Footprints - An Anniversary

Around Thanksgiving I did a series entitled "Footprints" where I offered various events in my life that were clearly God's direct intervention. Today is our 33rd anniversary, bringing up one of my favorite "footprints." My first wife divorced me (she had another guy and said I was boring) and I and my two sons were on our own. We tried a new church and I came across a woman with two kids of her own. Neither of us were interested in "doing that again" ... the mistake of investing your whole life in someone only to lose it all ... but we had coffee from time to time in group settings ... that sort of thing. I knew what Scripture said. God hates divorce (Mal 2:16). And Jesus said, "Whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery" (Mat 19:9). So I was "off the market," so to speak. Then I came across one of those verses that you know you've read multiple times but feel you've never seen it before.

Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. (1 Cor 7:27-28)

Interesting terms. "Bound" means "knit or tied together" clearly a reference to marriage and its obligations. "Do not seek to be released." But ... I didn't. In fact, I tried to hire a lawyer who would sue her to stay with me (ostensibly for "contractual reasons"). (Obviously no such lawyer exists.) And "released" ... clearly the opposite of "bound," but it requires first being bound. (You can't be "released" if you were never "bound" in any sense.) So ... I didn't seek to be released, but I ended up released (thanks to California's "no-fault" divorce laws). Yet, I did not seek a wife. And God said, "But if you marry, you have not sinned."

Thirty-three wonderful years now. I laugh at Adam's "It's that woman you gave me!" (Gen 3:12), but I delight in God's unique gift to me. You see, I'm not ... normal. I'm ... boring. I don't need novelty or excitement. I'm not overly sociable or greedy or any of the typical extremes. Yet ... this woman -- this one God gave me -- finds herself contented with me ... for 33 years and counting. We enjoy each others' company, share each others' joys, bear each others' burdens. We've experienced "better" and "worse," "richer" and "poorer," "sickness" and "health," and through it all she has loved and cherished me. No small feat. She's an independent woman who simultaneously takes care of everything she deems her responsibility (and that's a large list) and relies completely on me to do anything I can do for her.

In 2014, I wrote about my "Proverbs 31" wife. I quoted from the end of the chapter: "Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: 'Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all'" (Prov 31:28-29). She has always been that woman and she stands as my absolute favorite example of a "footprint of God" in my life. I was reading recently (again) of God's requirements for husbands in a marriage. I talked to her about it ... you know, a "performance review." My requirements, I explained, are to "give up self" for her, love her as myself, and live with her in an understanding way. "How am I doing?" Amazingly, she said, "Great." That's the kind of miraculous wife I have ... not that I'm doing great, but that she thinks so. She is a "gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious" (1 Peter 3:4). And I'm very blessed. When I see her, I see God's handiwork, an ongoing "footprint."