Miracles, God’s Plan
and that Still, Small Voice
This is going to be a personal testimonial, but hopefully
one that you can relate to and hopefully find some truths that you can apply to
your own life. It is a testimonial of my
life but it is scripturally and spiritually based.
I was raised in a fundamentalist denomination and my family
left that denomination when I was 15 or 16.
I didn’t attend church again until age 39. I didn’t deny the existence of God, but I
knew that the God I was taught about as a child could not be the true God. There’s a longer story there but that isn’t
the point today.
I had a number of relationships during that time including a
marriage that ended in divorce. The
other relationships were much worse and I seemed to have an ability to make
some really bad choices in partners.
In early 2008, I met a woman who didn’t meet any of my
preferred characteristics. Physically,
she wasn’t “my type.” She lived in
Spotsylvania which was much too far from my townhouse in Woodbridge than I
thought could work for dating. She was a
mother of three kids, including twins who were 9 and a son who was 7 and I had
carefully avoided children all my life.
She was not only a Christian, but was the choir director at an Episcopal
church. Overall, there just wasn’t
anything there that attracted me, but she had shown interest in me.
Something in the back of my mind told me to stop. That voice said “Steve, you’ve proven that
your criteria isn’t healthy. Maybe you
should at least say hello and see what this woman is all about.”
I listened to that voice.
I made contact and quickly discovered just how wrong I had been. We talked often for a few weeks and finally
had our first date on February 14, 2008.
On February 14, 2009, we were married.
In mid-February 2010, I adopted her children. I became a confirmed Episcopalian and joined
the choir. I found happiness in so many
things that I had scrupulously avoided all my life.
On February 12, 2015, two days before our anniversary, she
suffered something called Spontaneous Arterial Dissection, also known as the
widow maker or the bolt from the blue.
Her coronary artery ruptured with no warning, symptoms or heart
disease. She died while I tried in vain
to perform CPR. It was the most shocking
and devastating event in my life.
It was then that I discovered that far too many people don’t
understand how to console the grieving.
The most common phrase I heard was “We just never know God’s plan” or
“God called his angel home.” It was as
if God had some mysterious plan that I could never know or understand. God killed my wife and I wasn’t allowed to
question that because his plan is divine.
As a side note, if you ever look up advice on how to console
the grieving, the number one thing they all say is to NOT use the “God’s plan” phrasing. God did have a plan and I’ll get to that in a
moment, but implying to somebody who just lost a loved on that God planned their
death is never constructive.
Jeremiah 29:11-14 says “11 For I know the plans I have for you,”
declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to
harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. 12 Then
you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will
listen to you. 13 You
will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 14 I will be found by you,” declares the Lord,”
I adopted a
mantra to respond to the “God’s plan” comments.
I realized that the people using that phrase didn’t realize just how
damaging it was and I didn’t get mad. Whenever
I heard it, I responded by saying “We live in an imperfect world, in imperfect
bodies. God gave us free will and
sometimes, that means horrible things happen.
I don’t think God planned for my wife to die but I do think he planned
on how my family moves forward.”
So yes, God does
have a plan, but that plan is not for harm or calamity. So what is it?
Jeremiah actually answered that a few verses before this
passage. Chapter 29 verses 4-7 shows
that plan. “ This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into
exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 “Build houses
and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find
wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may
have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of
the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.”
Think of the
context of this. Israel, the chosen
people of God have been defeated, captured and sent into exile hundreds of
miles from their home. There was no
bigger calamity. I have no idea how many
Israelites died during their defeat but I imagine it had to be in the tens of
thousands. That means tens or even
hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans and now childless parents were grieving
and couldn’t even visit the graves of the deceased. The men had to be completely humiliated as
they realized that they couldn’t defend their nation, their temple or their
families from this bitter result.
But now, God was
telling them his plan. His plan was not
the calamity that had already happened.
His plan was how they moved forward.
Build, plant, harvest, marry and prosper! That was his plan. His plan was how to move on and live a full
life after something so devastating. He
was telling them that they had to figure out what the next best thing to do
was.
So how does God
help us move forward? This is where I
discovered the nature of miracles. Here’s
where we hit some heavy stuff. In the
years preceding my wife’s death, we made a number of decisions. We didn’t always have clear reasons behind
some of those decisions but something told us that there were some things we
should do. That starts with my decision
to speak to her in the first place. The
decision to adopt was a weird one as well because it meant that her ex-husband
could stop paying child support but also meant that upon her death, the kids
would be safe and cared for. Her ex was
not a good man and upon her death, people around us suddenly realized how
important that adoption was. We decided
to get life insurance in spite of the financial strain that sometimes
meant. She was 40 and I was 41 when we
got those policies and both of us were in good health so it wasn’t like we
feared the demise of either of us but a nagging voice in the back of our mind
told us it would be a good idea.
So what was that
voice? I am absolutely certain that this
is exactly what Elijah described as the still, small voice that is the Holy
Spirit. It was not a fire, an earthquake
or the wind. It wasn’t loud. It was not an order. It was a suggestion. We listened to that still, small voice, the
whisper that told us how to implement God’s plan. Following that plan is where the miracles
happen.
When my wife
died, it all came into focus very quickly.
All those large and many of the small decisions that I had made over the
previous several years, suddenly made sense.
Dating her, marrying her, adopting the kids, the life insurance, the
crazy number of groups and activities we participated in which made for an
enormous support group for me and the kids, the closeness of her family, and
even the fact that the last thing she heard before she fell asleep was that I
loved her. All of it meant that there
was a future. A future without
regrets. A future where all of us could
grow and prosper in spite of the calamities.
A future where our family is not bitter toward God because we know his
plan was not the death.
Her death was the
result of living in a sin filled world. Our
lives though, are a gift and our future is the result of many people listening
to the spirit and allowing miracles to happen by following God’s plan.
Before I finish
up, I want to share one more of the miracles surrounding her death. This one will put the icing on the cake if
you’re on the border in believing in miracles.
Three days before she died, we attended a funeral. She hated open casket funerals. They freaked her out to see a person she
remembered as alive and happy to be laying in a box. It made her very uncomfortable and we had
talked about her desire for cremation before.
She looked at the
coffin and tugged at my sleeve and whispered, “Don’t you EVER do that to
me! I don’t believe in ghosts but if you
do that to me, I’ll find a way to haunt you!”
I chuckled but she wasn’t done.
“And use Covenant
Funeral homes. The Mullins are good
people but don’t spend any money you don’t need to. Don’t buy an urn from them.”
I looked at her
like she was joking. “How much could an
urn cost? It can’t be that much?”
“It doesn’t
matter. You don’t need to spend the
money. Have my dad make an urn.”
Now I’m
laughing. “You think your dad will outlive
you?”
”Of course he
will. My dad’s immortal.”
I chuckled and
dropped it but three days later, guess who was making an urn? I have no ideal what prompted her to talk
about that at that moment but that became a very important detail in the
funeral planning. It is just one more
thing I chalk up to listening to that still, small voice.
This is the
beauty of God’s word and his plans. He
does plan for our happiness. He wants us
to move forward. He wants us to prosper. If we listen to his plan through the whisper
of the Holy Spirit, we’ll see how to make that plan work.
I’ll end with one
more miracle. After her death, I met
another wonderful woman. That woman had
been told she could not bear children. Well,
if you know anything about me, it is that by another miracle, we are the
parents of beautiful twin daughters. So
yes, I am the father of two sets of twins and I thank God for that every
day.
