When I was 32 years of age, a single mum with 3 small daughters, having escaped a difficult marriage that was threatening to become violent, I was working in a govt position and attending church regularly. One day a woman at the church came up to me and told me I should be ashamed of myself – throwing my marriage away. Turned out she’d been praying for a husband and desperately wanted to be married. I spoke with the Pastor who, in turn told me I was a woman who should be married and needed to pray about it – me, I’d had enough and wanted to stay single and bring my girls up on my own. I’d made a mess of things in that area and didn’t feel like trying again. About a week later a girlfriend at work told me of the criteria she had for meeting guys – 5 points. I told her I thought that was a rather cold way of approaching things and she said it was her life and she wanted to make sure when she met ‘him’ he was the right guy. Why waste time on anything less? I began to wonder if God had a message for me and taking Sue’s 5 points I increased them to 12 and prayed over them, at first somewhat cynically, but over time, more in earnest.
During this period of time one of my associates at our work prayer group told me about a man whose marriage had recently broken up and there were two little girls involved. He asked if we could pray for this man and his family and that God would enter into the situation. At that time I’d been learning about how, if we concentrate on other people and their needs, that God would also look after our needs. So, for a couple of months I was praying over my situation and praying for this man and his situation.
I won’t make this a long story but suffice for you to know the man I was praying for ended up asking me out and within one month of getting to know him, he met 11 out of the 12 criteria I’d set – think God had plans for me! Graham soon met that 12th point as well and in 1991 we married and combined our family of 5 girls. A co-incidence? I don’t think so!
Leave a Reply