Oh the Joy!

This month my husband and I will celebrate Easter and our 33^rd wedding anniversary on the same weekend. It’s hard to believe it’s been that long.

After I became a Christian, I asked God to send me the right mate. I even made out a list of the qualities I was looking for in a spouse.

I believed that God would honor my request in accordance with Genesis 2:8: “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.” I expected my prayers would be answered within a few months. However, the months turned into years.

Sometimes I got discouraged as the years went by, but God would encourage me somehow. On occasion a particular co-worker mocked my faith and inaction to look for someone. I had told him I was no longer interested in the bar scene since I had become a Christian, and also wasn’t interested in joining any singles dating clubs. “What do you think God is going to do,” he sneered, “drop him in your lap?”

“I don’t know what he’s going to, but I know he’s going to do it,” I retorted.

I arrived at work in upstate New York one morning and noticed a handsome stranger meeting with my boss in his office. Shortly thereafter, they emerged. “Mary, this is Wally Hutchinson. He’s a CPA from Virginia here to do an audit for the next several months,” he informed me. “If he needs assistance locating documents, please help him.”

While Wally worked in my building, we spoke to each other frequently. Two weeks later, we went to lunch. On our second lunch date, an inner voice told me, ‘this is the man you are going to marry.’ He seemed to check every box on my prayer list I had made out seven years earlier. We began to date on a regular basis. When his audit ended, he returned to Virginia without any mention of continuing our relationship. I was saddened, confused and discouraged once again, as I was sure he was the answer to my prayers.

Three mornings later, Wally called me at work to tell me he was returning for another audit. “I knew it,” I thought. Eighteen months later we married.

As Easter approaches, I think back on the discouragement and devastation Jesus’ disciples must have felt when he was crucified, which was so much more than my own discouragement and sadness when Wally left New York. Jesus told his disciples multiple times that he would die and be raised up on the third day. But, I don’t believe they understood what he was saying for they were clearly distraught when he died.

But, oh the joy when He was resurrected and appeared to them three days later!

God speaks to us in different ways. Sometimes it’s in a still small voice, sometimes through His word, or sometimes through other means. John 10:27 says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” I pray I always listen to his voice.