1972-73
During the summer of 1972, my wife Sharon and I became engaged to be married. She had already graduated from Wheaton college, but I still had a year of college to go and planned to attend graduate school. Accepting my family’s rule that you don’t marry until your education is complete, I said to Sharon regarding the length of our engagement before marriage, “It will be five years.” She said, “OK.” Six months later, in March of 1973, she was awakened in the middle of the night when I was 140 miles away at college. In what she describes as “a dream or a vision,” a voice said to her, “You will be married in 5 months.” She responded, “But Paul says it will be 5 years.” The voice said, “You will be married on your birthday.” (Her birthday is August 18.) She responded, “You’ll have to talk to Paul.” Then she fell back asleep.
About a month later, Sharon became ill with mononucleosis. To recuperate, she resigned her job as a full-time staff member of Young Life (a ministry to youth) in Chicago, and moved back to her parents’ home in Grand Junction, Colorado where her father was an Evangelical Free Church pastor. During the next three months, I could only talk to Sharon by phone. Back home from college as the summer began, I was feeling frustrated with our separation when a surprising thought suddenly crossed my mind: “She could recuperate with you as well as with her parents.” This was a Eureka! moment like others that have happened to me occasionally over the past 43 years.
The first Eureka! moment, on August 4, 1971 during a prayer meeting of college students at Christ Church of Oak Brook, Illinois, I mentioned at the end of chapter two. My second Eureka! moment happened in August, 1972 as I drove 140 miles south from my Chicago home to the University of Illinois for the fall semester. I left Chicago on little sleep. Driving through the flat farm country of central Illinois, I fell asleep behind the wheel. Just as my car was drifting off the road at 70 mph, I heard a loud voice in my head: “Wake up!” I was able to regain control of the car and get it back on the highway. I thanked God for rescuing me from disaster at that moment!
Typical of such Eureka! thoughts that I have occasionally received from God over the past 45 years, “She could recuperate with you as well as with her parents” came out of nowhere in June, 1973. Sharon had not told me about her experience three months earlier, when she was told that she would be married on her birthday. I didn’t reason my way to this Eureka! thought, either: I had not been pondering what to do about our separation. I was just feeling frustrated about it when the Eureka! thought dropped into my mind with such positive impact that it immediately altered my thinking and my direction, and gave me confidence that the financial risks involved in an accelerated wedding before I graduated from college would be provided for by God. I immediately called Sharon in Colorado and said, “You could recuperate with me as well as with your parents. Let’s get married this summer!” She said, “OK!” We agreed to have her father officiate our wedding at his church. With calendars in our hands, we discussed possible wedding dates, starting with Saturday, August 25, 1973, because my final semester of college at the University of Illinois would start two days later, on Monday, August 27. But a wedding on August 25 would give us only two honeymoon days, during which we would have to drive 1,000 miles from Colorado to my college in Champaign/Urbana, Illinois. We then considered marrying one week earlier, on Saturday August 18. I said, “But that’s your birthday. Our anniversary would always take away from your birthday!” She responded, “That would be ok.” So we got married on her birthday. Sharon did recuperate from her illness during the first five months of our marriage, and was able to go back to work in month six. God provided affordable housing for us off campus that fall, and two part-time jobs for me.
At some point after our wedding, Sharon told me about the voice that had said to her, “You’ll be married in five months…You’ll be married on your birthday.” I was amazed: God had done what Sharon asked when she said, “You’ll have to talk to Paul.” Sharon’s story strengthened my confidence that our marriage was “made in heaven”: since God directed the timing of our wedding, I reasoned, it followed that our marriage itself was also God’s idea, as we had thought when we became engaged. 43 years later, I thank God every day for making Proverbs 19:14 real in my life, four years earlier than I planned: “Houses and lands are inherited from parents, but a prudent wife is from the Lord.”