Divine Intervention: A story of faith

Tuesday, April 10th - 9:00 pm

Carrying on.  This is a long story, but I want to get all the details out.

I went back to work after the appointment and had 2 more clients to see.  Fortunately I was able to push my problems out of my mind and help out some others.  We had really good sessions.  Once I was done I was so ready to come home.  Only problem is that there was a church staff meeting at our house.  DH had told them he wasn't going to be there, so we hid out in the basement eating dinner and then we took off.  I just wanted to walk.  So we went to our favorite walking beach where you can just walk and walk and walk.  We took the dog along too (she is the most comfort anyone could ever ask for).  DH was still really upset.  He didn't even want to walk and so after a while he headed back but I needed to keep going.  All I could do was walk. 

As he was walking back to the car, I noticed another guy walking out from the parking lot.  I didn't think much of it until DH turned back and started walking with him.  Eventually I turned around and went to meet them.  When I saw who it was, I almost burst into tears. 

There is a wonderful guy from our church who has been such a friend to us over the past little while.  He is brilliant (has 2 degrees and went to Princeton University), compassionate, and just the most solid Christian I think I have ever met.  Of all of our friends, I think I would trust him the most when it comes to matters of faith.  He was the one who was walking on the beach - a completely empty beach apart from us.

Oh, I forgot to mention something.  Pretty much the whole drive to the beach, DH and I talked about our faith and (especially for him) how this rattles everything we have ever believed in.  In our anger/hurt/frustration we wanted to renounce the faith then and there.  However, DH kept coming back to the fact that it seemed like God kept putting things in our path that drew our attention back to him (his dad having a dream, the picture that my mom had, a sermon we listened to that talked about another infertile couple).  So faith was very much on our mind. 

Okay, back to the beach.  We all walked a bit together (came across a dead walrus... that was interesting), and eventually our friend kept going and we hung back.  We were going to just leave but our dog decided she wanted to keep going and followed our friend and basically ditched us.  So we hung around, walked a bit more and eventually he came back with our dog following.  What is interesting is if our dog had not followed him, we would have just left and never had this encounter.

DH and I had talked about telling our friend what was going on, because if we were feeling too weak to pray, we know that he would pray for us.  But as I was working up the courage to bring it up, he said this:

"Now, since it's Divine Intervention that we both happen to be walking at the beach at the same time, is there anything that I can pray for for you guys?"

I lost it.  I burst into tears.  We told him our story.  I told him that we didn't even have the faith to pray.  And he responded, "Well, that's why you have the Church, to help and hold you up when you can't do it yourself."  And he prayed for us. 

I don't know why this happened.  I don't know if this is another one of the "signs" that DH keeps thinking God is bringing across our path.  I don't know if this was just a message from God, reminding us that He is there with us right now.  I was kind of feeling like distancing God from everything that is happening.  I wanted to believe there is a God out there, who made things and rules things... but I don't want to believe that He is personally involved in our lives.  I'd rather just live with the fact that bad things happen to good and bad people, and good things happen to good and bad people.  There's no rhyme or reason for it.  But if God is intimately involved with our lives, and cares that we are struggling right now, I don't know how to deal with that.