God Cares

 

            When my husband and I got married, he was Catholic and I was Protestant. At the time we both thought that we basically believed the same thing but just went to different churches. Ted’s father had been Episcopal and his mother was Catholic.

            Ted doesn’t remember his father attending church, but his mother came from a strong Catholic Italian family and so she took him to her church. As Ted grew up, he became an altar boy and he remembers the mystery and awe of the Latin services.

            We wanted to have a wedding ceremony with both my pastor and Ted’s priest involved, but Ted’s priest refused. No one in Ted’s family seemed to care that we were married in my church and we didn’t think about it again until I was about 9 months pregnant. I thought that if the Catholic church didn’t recognize a marriage unless it was performed in the Catholic church, that it would be great to do that before the baby was born. No one expected it. It was our idea.

            So we went to Ted’s church and spoke with the new priest that was there. I had all kinds of questions to ask, regarding the difference between Protestant and Catholic beliefs, but so did Ted. When our conversation ended, the priest refused to marry us because he said that Ted didn’t believe in what Catholics believe.

            Ted was stunned as he had grown up Catholic and been an altar boy, but he began to realize that what attracted him was the ceremony and mystery of it all. He never really understood any of it. It wasn’t too much longer after this that I became a born-again Christian, and in time Ted began to (rather reluctantly) attend Church with me.           

            One summer day while I was outside weeding my flower bed, Ted came home from work and I could hear him desperately searching for something in his car. He finally stormed up the steps and went into the house. I followed him in and asked what was wrong, and he said that he had lost his contact lenses. He continued to search through his pockets and dumped the contents of his briefcase on our dining room table and pawed through them.

            He went back outside and I think he actually pulled out the back seat of the car in his search, and then returned inside again to re-look through the mess on our table. By now he was yelling at himself and crying.

             Contacts, back then, were very expensive and we didn’t have a lot of extra money, being a young married couple with a new home and a baby.

            I came to Ted and suggested that we pray about the missing contacts and that the Lord would help him find them. Ted boomed back at me that he didn’t want to bother God about the little things. I told him that if he was so upset and crying over this problem that it wasn’t “little”, and I proceeded to tell him that God cares about everything that is important to us. He didn’t believe me, and just went on yelling at himself and searching.

Ted went back outside and I began praying for him, not just that he would find the contacts, but that God would give him a calm spirit. I began washing the dishes in the sink and at one point glanced out the window and saw that Ted had gone out into his garden and was crouched down eating raw peas (peas never made it into our house, they were always consumed right from the vine). That was a calming situation, but what I noticed next was amazing.

Right behind Ted, by about 20 feet, were two young spotted fawns. They were stalking him out of an obvious curiosity. I yelled at Ted in a whisper-like voice not to move, but just to slowly look behind him. He looked and saw these two adorable babies, and his anger and frustration vanished. Eventually the two youngsters bound away, probably from the warnings of their mother.

        God is amazing in the ways He answers prayers. When Ted came back into the house, he was relaxed and calm, marveling at the event that had just taken place.

        The next day, I was in exactly the same place, weeding the flower garden, when Ted came bounding up the stairs to the house. He hesitated just long enough to say, “You were praying for me, weren’t you?” And he proceeded into the house.

I went after him and said, “You found your contacts, didn’t you!” His expression said it all.

“I thought I lost them in Buffalo when I did a job there and they probably fell out of my pocket and were gone forever,” he said. “But as it turns out, I drove to the office in Rochester and parked in the underground parking garage in exactly the same place I parked yesterday when I went to the office before going to Buffalo. When I got out of my car, I just happened to look down and there were my contacts on the ground, just where I must have dropped them yesterday morning!”

 

We were both happy, but Ted realized that God played a part in this whole ordeal, and began to think differently about how much He cared for him. As I look back, this was a starting point in my husband’s beginning a relationship with Jesus. He too is a born-again Christian, and I was blessed one day in church when we had a sharing Sunday. Ted went up to the microphone and said how he gives thanks to God for me because without me, he would not have come to know the Lord as he has.

 

I can’t think of a greater compliment!

Refferences: 

1 Peter 5:7- "Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you." (NIV)

Luke 12: 6-7- "Are not 5 sparrows sold for 2 pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows." (NIV)