My Story - The Call Part 2

I did not marry that boy across the table. I finished both elementary school and high school without finding Mr. Right. I spent the next four and a half years in college, trying to earn my MRS degree. I still dreamed of being a pastor’s wife and attending Liberty Baptist College seemed like the ideal place to make that happen. Since the college did not offer a degree in Pastor’s Wife, I decided to major in Drama. That was fun for a season and while I still love drama, I realized it would be difficult to make it my career. So, I began my sophomore year with a more practical plan of becoming a teacher. I successfully graduated in 1985 with a BS in Elementary Education and failed miserably at any attempts on the MRS degree.

During those long and often lonely collegiate years, God gave me a tender heart toward missions and I surrendered to do whatever the Lord wanted me to do. I didn’t feel led to go to a foreign field as a single woman. There are many single missionary women and there is nothing wrong with that. It was not the path that I was to take. I did try to open a few doors in that direction but each time, they were shut tight. Right after I graduated from college, I had applied with the Southern Baptist Convention Journeyman program to be a short-term missionary for two years. They rejected me! I never found out their reason but just accepted it as God’s plan.

The next winter, I held in my hands a contract to teach in a Christian school in Korea. The excitement of going to a foreign land, serving God in what I was trained to do was intriguing. By this point in my life, I had taught for a year at a small Christian school. I had assumed that since Mr. Right was not at Liberty, that he must be at this church. Unfortunately, there was no sign of him. I was frustrated with my job and wanted to quit. I had to teach too many subjects to too many children in a tiny classroom on a meager salary. This wasn’t teaching. It was more like spitting out facts and giving tedious assignments at the end of the day better known as homework. There was always the hope that the administration would see my plight and divide the class in half, leaving me with only one grade to teach. But hope deferred makes the heart sick. My hope grew thin and my heart weary of my career and the everlasting absence of Mr. Right so I looked for opportunities elsewhere. I considered the contract. It was the perfect way out. There was only one obstacle blocking the way and that was the complete lack of peace in my heart. I prayed, cried and pleaded with God but the peace did not come. This was not the path that I was to take. I knew that if God wanted me on the mission field, I’d have to marry a missionary. But that didn’t happen.

Instead, I met John, a Richmond City Police officer. We dated for a solid week and he asked me to marry him. “Lord,” I prayed during our short dating relationship, “he’s not a missionary, not a pastor, not a ‘full time Christian service’ anything. Is this Mr. Right? Is this the man you have for me? Is it okay for me to marry someone who is not in the ministry?” There was no audible answer. Only peace. The peace that I searched for in the doors that I had tried to open. The peace I longed for in my years of searching for the way God would have me to go. At last I had stepped on the right path and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, had filled my heart.