bag twice.

Guess who drew the other one?  The one I had written?  Yep.

The whole thing was kind of like that. When I went home for Christmas, I sat Mama down again and had another couple of shots of Jack so I could tell her that I was leaving my Wall Street job and marrying a man she had never heard of, and oh, by the way, he was arriving the day after Christmas to meet everyone.  (PS- Mama, if you can see this from heaven, I am SO sorry. I totally get it now.)

Sometime before Christmas we decided it was time to plan a wedding. The Lord gave us a date: April 20.

Ah, the Divine sense of irony.  Muhammad's birthday, Hitler's birthday,  Weed Day, and L. Ron Hubbard Day. Later to become the day of the Columbine massacre and the Johnson Space Center Shooting.

And every few years, the day of the school board elections. Like today.  (What other idiots are working the polls on their 25th anniversary?)

I bought my dress off the rack and it was about 3 sizes too big.  Who knew my mother-in-law was a seamstress who specialized in beading, formal wear and wedding gowns?

Did I mention it cost $325?  Even in 1985, that was cheap.

The wedding was planned in about an hour. Seven phone calls and we had a band, a photographer, a hall, a caterer, invitations, wedding favors, and two limos.

Did I mention the five course catered meal was $9 a plate?   That was probably cheap in 1965.

The whole thing since has been kind of like that.  In the other post I talked about the hardship, but there has been much joy as well, and an overwhelming assurance of God's faithful presence, with a periodic demonstration of miraculous provision thrown in.

Happy anniversary, honey. I love you more than you'll ever know. 

Proverbs 3:5-6 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and he shall direct thy paths."

Remembering Columbine

No, this is not going to be a discussion of why homeschooling is an attractive alternative to the risk of school shootings. This isn't even the anniversary of Columbine, which not so incidentally was planned to occur on Hitler's birthday.

Shoot, it isn't even Wednesday, when I give myself permission to write off topic.

But I've been thinking about it all week after last week's discussion in our youth group of knowing God so intimately that you would be willing to die rather than renounce Him.

The first part of the lesson was about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. There are many stories in the Bible of people choosing to die rather than renounce their faith in God, but this is one of the most famous. It has echoed down to our time through, among other things, Negro Spirituals in the 19th century and Martin Luther King in the 20th.

Maybe you know the story of three young Jewish men thrown into a fiery furnace for refusing to bow down to a gigantic statue of King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. (Daniel, Chapter 3)

12 But there are some Jews whom you have set over the affairs of the province of Babylon—Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—who pay no attention to you, O king. They neither serve your gods nor worship the image of gold you have set up."

13 Furious with rage, Nebuchadnezzar summoned Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. So these men were brought before the king, 14 and Nebuchadnezzar said to them, "Is it true, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods or worship the image of gold I have set up? 15 Now when you hear the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp, pipes and all kinds of music, if you are ready to fall down and worship the image I made, very good. But if you do not worship it, you will be thrown immediately into a blazing furnace. Then what god will be able to rescue you from my hand?"

16 Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego replied to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to defend ourselves before you in this matter. 17 If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and he will rescue us from your hand, O king. 18 But even if he does not, we want you to know, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up."

The girls in our high school freshman group were only maybe 4 years old when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold opened fire on their teachers and classmates, killing 12 students and a teacher, and wounding 23 others before killing themselves. Though there is now considerable controversy about whether the subjects of the video, Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott, actually were shot because of their belief in God, it is clear from the testimony of family and friends, and from their own words, that both girls were serious Christians. Cassie's mother wrote a book, called She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall, a candid chronicle of Cassie's transformation from, according to one reviewer,

"a sulking stranger, fascinated with murder, self-mutilation and witchcraft...destroying herself with hate and despair"

to one who passed a note to a friend on the morning of her death: "Honestly, I want to live completely for God, it's hard and scary but totally worth it."

When we started talking about her, we were going to play the 1999 Michael W. Smith anthem, "This is Your Time", but the laptop where it was stored was in the car. One of the girls offered to pull up a song on YouTube by the group Fly-Leaf (the video at the top of this post) that meant a lot to her about the Columbine event called "Cassie". This photo was taken as they watched the video above on a cell phone - with lyrics - spellbound and contemplating how they might react if faced with a similar choice. After the song was over, we also talked about Rachel Scott.

Though it is now believed that Harris and Klebold were actually targeting jocks, and that the others were just randomly selected, the story of a girl in this day and age loving God enough to die for what she believed in has provided much fodder for sermons, and sober consideration by many teenagers of how important it is to make those life or death decisions in advance.

NOW is the time to decide how important God is to you.

What would YOU do?