I promised a good bykfixr story today, the anniversary of his death. I again say thank you to you all that have welcomed me so openly. Let me apologize in advance that this is not a flashlight story. This is the story of how Mike and I met and became friends. I feel that this is the best day to tell it. I will say that the good Lord was at work on both of us.
I was a single mom of 3 boys and I worked as an assistant manager at 7-11 on midnight shift. I had applied at somewhere, I don't remember where it was so long ago. I used to see this man every night coming in for coffee and I thought he was a mad married guy, he never seemed to smile. He would come to the register to pay for his coffee, always a small comment obout not having to worry about very many bills. I was like, "ok". That was the extent of our conversation for a very long time. Then all at once, he stopped coming in. Not a big deal in my opinion because I didn't want any kind of relationship with anyone. I had been married twice before and both of them ended badly, and I had no intentions of ever doing that again.
Then one night, he came back in. He told me that he had been taken off night shift for the winter, but was back now. I was happy to see him, he seemed nice enough. You guys may not know this, but there are plenty of police officers at 7-11 off and on during the night. Mike walked up to the counter and looked over at the police standing in a huddle drinking their coffees and said "bad time to say this is a robbery" with a childish grin. My response, without missing a beat was "Even worse time to say we're out of donuts." (if there are any police reading this right now, let me apologize. I was trying to be funny.) We both laughed and started talking. I found out he wasn't married and he was in to a lot of the same things I enjoyed.
Here is where God went to work. One night, Mike came in and we were talking and he grabbed a camera out of his work truck to show me a picture he had taken. The picture was one of a sunset, that was beautiful, with a bridge over a road and there was a person on that bridge looking at the sunset. The person was a black outline because of the brightness of the colors in the sunset. I almost fell out. I showed him a picture that I had taken with an extremely old camera that had been given to me, the camera took floppy discs if you can believe it. It was the exact same picture of the same sunset at the same time, the only difference was there was no bridge in mine. That was because, as we were talking about timing of our pictures, I was the one standing on the bridge!!
That was the beginning of what turned out to be a 20-year marriage. At some point, I may tell a few more stories because our entire dating life was moments like that, ones that seemed impossible, but please know that all things are possible with God.
I was a single mom of 3 boys and I worked as an assistant manager at 7-11 on midnight shift. I had applied at somewhere, I don't remember where it was so long ago. I used to see this man every night coming in for coffee and I thought he was a mad married guy, he never seemed to smile. He would come to the register to pay for his coffee, always a small comment obout not having to worry about very many bills. I was like, "ok". That was the extent of our conversation for a very long time. Then all at once, he stopped coming in. Not a big deal in my opinion because I didn't want any kind of relationship with anyone. I had been married twice before and both of them ended badly, and I had no intentions of ever doing that again.
Then one night, he came back in. He told me that he had been taken off night shift for the winter, but was back now. I was happy to see him, he seemed nice enough. You guys may not know this, but there are plenty of police officers at 7-11 off and on during the night. Mike walked up to the counter and looked over at the police standing in a huddle drinking their coffees and said "bad time to say this is a robbery" with a childish grin. My response, without missing a beat was "Even worse time to say we're out of donuts." (if there are any police reading this right now, let me apologize. I was trying to be funny.) We both laughed and started talking. I found out he wasn't married and he was in to a lot of the same things I enjoyed.
Here is where God went to work. One night, Mike came in and we were talking and he grabbed a camera out of his work truck to show me a picture he had taken. The picture was one of a sunset, that was beautiful, with a bridge over a road and there was a person on that bridge looking at the sunset. The person was a black outline because of the brightness of the colors in the sunset. I almost fell out. I showed him a picture that I had taken with an extremely old camera that had been given to me, the camera took floppy discs if you can believe it. It was the exact same picture of the same sunset at the same time, the only difference was there was no bridge in mine. That was because, as we were talking about timing of our pictures, I was the one standing on the bridge!!
That was the beginning of what turned out to be a 20-year marriage. At some point, I may tell a few more stories because our entire dating life was moments like that, ones that seemed impossible, but please know that all things are possible with God.
