Full Circle

It’s 2:20 am and I just got home after dropping Jennifer off at the airport. The past day was a fitting conclusion to what is arguably the best two weeks of my life. Jennifer is everything I hoped she would be and a little bit more. I know that I know that I know that she is the one that God has made for me in this time in my life. We finished off the trip in grand fashion. My mother graciously offered to put us up in the Ritz Carlton hotel for our last night (now Im sure my sisters are jealous, especially Shari thinking…Where’s mine?) But before you go thinking anything, Jennifer and I have spent a lot of time together and we both agreed to wait for appropriate actions until we are married. Ohterwise I’d just be a big hypocrite (as others have accused me of being.) So far so good.

It hit me yesterday around 3:00 PM, my life has come full circle…finally. It was September 2005 and I was at the San Francisco Airport about to board a flight for Saudi Arabia. It was clear that God called me to Saudi, but I didn’t want to go. In fact, I felt a little like Jonah, trying whatever I could to get out of it. Even until the moment I left for the airport. It was pretty clear that God called me to Saudi, and He spoke also to my former wife at the time. I think I mentioned this before in a previous blog but I believe it bears repeating. A few months prior to me leaving, it was clear that God was calling me to Saudi, but I didn’t want to go. I didn’t think it was safe and I certainly didn’t want to leave my family. But my former wife kept encouraging me to go (something she disputes now as her version of revisionist history). So we prayed fervently and we prayed often for guidance. One particular Saturday night we both kneeled by the bed clasping each other’s hands and we prayed “God I don’t want to go but if its your will, we will obey, but we need a billboard, a giant sign from you conveying that it is Your will that we go. I need it to be clearer than when you called us to go Taiwan.” The very next day at Cornerstone Church in Livermore pastor Steve Madsen spoke an entire sermon on Matthew 19:29 for the entire sermon. “If any man leaves his father and his mother, his wife and his brother, his children and his land and travels into a foreign land for my name sake he will receive a hundredfold blessing and the gift of eternal life. Just the fact that we heard that verse a mere 10 hours after we prayed gave us both a resounding peace that his was absolutely God’s will for me to go to Saudi Arabia. The plan was for me to go alone, to scout it out, and then if it were safe perhaps bring the family over.

So there I was at SFO in Sept. 2005, crying my eyes out, no I was sobbing. I didn’t want to leave my family, my wife, my children whom I held so close to my heart. But God was calling me and I had to be obedient. I passed by security walking down the long hall towards my plane, my family became smaller with the distance. My parents, Lindsey and Spencer had already gone to the car. Standing and waving with big smiles was my former wife (whom I loved dearly at the time) holding my middle Son Max. They were vigorously waving and smiling so big. It just broke my heart each step that I was moving further away from them. I could barely see because the tears were streaming so fast down my face. I don’t cry often in life, but this was one of those watershed moments. I had one final look at them, then I rounded the corner. Once they were out of sight the tears stopped and such an amazing and immediate peace fell over me. The Lord clearly spoke to me how blessed I was to have a wife and family that loves and cares for me so much. I can look forward to returning to them and that love and adoration. With so many lonely people in the world, I had all this love and hope surrounding me to which I could return. That gave me the comfort that I needed. I got on the plane and God used me in some amazing ways in Saudi Arabia in 2005. Now here’s the part that gets a little tricky. Exactly what God told me to give me comfort, how blessed I was to have a family that loved me was quickly taken away when my former wife decided that she no longer wanted to be married to me. So that in turn started the four years of really really tough stuff. I like to call it Hell, but God sustained me through it. But it just seemed cruelly ironic that what comforted me earlier (a wife and family that loved and missed me) was now taken away. What was even more troubling is the verse he used to call me out there, Matthew 19:29 It seemed like I was living the opposite. I left my wife and children to follow God’s calling, but instead of receiving a hundred fold blessing, it seems like I received a curse and had a hundred fold taken from me. This was something that would haunt me over the next few years, but I trusted God enough to know that he had a plan.

As I stood at the gate sending Jennifer away, I realized that life had come full circle. I thought to myself how lucky/blessed I am to love and care for a person so much that I can look forward to seeing her again in a month or so and then spending the rest of my life with that person. Maybe this was God’s plan all along. Now we know that God hates divorce, Malachi 2:16. So its obvious that he would have never orchestrated a divorce in my life. However, he is omniscient. I believe that he could see into the heart of my former wife and realized that she was choosing to go the divorce route if not then, soon. That’s the sucky part of a free-will, He lets people make their own choices even if those choices are terribly destructive. So God knew what was coming, and he prepared me and comforted me during the storm. While I was not perfect the past four years and I had a few slip ups, I believe that I emerged stronger and more resolute with my intimacy with Christ. I think I weathered the storm almost exactly how God would have wanted me to do so. I think Jennifer is the end result of the “perfect” plan that God has for my life. Im so blessed. Not only do I have a great career, a great and adventurous life, friends from all over the world, but soon I get to add a hot 29 year old, blonde-haired, blue-eyed, genius, hard-body, funny girl as my wife. I think just having her on my arm (we got so many looks from everyone in Bahrain and Dubai) proves there is a God. Im sure many of the people that passed us and jerked their heads around to see this beautiful blonde must have thought “Now I know there is a God, how else would a guy like that get a girl like her.”