Hello Friends,
Have you ever experienced an event, a divine intervention in your life that you know beyond any doubt that God did THAT?
I have. It’s a beautiful story, so if you like- pull up a chair and a cup of tea and I will tell you a sweet, sweet story.
August 6, 1980. A day that will go down in history.
Of all the things I have remembered and forgot in my life, this day has never been one of them. It was the day my knight in shining armor rode into my world.
It was a Tuesday. I spent the night before at my best friends apartment. I was 15 years old. Kerri, my best friend let me wear one of her beautiful, feminine skirts and a lacey blouse. I felt like a princess, like Cinderella. It was a morning carved out of a time that didn’t fit in my world. It was the most magical day of my life. Little did I know that when I donned that skirt and blouse, I would be escorted into a parallel universe, a universe that changed my entire life.
Our youth group spent that summer around our community, meeting other teens and talking to them about Jesus. There were many that summer that we had the privilege of leading to Jesus.
But this one…this boy.
At the intersection of 185th and Kinnaman Road, I saw this guy. I said to my friends in the van that I was going to ‘get this one’. Of course, I meant it in the purest sense…little did I know. You see, I didn’t think I was anything. I didn’t think I was pretty or worthy or attractive. I had no dreams outside of the life I knew. I didn’t think about college…sure I wanted to be married and have children, but who would pick me?
The kids in the van with us knew him from the public high school. They said that we would never win him. He was a bad dude and not someone to mess with. Confidence surged and my friend and I jumped out of the van at that intersection and we introduced ourselves to Timothy Alan Wolf. Football player, Jersey number 55. A guy with a bad reputation. Handsome. Shiny blue eyes and a beautiful smile. Longish hair. CUTE. I remember thinking so, but not like I thought he would see me.
We followed the protocol of our teen interventions that summer. With pocket New Testament, a clip board, pen and my best friend- we crossed the intersection to introduce ourselves and talk to him about Jesus.
My heart was beating out of my chest instantly, but I didn’t know why. I was merely a girl on a ‘mission’. A Jesus mission.
My friend and I asked him if he knew Jesus and it he died that day, did he know he would go to heaven. He said no. We shared the gospel. After much nervousness (he was so cute) and fumbling, we prayed with him on that street corner and introduced him to Jesus. To the Jesus that would change the course of his life and mine.
The rest is history as they say 🙂
Big and little acts of God that day and as they days and years unfolded.
6 weeks after we met, he took me jogging and told me that he was going to marry me. I was in heaven. Who would have thought that the football player/really cute guy would give me the time of day, let alone stay with me for the last almost 38 years. By then, I had only begun to grasp the plans that God had in store for us, his children.
I later learned that he was enraptured with me. He thought I was the prettiest girl he had ever seen. He also confessed that he would have bought anything I was selling that day 🙂
But Jesus, the orchestra master, the ultimate coach and match maker had set that day into motion long before it ever happened.
That summer, Tim knew that if he continued on the path that he was on that he would be dead. Drugs and alcohol and a life without hope was all he had to look forward to. That summer, he had cried out to a God that he didn’t really believe existed. He opened his bible and in the context of his catholic upbringing tried to read the bible. Exploded in anger and threw it against the wall. Cried out in rage and hopelessness and laid out his heart to the God of the universe. And through tears and anger pleaded with the God he didn’t believe in. Asking him to send him the woman who would become his wife and provide a way out of the hopeless life he was living.
We both sat in our worlds of unbelief and entrapment, hoping and grasping for things we didn’t know existed. Little did we know, those hopes were playing out within a 10 mile radius of each other.
Mere months later after Tim’s desperate cries, we met at that divine intersection. Me, in a beautiful borrowed princess outfit and he, in his shorts and bare chest…2 people with no idea what He was going to do that day. Only God.
There are dozens of stories and miracles within that event and the weeks and months that followed but what I wanted to share was about the miraculous and divine intersections that our Papa God orchestrates and allows.
Tim’s story was different then mine, but entrapment nonetheless. We both needed a rescue that only Papa God could provide. And…He did.
Tim asked to meet the woman who would be his wife and a life of hope. Papa heard his cries.
I wasn’t asking for anything, I was living out my life in rote, doing all the ‘right things’ trying to save myself by being good and pure and ‘religious’.
Our lives changed forever that day. He taught me how to think for myself, how to see the beauty that was really me. He taught me to have a voice and to dream for a life that was not even part of my secret imagination.
July 30, 1983, we became man and wife. I was 18, he was 20. Neither of us knew what we were doing, but we had Jesus. We had the faith that He had planted that miraculous day. We determined that we would build the life that we wanted which was diametrically in opposition of anything and everything that we each had known. We would have children and we would love them well. We would ensure that they knew their own value and that their lives would explode with purpose and strength.
In order to do this and to ensure that our children and their children would grow up safe and without abuse, I walked away from my family and everything that I knew.
Life has been full of beautiful and hard. Life on the tight wire, 100 feet in the air with nothing but our faith, hope and each other to hold on to.
But that is for another time, another sharing.
Divine intersections. I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in happenstance, I believe in God. I believe in the strength and determination to persevere. I believe in the resiliency of the human nature that He created in each of us.
Only God. Only God saw each of our lives before even one moment was lived or breathed. He saw a broken girl and a broken boy who just wanted to be loved and be free.
5 minutes on either side of that intersection of 185th and Kinnaman Road on August 6, 1980- I don’t know if I would be here to tell this story. We would not be living, loving and enjoying 3 spectacular adult children and 7 grandchildren. We would not have this simple, beautiful acre of heaven to live on.
I am forever grateful to a God who sees our deepest needs and hears our deepest heart cries and does what only He could to.
Do you have something you are believing for that seems impossible?
Do you find yourself in spaces where you wonder if anything will ever change?
Can God heal that relationship?
Can He restore your marriage?
Can you bring hope into your darkest places?
Intersections are everywhere.
I encourage you to trust Him with that last shards of hope you have. Pour out to Him your deepest needs, desires, hopes and pain and watch what He can do. What He wants to do. What He is capable of doing.
My beautiful friends, I pray blessings on your needs, your hearts, your sorrows, your secret wishes and your greatest dreams.
Papa is the one who can meet those needs and He longs to with a passionate love.
Until next time, my friends- blessings and HOPE – Beloved Reborn.
