God’s Script
Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. (Proverbs 19:21)
I remember when I first saw him at the weekly City of Chattanooga press conference. David was a radio news reporter and I worked for the local television station. As I looked at his 6’10 frame, I thought, “He’s pretty cute!’ I asked him where he moved from. “Texas,” he replied. “I was amazed because I was from Texas as well. Then I asked him where he attended college, “Texas Lutheran,” he said. “Texas Lutheran in Seguin?” I exclaimed. That’s where I went to college. I’m not sure he shared my enthusiasm. I realized that we had just missed each other because David was two years younger than me and had transferred in to play basketball. I had also played basketball at Texas Lutheran.
I had recently gone through a difficult breakup with a different boyfriend so I thought God had seen my heartbreak and dropped this young man into Chattanooga for me. What else could all these similarities mean? As it turned out, we dated steadily for about a year but in the end, it did not lead to matrimony. However, in that stretch of dating, I became close friends with David’s mother and family. I’d spend weekend’s at his family’s house and hours in the kitchen talking to his mom. Half the time, I didn’t even know where David was while I was with his mom. Those were precious times as I was unable to have those girl times with my own mother because of her mental illness. I desperately wanted Joyce to be my mother-in-law.
When David and I broke up, neither his mother nor I wanted to let each other go and we never did. She adopted me as her daughter and I adopted her as my mother. I helped her through a crisis years ago and now I will be there for her through another crisis, the death of her son, David, who passed away after complications from heart surgery this week. He was only 53.
As I write this from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where this all started, I am preparing to attend David’s celebration of life service. I am realizing once again, God’s script for our life is never exactly as we write it. My dating relationship with David was more about developing a close bond with his mom, Joyce. I needed her then and she needs me now. In the week before David’s death, I shared her burden and cried out to God on my knees, praying for a miraculous recovery but it wasn’t in God’s plan.
Isn’t it amazing how God brings these relationships around? Once the former girlfriend, now a friend of the family and sister in Christ. That is called spiritual maturity. For the family’s sake, I wish David had lived, but again, God wrote a different ending.
How about you? How has your life script been re-written by God?
Forty one years ago I was a pastor’s wife in Logan, Ohio. That Oct my husband passed out 3 times in 24 hours. Even extensive testing didn’t reveal the brain tumor until 2 months later. Doctors gave Len 2-3 months to live. As I prayed, I thought God promised a miracle as He led me to the story of Abraham and Isaac. The third month, March, Len began walking and talking again and prepared new radio messages daily for 7 weeks, and preached sermons on 3 Sundays. Three weeks later he died.
As I grieved, I asked God what happened. I thought He promised a miracle. His answer was as clear as if it had been audible: “How long does a miracle last? I performed a miracle in March. He would have to die sometime to come home with us.”
Had I stayed in Ohio, I never would have been writing or in the NTCW group where I heard about Pearls of Promise and met you.
Barbara Ferguson
Barbara, thank you for your insight. Only God can see the much bigger picture. I felt a drawing from God to go see Joyce in September so the Lord was gracious enough to provide a speaking engagement and book signing in Chattanooga. Little did I know this would happen but the Lord knew. In three months, Joyce will need my support and he is placing me back here in Tennessee with her. I am praising God for his gentle nudges because he knows the future.