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 other's company, share each other's joys, bear each other's 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."

Footprints - at Thirty-Four

I was 34. I was working at the new company and enjoying my work with good money and good raises and a wife and two kids. A good life. Until my wife came home and told me she was leaving me for another man. That was a shock. I didn't see it coming. "God??"

I was packing stuff up to move out of the house and go to a smaller apartment. I came across a notebook with old writings in it. Twelve years before, I was that career-seeking husband and my new wife had yelled at me about how she hated me. I was a night watchman and I was crying out to God. And I started writing. How did I get here? I listed the events that led up to marrying her. I counted 28 times that I placed my decisions in front of God and said, "Stop me here if this isn't where You want me to go." I actually had approached that marriage expecting God to stop me at any point, and that was okay because I only wanted what He wanted. He didn't stop me.

So there I was, 12 years later, and I pulled out ... that sheet of paper. I didn't even know I had kept it. And I read it again. And God said, "I've got this." I heard, "In My book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for You, when as yet there was none of them" (Psa 139:16). "Oh," I said, staggered, "so ... this was Your plan ... from the start?" Yes. It was. "For I know the plans I have for you ... plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jer 29:11). I wasn't abandoned. I wasn't forsaken. I was looking at another footprint. And I could trust Him to carry me in it.

Footprints - at Thirty-Two

I was 32 and I had been in the Air Force for 10 years. I had another 2 years on my enlistment. I was teaching and enjoyed it. I had leaned toward making it a career, but was having doubts. Then someone from my first station called and asked me to interview for a job in California. Well, not happening. I had 2 years left. "Our VP is going to be out there. Meet him. Take the interview." So ... I did. Whatever. He liked me and offered me $10,00 a year more than I thought I would need ... but I still had 2 years.

I was stuck ... but almost immediately after, the military needed to drop people ... fast. "If you want out, get out." I told my commander I wanted out. "Oh, you can't go. We're making this the training base. We need you and 4 more like you." But the request was approved. I was honorably discharged, packed up the family, and headed to my new job in California. When I got there, I called them up. "Oh, we're going out of business. We can't hire you." "Um ... God? That was a dirty trick." So I started searching. I saw an ad for a company and applied. In the interview they asked where I heard of them. I told them about the ad. "We didn't put an ad in the paper." Seriously. But they hired me. And waived the standard 90-day probation period. My benefits went into effect the day after my military benefits expired. And the job was wonderful.

God blessed in the intervening years, but the surprising sequence of events served again to boldly declare that God was still at work while I was suggesting it was a "dirty trick." There never was an explanation of how my request for discharge got approved or where the ad came from. Well ... a human explanation. Another footprint of God in my life.

Footprints - at Twenty-Two

I was 22 years old, newly married. In a quick sequence of events, my wife found out she was pregnant and I lost my job. I was desperate. I needed a job ... no ... a career. I needed a future for my new family. I know! The military! They could train me and pay me and I'd come out in 4 years with a career.

The military has you take the ASVAB test, the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery. (Interesting that you can fail something that is supposed to test what your aptitudes are. "I'm sorry ... you have none."?) At the end, they asked ... opinion questions. "Do you like ...?" Preferences. Do I like cooking, fixing radios, repairing cars ... all sorts. Anything around electronics was a sure "No!" because I knew nothing about electronics. Well, I got approved, so I looked for a career, not just a job. Accounting ... that's good. "Oh, sure, we can get you in ... in 6 months." No, that's not going to work. My wife is pregnant ... now. So, "How do I get in immediately?" They told me if I showed up packed and someone who was going in that day couldn't make it, I could take their job if I qualified. So ... I did. And the next day, someone didn't make it. He broke his arm. So I went in ... "open electronics." "Thanks, God." But, okay, it's a career. So I took it.

I spent the next 10 years in the Air Force working electronics all the way up to teaching it for 3 years. I worked in one of the last career fields that still did everything, from tube technology to solid-state, from the aircraft to the shop to the board level. And ... I loved it. It was precisely my cup of tea. Because it was perfectly suited to my own thinking patterns. Because God knew what I didn't and provided what I never would have expected when I needed it most. There ... right there ... another footprint of God in my life.

Footprints - at Three

You've seen, I'm sure, the famous poem, Footprints in the Sand. In a dream, footprints in the sand showed two sets. The dreamer realized that the second set was the Lord's. She noticed that in the toughest times, there was only one set, and asked God why He wasn't there when she needed Him most. God replied that in those times He was carrying her. Footprints. I've been thinking about God's footprints in my life. It's Thanksgiving week. So ... maybe I'll write a few "footprints" accounts of God's footprints in my life. Jesus told His disciples, "You will be my witnesses" (Acts 1:8). So ... maybe I will, too.

My earliest memory ... you know, the kind that is certainly my memory because no one else was there to tell me ... was when I was three years old. I remember waking up in a crib. I didn't sleep in a crib, so that was odd. And my wrists were bound to the mattress. And my foot was suspended and an nurse was attaching a giant (to a three-year-old) bottle of fluids through a needle into my ankle. "Oh," she said, "you're awake." As it turns out, I had been in a coma. I had contracted spinal meningitis. The doctors had told my parents there was very little hope because they had no treatment. (Yes, I'm that old.) So they prayed and their church prayed and ... lots of people prayed. And ... I lived ... without much explanation as to why. A short time later, I got sick again ... but it turned out to be an infection from that needle in my ankle, and that was quickly managed and I was out by Christmas.

I still have the scar on my ankle. I see it every time I put on socks. It serves as a reminder. I could have died at the age of three. I didn't. Clearly God had other plans. Clearly my existence wasn't a cosmic mistake. Clearly God still has a purpose for me. That's what that scar on my ankle tells me every time I see it. God's not through with me yet. It serves as a footprint of God in my life.