A Time of Change

I realize it's been nearly a month since my last post about my journey into ministry. With this post I will continue...

I worked as a Christian Counselor in Fort Wayne for a year. For the first five months of that year, I worked as a claims processor at a medical insurance company. I was a single mom working full time as a processor, part time as a Christian counselor and I was beginning to feel the pressure. I wanted to go part time at my processing job. When I made the request, it turned out that the company found me in "conflict of interest" with my counseling. They told me I had to choose them or the counseling...that was a no-brainer!! I chose to do the thing I felt God calling me to. I could feel God rocking my boat. I was actually excited because I knew when God starts shaking things up, it's always a good thing. Not always easy but always good!!!

The last seven months of that year, I continued counseling but God had a major change in my future that I did not foresee...

One Wednesday evening in late February 2003, I got an email from classmates.com telling me that someone was looking for me. My first thought was that it might be my long-lost first love, Tony. He was the one guy I never got over from my high school days. Always a gentleman, very sentimental, and I knew I could trust him. Nah....couldn't be him. IT WAS!!! He had just gone through a divorce and got on classmates.com to see if he could find me among other folks. We began emailing almost constantly and finally, that Sunday, we finally saw each other for the first time. It was so good to see him. We talked and talked about where we've been the past 20+ years and what has happened in our lives. We talked about God and how He had been working in our lives. It was determined very quickly that we wanted to work at this relationship. Well...to make a very detailed and intense story short, Tony and I got married that June. I know it seems awfully quick, but you have to remember, we had known each other for several years. Yes, we both had made some changes, we both had baggage, and there were definitely adjustments that needed to be made. But, we are happy with our choice.  I have married a good man who loves God, loves me and has helped to make a wonderful life for the two of us.

I wrestled with whether marrying each other would be of God or sin. We had both been what you might call, victims of divorce. We didn't want the divorces, our former spouses left us and in my case, for someone else. I poured over scripture, prayed immensely, sought counsel and came to the conclusion that the circumstances surrounding our divorces were such that marrying each other would not be sinful. God truly made His presence known at our wedding ceremony and I knew that this union was blessed by Him.

After I married Tony, my daughter and I moved to Indy where Tony lived and owned a business. I struggled with the move and the grief involved. I missed my family, friends and life in Fort Wayne. I ended up seeing a Christian counselor to help me sort things out and found out that the degree I got and the Masters degree I was pursuing was not from an accredited college and would not allow me to earn the license I needed to counsel in the state of Indiana. I was very upset. After talking it over, Tony and I decided that it was not time or economically feasible to pursue it. My dream was over.

This began what I might call, desert time. A time when I felt as though God had me on hold. It was a very hard time emotionally for me and I really didn't see God using me in my future. But see, that's why God is God and I am not. He had plans...He knew exactly what He was doing and He was preparing and pruning me during this time. Nothing goes to waste with God and this time was no different.