Welcome to my blog! If you are a new reader, I encourage to go to my first installment, "When God Spoke, and the Lost Memory", as that begins this chronicle of an amazing time. You might consider this installment "Chapter 3". Since nobody really should start a good read at "Chapter 3", I encourage you to go to "Chapter 1". If this blog blesses you, please share it with as many others as possible - encouraging them to read it. I pray it touches as many people as possible.
It was in November of 1982 when four different people contacted me, independent of each other, and told me that God had spoken to their spirits that I should move to Washington State to be close to my family.
All four people were credible people to share this with me: The president of the company I worked for, my pastor, my manager and my father in Washington State. God says in the Bible, his Word, that His Word is always verified by two or more witnesses. I had four. So I prepared to move.
By this time I actually had acquired some furniture, so I rented an 18 foot Ryder truck, hooked my red Pinto "Bean" to the back to tow her, and praised God for the way to get there. I had done well in sales with the National "Write Your Congressman", but had not at that point gathered together much money, so was preparing to cross the country more on faith than anything else.
The president of the company had arranged for my transfer to take over a territory in Northwest Washington State, and my parents told me they had found a house and rented it for me - I could pay them back when I arrived up there.
In the Bible, Hebrews 11:1 describes faith as this, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." What that means is a commitment to believe before you see the physical manifestation of that belief. I was committed to believing that I could make that trip across the country in the middle of winter, driving an 18 foot Ryder truck, towing a car behind me, with two small children sitting on the seat next to me.
I had to believe - everyone else around me was telling me not to go! Roads are icy in winter, and can be hazardous. My response was the same, though: "Lord, I don't know how it's going to happen, but I praise and thank you for it in advance in Jesus name!" I had been taught to praise Him in all things, and to praise and thank Him for fulfilling my needs before seeing the manifestation of their happening.
It was in December, just before Christmas. I attended my church in Carrolton, Texas one last time. They surprised me with a huge basket of food and other items they felt that I would need for my trip. They included a big turkey for my Christmas dinner, explaining that the kids and I could eat on it while driving across the country to save on having to buy food. In the basket was a small blue plastic nativity scene with white figures. It was an ornament, they said, to remember them by.
To this day, I still keep it on display in my house.
So on Christmas day, I fixed Christmas dinner, my kids opened their presents, I cleaned up the house and finished packing. The next day, we departed.
Everyone had told me not to leave that day. An ice and snow storm was predicted to blow in that day, and drivers were being warned to stay off of the roads. I said, "God wants me in Washington State, and if He does, then He'll open up the heavens, hold back the snow and let me through. Then He'll close up the weather behind me and let it snow. Praise God!"
I sat my 4 year old son in the seat of the truck, sat my 3 year old daughter on top of my overnight case (this was before the days of car seats!) laughed at the white overcast sky, and headed for the New Mexico border.
That night, it snowed to record levels in Dallas - so deep that they closed Dallas Fort Worth Airport. But we weren't there.
We arrived that night in Odessa, Texas, and booked a little motel room. I told the clerk, "Looks like you're in for some snow!" The clerk exclaimed, "Oh, no! It hardly ever snows here! It won't snow!"
I said, "God's opened up the heavens to let me through, and He's closing them right up behind me. You're getting snow!"
The next day, as we clambered into the truck, with my son on the seat and my daughter on the overnight case, we watched light little flakes start to drift down from the sky. We headed out.
That night, they closed the roads through Odessa Texas because it snowed so deeply. But we weren't there.
As I entered Arizona, I started to have some trouble with my truck. I decided to stop at the Ryder truck dealership in Tuscon to have it repaired. As I was talking to the repairman, I looked up at the white sky. I said, "Looks like you're going to get some snow!"
He replied, "Oh, no! It NEVER snows in Tucson!" I said, "God's moving me up to Washington State. He's opening up the weather to let me through, and closing it up behind me. You are getting snow tonight!" He argued, of course. He fixed the truck and I was on my way to Phoenix.
That night, it snowed so hard in Tucson that they closed the Tucson airport and closed the roads. But we weren't there.
We headed from Phoenix to my grandparents house in Van Nuys, California, to spend a night before heading up Interstate 5 to Washington. It snowed so hard in Phoenix after we left that they closed the Phoenix airport and all the roads too. Ha, ha! We weren't there!
I had to buy a tire for "Bean" in California, and then headed north. As we drove through the San Joaquin Valley, we hit the thickest fog I had ever encountered. It is a long valley, and we drove all day through that fog - so thick that we could barely see the road. Imaginary mountains and cliffs seemed to loom around the road in the fog, and I could hardly discern vehicles around me. But we knew that God was with us, so kept going. We kept singing and praising God to pass the time. It was Sunday.
I was expecting a wire transfer of some money at a truck stop in Redding, so stopped in to gas up and get it. They said that they didn't have any money for me, and didn't get wire transfers on Sundays. I was insistent that they HAD to have that money for me. They made me wait and said they would check.
While I was there, about three different truckers walked up to me and told me that they had seen me driving with my kids, and that they had been watching out for me to make sure we were okay. Good guys. They told me that a storm was coming in and that they expected the roads to close. I told them that God was moving us to Washington and the He would open up the heavens to let us through and close them up behind us. I'm sure they thought I was crazy - except for one. He was a Christian.
It took over two hours for the truck stop to locate my money. I can still remember the puzzled look on the clerk's face as he said, "That's odd. It wasn't there before, but now it is! We never receive wire transfers on Sundays!" I told him that God was doing this, that he was opening up the heavens to let us through and closing them up behind us. I'm sure he thought I was crazy, too, but he gave me my money and we were off. I looked up at the white sky and observed light flakes of snow starting to come down.
As we traveled through Oregon, I tuned into the radio. They were predicting an ice storm. I kept trying to tune into Christian radio stations so that we could sing and praise God, which also helped keep the kids happy - when they weren't sleeping. As we rolled into Portland, though, it was night, and I couldn't find any more Christian radio stations. I was dog tired, knew the ice storm was blowing in, and needed to do everything I could to push on.
I told the kids, "I can't find any Christian radio stations". My little boy, Ron, chimed in, "That's okay, mom! WE'LL be your Christian radio station!" He and his little sister started singing together, "Jesus loves me, this I know; for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong. They are weak but He is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so." They sang this song over and over and over as the miles rolled by, through the night until, exhausted and unable to go any farther - or take any more renditions of "Jesus Loves Me" - I stopped at a little motel in Kelso, Washington.
When I stopped at that little motel, I said, "Looks like you're going to get some weather!" He replied, "Yes, we've got an ice storm coming in tonight. They'll probably close the roads, so you'll probably be with us for a while." I said, "No, God's moving me up from Texas, and I've another day's drive, yet. He is opening up the heavens to let me through and closing them up behind me. You won't get that ice storm until after I leave." Doubtful of what I was saying, and with warnings of the hazards of trying to drive in icy road conditions, he handed me my room key.
The next morning looked gray as we scrambled into the truck and headed north. The ice storm arrived into Kelso shortly after we left, and followed us all the way up through Olympia, through Tacoma, through Seattle, through Everett, and on into Bellingham. It started sleeting in Bellingham just as I arrived at my parents house, January 3, 1983. They closed all the roads that night. And we praised and thanked God in Jesus' name. He did exactly what I knew He would do: opened up the heavens, let us through, and closed them up behind us. That was His way of telling me that I would never live in Texas again, that I could trust Him, and that even when everything looks impossible, not to stop believing. No matter what.
A couple of days later, after the roads re-opened, my parents showed us the little house they had rented for us, and there, in the living room, stood a beautiful little Christmas tree, lights twinkling and ornaments shining.
It was time to put into practice what God had taught me in Texas.

If you are new to this blog, I will tell you that much of it is a chronicle, told in a consecutive order. The first installment of this chronicle was titled "When God Spoke - and the Lost Memory". That is the beginning of this story, and I highly encourage you to read that post first, before going to this one. It will set the stage for what is to come, and it is my prayer that it will bless you and touch you.
This story picks up where that one left off.
It was now 1982, and I was working in Fort Worth, Texas for a company called the National "Write Your Congressman", going business to business selling subscriptions to heads of businesses for a legislative research firm.
Arch Bonnema had hired me for the position based only on faith and on God's leading. I had been driving a rental car which had been rented for me by an acquaintance, whom I paid for the rental every week. My children were still in Virginia with their father, and I had moved from Mineral Wells to Arlington (between Dallas and Fort Worth) into a little duplex with the idea that I would make enough money to get my children back. It was a long, hard road.
Arch saw my plight with the rental car, (and with another car I had bought - a transaction which had turned out very badly!) and loaned me his wife's 1965 Mustang to go on my sales calls until a better solution could be found. He had just recently moved to Dallas from Minnesota himself, and was in the process of moving his family down to Texas to join him. Though not much older than I was, he was a man of strong faith and wisdom. I was still a new Christian, hungry for knowledge and wisdom myself, and he became not only a manager - my boss - but also a Christian mentor. I had an insatiable thirst to know more about Jesus Christ, about the end times, about Revelation. Arch had answers, and was glad to share that wisdom. He was also an incredible sales manager.
When Arch left for Minnesota to get his family and finish the closing on the sale of his house, he brought back a little red Ford Pinto Station Wagon. He agreed to sell me the station wagon and let me make payments to him. I promptly named the Pinto "Bean" since I thought it bore some resemblance to a red pinto bean.
Bean and I went to work to make enough money to bring my kids back.
My biggest problem seemed to be my looks. Business men in Texas in the early 1980's often didn't want to listen to pretty women about business or politics. I changed the look of my clothing to a strong "Dress for success" look, cut my long hair into an extra short boy cut, and - because I was in Texas - dyed it light blonde. It seemed to help, and my sales improved.
I finally put together enough money to drive to Virginia and get my children. My four year old son didn't recognize me because I looked so different. We drove for a day and a half with he and my three year old daughter in the back seat when I said something - I don't remember what - reached back and rubbed my hand on his little leg and his foot for reassurance, as I had done so many times before. I heard his sweet little voice from the back seat say, "Now I know you're my mommy!" It warmed my heart. He said he was glad I didn't burn up in the fire! Confused, I asked him, "What fire?" He said that he and his sister thought that when I said I was fired from Motorola, they had thought that I was burned up in a fire! They thought they would never see their mommy again! I had to explain what the term "fired" meant.
After we arrived home, though, bad things kept happening to us. Weird things. Out of the blue things. For example, (this was before a time of children's car seats, and my children sat in the back seat when we drove) one day, my son was in my car with me. My daughter was in the car of a fellow who happened to be a boyfriend at the time. My son suddenly, unexplainedly, opened the back door of the car and fell out while the car was moving, and fell on his head! In a panic, I rushed him to the hospital. While I was there, my boyfriend showed up with my daughter, who had suddenly, unexplainedly, opened up the car door and fallen out too! There weren't any cell phones then. We didn't have any way to call each other and tell each other what had happened. It just happened. And during that same period of time, there were other sudden, unexplained things which happened to us, too, which I cannot chronicle here.
Arch looked at all the things that were happening to us and decided that it was all happening for a reason. There was a supernatural reason that these things were happening, and he told me that, because of my background before I had become a Christian, Satan was attacking me. Satan hates to lose one of his own, and there were "strongholds" in my life that needed to be broken. He and his wife, Sherry, decided to move me, with my children, into their house to get to the bottom of those strongholds and see that they were broken.
To backtrack: I had grown up in a Roman Catholic household, where no one really knew, sought or understood the truth of who Jesus Christ was or what He had really done. In high school I started looking at all sorts of other beliefs, and continued on that search in college. I studied Buddhism. I studied Taoism. I studied Hinduism and Shintoism. I studied metaphysics and witchcraft. In the Air Force, I lived with a high priest of the Wicca and thought I was communing with nature. My first husband was a practicing Buddhist and together we had owned two schools of martial arts where we taught Chinese Kempo, Tae Kwondo and Shotokan. I'd picked up a lot of negative spiritual baggage before I had accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord.
It had happened this way: My first husband was an alcoholic and a veteran of the Viet Nam war who had been attached to Special Forces. He was a third degree black belt when we had the karate schools. He also was in the Air Force. He would drink a 12 pack of beer a night, the pupils of his eyes would pin, and the next thing I would know he would chase me from one side of the house to the other, get me to kneel on the floor in a corner, and then he would decide whether to beat me into a bloody pulp or to decide that I wasn't worth the effort and leave. He was hallucinating and thought at those times that I was a Vietnamese enemy combatant. He would never remember what happened the next day.
I had a side business that I was building, and was listening to some good teachers and mentors. Those teachers and mentors told me that I needed to read positive books if I wanted to be successful. "Magic of Thinking Big." "Think and Grow Rich." "The Power of Positive Thinking". "How To Win Friends and Influence People". And many others... but they said that if you wanted to learn to influence others, you needed to learn to ask good questions, and the best question asker was Jesus Christ. He knew how to ask the right questions. They said if I wanted to learn the best success principles, I should read the Bible, start with the book of Matthew, and learn how Jesus asked questions. I saw how successful, how wealthy and how happy these people were, and started reading every night: first a chapter from my positive book, and then a chapter from the Bible. I had worked my way through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and was in John when, one night, dead tired and bleary eyed, I reached John chapter 3. I forced myself to stay awake to read the chapter when I got to chapter 16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever should believe in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life." Immediately, I was awake as the realization hit me. I had a small son, but before I had him, I had miscarried four other babies. I could not fathom giving my son as a sacrifice for anyone else, and yet God loved me so much, that He willingly sacrificed His son for my redemption, regardless of how bad I had been! And that Son had not only died, but He had risen from the dead in his own body by His own will for my sake! A Jesus Christ who could do that could do anything! He could heal me, my soul, my spirit, my body, my life. I immediately fell to the floor and asked His forgiveness and asked Him to be the Lord of my life.
That was 1980. Now, back to 1982. I had indeed asked Jesus to be the Lord of my life, but my life before that time had attracted demonic forces that worked against me and my children to attack us at every level. Those forces had to be dealt with.
So we moved in with Arch and Sherry, and I continued to work for the National "Write Your Congressman" while mentoring with these beautiful friends. I became involved in a little church called Dallas North Community Church and became friends with the pastor, Paul Mills. The president of National "Write Your Congressman" was another Christian man, David Adamson (whom we called Grandpa David). He also became a friend and a mentor.
I continued working Fort Worth, and then started working the counties around and south of Fort Worth. One day I was working from business to business in a poorer section of a county southwest of Fort Worth when I started to go to one of the businesses on my list, and it just looked too poor to deal with. It looked like a shack and I decided to skip it and go to the next one. As I was leaving and driving down a dirt road to the next business, I heard a voice in the car, "Trust me, and everything will be all right." Shocked, I looked around the car to see who was sitting there. There was no one. I said, "What?" The voice repeated, "Trust me, and everything will be all right." I knew it had to be my Lord, and knew I had to trust Him, with everything. I turned my car around and went back to the shack I had previously skipped, and they not only bought from me, they paid cash.
A few days after that, while driving north towards home on the interstate just as I was leaving that county, I heard the voice again, "My child, my beautiful child, I have so much better for you." Again, shocked, I said, "What?" And the voice repeated, "My child, my beautiful child, I have so much better for you." And then I heard the most beautiful song - a song I had never heard before. Incredulous, I said, "Lord, if that's from you, then please don't let me forget this song until I've had a chance to write it down and score it." The sunlight shone brilliantly gold into the car as the song burned itself into my spirit - and stayed there. (It was 1992 before I finally had a chance to sit down to a piano, and put that song on paper, scoring it with all it's harmonies).
I turned my car around and went back to the shack I had previously skipped, and they not only bought from me, they paid cash.
About a month after this happened, Arch, his wife Sherry and I decided that the strongholds had been handled, mostly broken, and that we might be ready to move out. I was concerned, though, about any breaking from their help, their mentoring, their closeness. I asked them, when things became hard, what should I do? Arch looked me in the eyes and calmly asked, "Who's your source"?
The fact was, they were not my source. They were the tools. Jesus Christ was, and always would be my source. My true source. I could trust that, if I'd be willing to live it.
I moved out of Arch and Sherry's home and into a little house in Waxahachie, Texas. Shortly after that move, Arch called me into his office and said, "The Lord has spoken to my spirit that you need to move back to Washington State and be close to your family". I argued that this couldn't possibly be true. Within less than a day, David Adamson called me and said, "I don't understand this, but the Lord has spoken to my spirit that you need to move to Washington State and be close to your family. If you want, I can arrange to transfer you up there." Right after that, my pastor, Paul Mills, called me and said, "I don't understand this, but the Lord has spoken to my spirit that you need to move to Washington State and be close to your family."
None of them had talked to each other about this.
Finally, my father (who, along with my mom and brother, also had become Christians by this time) called me from Washington State and said, "This may sound weird, but the Lord spoke to my spirit that you need to move up to Washington State and be close to us." It was out of the blue. He didn't know, never talked to and had never met any of the people in Texas.
The Bible says that you know when God speaks, because He always verifies what He says by two or more witnesses. I had four. I began to make arrangements for the move.
The next installment will be called, "When God Spoke, and The Move Across The Country."

The year was, I think, 1981, and I was living in Mineral Wells, Tx.
I had arrived there a few months earlier with my two small children, ages 4 and 3, filling in a sales job with Motorola corporation selling two way radios to oil companies. I had traveled there and taken the job after a bitter divorce from an abusive husband. I also considered the move to be an escape from a boss who, though married, had insisted he was in love with me and continually looked for ways he could try to take me to his bed. I was a brand new Christian and didn't want his bed. Sexual harrassment laws in Texas in 1981 were practically nonexistent, so I ran to Mineral Wells.
I also had a small business on the side - a direct sales business - which I hoped to build someday into a business large enough and secure enough to provide for a legacy and the long term financial security of myself and my children, but I needed to talk to a lot of people to do it.
The job with Motorola looked promising in the beginning: They promised a salary plus generous commissions, a new company car and reimbursement for gas and mileage. This was helpful, since my own car, an old Ford Fury, had recently gasped it's final breath and gone down for the count. I was a good sales person and full of hope.
The job with Motorola started to show signs of trouble, though, when the "powers that be" first gave me the company car. It turned out that my "boss' boss" had his eye on that particular car and they gave it to me instead. He was not pleased, and told me so.
It didn't stop there, though. My own boss took me out for training into the oil fields, where I learned the sales job, and within just a few weeks he started inviting me to go to his lake cabin with him. I sweetly told him that would be fine as long as we took his wife and my kids! He didn't take that too well,either. I also didn't participate in the cursing, swearing and foul language the other sales reps used, and so seemed to stand a bit away from those reps. Both bosses called me in one day and told me that they didn't know how, but they WOULD find a way to get rid of me.
Only thing was, they couldn't. Not honestly, anyway. I was selling, and making them money. I was more than 400% over quota - good by any definition. My only offense was that I was good looking - some might say "hot". And a Christian. So they collaborated.
I considered the harrassment and collaboration against me to be an incentive to build my own small business at night, on my own time, so as to hopefully make enough money to carry me through when I eventually hoped to leave them. I didn't have time to do that, though. One day the bosses called me in, told me that they were firing me and said the reason was because I wasn't producing anything. I was shocked, as I had turned in thousands of dollars in business. I asked them how that could be - and then I saw my contracts on the boss' desk - my signature taken off and boss's signature overlaying where mine was. Forged.
They followed me home from Fort Worth to Mineral Wells that night and then took the company car. I was shocked as I had never been fired from anything before, but felt that God was on my side and He would carry me through. I started job hunting.
Mineral Wells had been home to an Air Force Base earlier in it's history. The base closed down some years before I moved there, and business had gone downhill with it. There was a gas and oil crisis going on at that time, too, so the surrounding oil fields were shutting down, creating a general depression in the area.
I walked door to door to the businesses in town, to see who would need a good sales rep, or a waitress, or even a MacDonalds burger flipper. Nobody was hiring. Nobody. I finally convinced a local Ford dealership to hire me, giving me the use of Ford vehicles to drive, but nobody was buying cars, either. Customers weren't even walking onto the lot or calling, and the reps - all of us working on commission only - were left standing around an empty lot and an empty showroom, for day after day. Phone calling, advertising, nothing was bringing the customers in.
No commissions means no money. Two days before my food was going to run out, I called my ex-husband in Virginia and asked him to take the kids for a while because I couldn't feed them. My little sideline business wasn't making enough money yet to support us or even pay the bills. My ex flew out within two days and I hugged both kids and told them I would come get them as soon as I could.
And then I walked back into that big, empty house. Alone. Too soon after my divorce to acquire anything, I had no living room furniture, no TV, just the kid's beds and a mattress on the floor for myself. I had bought a window air conditioner on credit when I moved in to provide some relief from the 100 degree (Plus!) summers.
I had decided on one principle which I would not compromise: I would not go on welfare. It was against everything I believed in. America is the land of opportunity, where if you work, you eat. America is where, if you have a dream, and you work hard and you focus on it and don't quit, you can make that dream come true. Welfare, to me, was a crutch, and dangerously generational. I would not give the example of a welfare crutch to my children.
As a Christian, I had learned another principle: God "inhabits" the praise of His people. In the Bible, His living Word, He says that we are to praise Him in all things and thank Him for all things. It says that praise and thanksgiving releases His power in our lives and gives us victory over our situations. I knew that a Jesus that could rise from the dead in His own body by His own will could get me through this. He died for me. He rose from the dead for me. So I continually praised Him and thanked him for my situation. Often, the prayer went something like this, "Lord, I don't know where or how or why this is happening, but I praise and thank you for it right now!"
I went on as best as I could. My money ran out. My food ran out. I walked to the local churches to see if I could get any help from them. The Southern Baptist church curtly told me that they only helped church members and if I wanted any help I would have to become a member. I didn't.
I still continued, as best as I could, to try to build my little fledgling business, but it became harder without gas or ability to get to see people in outlying areas. Mineral wells wasn't very big - only a few thousand people. Anywhere you had to go was farther than walking distance.
One church recommended me to the local Salvation Army, which consisted of a house with one person living there. The Salvation Army there didn't have any food, but did lend me a bicycle so I could get around when the Ford Dealership started to go out. (I think they cut their entire sales staff down to just the owner). Someone else lent me a big 5 gallon water bottle after the water was shut off so I could load it into the kid's little red wagon, haul it to the corner gas station, fill it with water, and take it home. I had water - just no food.
Somewhere during that time, a very old friend showed up for a very brief time. In the early 1970's we had been close; so close, in fact, that three times he had asked me to marry him, and, being that time a very wild immature young lady, three times I had said yes, and then dumped him for other people. Still, somehow he had always been graceful and kind, and we had somehow ended things on a friendly basis. Back in the 1970's he had taught me to drive, to work on cars, and even how to have table manners. He graduated from college, went into the Navy, and I went into the Air Force (which had planted me in Texas. After I got out of the Air Force, I had married a Tech Sargeant who became an officer, and had my beloved two children - and then divorced when he beat me). When my old friend showed up in Mineral Wells, I put on my best face and did all I could not to let on the dire situation I was in. He put his hand in mine as naturally as if we had never been apart, and we talked. I invited him to come into business with me.
That's where the missing memory comes in. I don't remember what happened. Any of it. What happened? Did he say no, and I say that if he wasn't coming into my business we couldn't be friends? Did he say he'd get back to me on it? What happened? I don't remember. Any of it. It's like a big hole. I just remember that he left - faded out into a cloud as if he had never been there. Did he have any idea that he was leaving me to die? Well, not absolutely die - but almost die.
The days wore on with no food and no money. The people I had bought the air conditioner from came and took it back because I couldn't pay for it. The electricity was turned off. The phone was turned off. I had exhausted every option I knew of, and yet the one thing I knew to keep doing was praising and thanking God for the situation - and reading the Bible, His Word.
Finally, one night, having not eaten in longer than I could remember, I laid down on my mattress to sleep, and, I thought, to probably die. I felt I was very close to it. The last words I said were, "Lord, I don't know how or why, but I praise and thank you for this in Jesus Name". I had drifted into that twilight between sleep and awake when I heard an audible voice say to me, "Get up and start packing. Everything's going to be all right". I was alone in the house! Who was here? Immediately awake, I sat up and said, "What? Who's there?" The voice spoke again, "Get up and start packing. Everything's going to be all right." Amazed, I knew it had to be the voice of God. Suddenly I had energy, got up, and immediately started packing my things.
A few hours later, I heard a knock at the door. I opened it, and a fellow I had only met once in a business meeting was standing at my door, with his pick up truck backed up to it behind him. He had a strange expression on his face as he said, "You know, I don't understand this, but my wife Leslie and I think we just heard God tell us to come here and move you in with us."
Amazed, I immediately thanked the fellow, whose name was JT, and together we packed my things into his pick up truck and moved me to to his house on top of a hill.
Day after day during the time I stayed with them, I rode the donated bicycle down that hill to go job hunting. Day after day I rode that one speed bicycle farther and farther back up that hill until I could ride all the way up without walking.
One day I heard about a drafting job. I had some drafting experience, so rode the bicycle down the hill to head to the business and fill out an application. During the ride, a thunderstorm blew in and washed yellow mud all over the road, so I arrived at the business soaking wet and covered in yellow mud. The receptionist told me that the job had already been filled, but I was welcome to fill out a job application. I sat down to fill out the application and, while writing, saw two men walk into the office. One of them, who I assumed was the manager, asked for the head of the business. I figured they were either with the National "Write Your Congressman" or the National Chamber of Commerce, and decided to approach them to find out when they came out. I figured that if they were with the Chamber, I didn't want the job because it required too much travel for a mom with kids, but if it was the "Write Your Congressman" that I would tell them I was a really good salesman and wanted a job so I could get my kids back. When they walked out, I asked the one I assumed to be the manager, "Who do you work for?" He replied, "The National 'Write Your Congressman'. Why do you ask?" I said, "I want to work for you". He looked me up and down, soaking wet, covered with mud and with a rubber band around one ankle to keep my pants out of the bicycle gears and said, "Why?" I told him my story, and that I had been a member of "Write Your Congressman" in Wichita Falls. I told him I felt I would make them a good salesman and that I felt God had directed me to him. He smiled broadly and said, "Great! I'm a Christian too! My name is Arch Bonnema". He gave me his card, I called him, we scheduled an interview, and he hired me. Someone else showed up with a rental car for me and I went to work in Fort Worth, TX. This started one of my most treasured friendships. Arch, and his wife, Sherry, became friends and mentors who impacted my life in every area, but especially in the area of my spiritual life. They "adopted" me for a while after I finally made enough money to get my children back and Sherry was matron of honor at my second wedding. Arch and Sherry have, before and since, impacted more lives of other people than I can count and the very thought of what they did for me blesses me every time I think of them.
It is now 2007 and my husband and I live in Idaho. My children are grown and married. But what about the old friend I last saw in Mineral Wells? I know we parted friends, but still have a huge hole in my memory. The reason I bring this up is that particular old friend moved to Idaho a year or so ago. I found out only a few weeks ago. He has now been married for a long time and has daughters of his own. I'm glad, as I had often prayed for him that he would find a good mate and have a great marriage and good family. I always thought well of him. The company he was working for, though, went out of business, he is out of a job, and he and his wife have a little sideline business that they are hoping to build into a big business.
When I found out (through a business website that we both subscribe to) that he had moved to a portion of Idaho that my husband and I travel often to, I realized that there was a good chance that we could cross paths. I did not want that situation to become awkward, so immediately shot him an email to say hello and alert him that we were here and could cross paths. This led to a series of emails that indicated that his family and ours have a great deal in common - especially in the areas of faith and values - and they would like to be friends. They have invited us to their house.
And they want to invite us to participate in their little sideline business with them.
And there, again, is the hole in my memory. Part of me wonders if he had any idea that, when I invited him into my business so long ago and he didn't participate, that he was leaving me to almost die. Part of me wonders if and how things might be different if he had signed on: I would not have heard God speak. I would never have met Arch and Sherry Bonnema and been so incredibly blessed by their presence in my life. I would never had been in the other businesses I have been in. I would never have met my own sweet husband, whom I love dearly. And even though I want us to be friends - I have missed his friendship - I don't know if we can comfortably participate in his business.
One thing I do know. I can say, "Lord, I don't know where, how or why, but I praise and thank you for this in Jesus Name". God doesn't lie, and he doesn't make mistakes. He will lead us correctly and perfectly in this thing too.