"Unanswered" Prayers

Father's Day on Cannery Row.

Yesterday I had the wonderful blessing of being able to head north after church and spend Father's Day with my parents. For weeks I looked forward to a good, long cup of coffee at a special coffee shop on Cannery Row—sitting, catching up, just being together. As we headed up the Salinas Valley the fog bank ahead looked ominous, but when we got to the coffee shop I had requested the weather was beautiful, the ocean glittered in the sun, and someone had even left us two outside tables, pushed together, with an umbrella above them and six chairs arranged around them. Thanks, Lord!

When I went into the coffee shop to order while we waited for my folks to arrive I noticed on the top of the counter facing the door a few books on stands . . . a couple of titles by John Steinbeck, and my dad's pictorial history of the Monterey/Cannery Row waterfront and sardine industry, From Fisherman's Wharf to Steinbeck's Cannery Row. When he got there I had fun telling my dad that he was ranked up there side by side with Steinbeck!

Not bad company to be next to . . .

Later last night, as we sat around visiting at my parent's home, Dad reminded me of a time in the very early 1960s when he had bumped in to Steinbeck on the street up in San Francisco. All of a sudden, as he shared it, I thought of how, often, if we were told our future, we'd never believe it because it would be so out of our current frame of reference that we couldn't receive it. When my dad bumped in to John Steinbeck, at the time Steinbeck was a well known author . . . but my dad was not writing, I wasn't in the picture, and grand kids certainly weren't! It would have been, on that early 1960s day, mind-bending to be told that he would one day be a father of a son, a grandfather of two beautiful girls, an author of a book that would be shelved next to Steinbeck's, and spending a Father's day almost 50 years later with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters at a waterfront coffee shop at an elegant resort hotel in an area that, at that time, was marked old abandoned canneries with little tourist appeal.

As I reflected on that, I found myself thinking of how often we probably ask God for an answer to something and, while He knows it, He either can't give it to us, or we can't recognize it as from Him when He does (thinking, instead, we are just having weird thoughts or daydreams), because the answer is completely out of our frame of current reference because it involves situations and circumstances that we have yet to even know will happen. Sometimes, I believe, we must wait to get an answer from God because a person, or situation, or event involved in the answer is not even in place or in the picture yet, and there is no way for us to comprehend an answer that involves something or someone we are not even aware of yet.

As I look back at seasons of my life I realize how many places there are in it that if you had told me where I'd be five or ten or twenty years later I would have either laughed, called you crazy, or simply not been able to wrap myself around it (i.e. the college freshmen mocking a God he claims he doesn't believe in becoming a pastor, etc.). Certainly, if I had a thought about a future like that I would have dismissed it! And yet, when we pray and ask God a question about the future, how many times is that the same situation? We wouldn't recognize the answer if He gave it to us because it is so out of the current context of our life or situation. And so, in that period of waiting, we move ahead on faith—not believing God hasn't heard or doesn't care, but just trusting the love He showed us on the cross and knowing that, if we aren't seeming to get an answer from Him, we can trust His love and trust His character and goodness, and trust that there is a good reason for it—and that He has not left us, ceased to care for us, or stopped watching over us.

17 Years . . .

This Saturday Mary Ann and I celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. As I tell her often, "If God lined up all the women in the world and told me I could pick any one I'd walk up and down the line and not stop until I'd found you again." She is my bride, my best friend, my "buddy," my pal, my partner. I can't imagine my life without her, and I think she is the greatest wife I could ever have, and the greatest mom our girls could ever have.

This is not to say we have not had, or don't still have (or won't again have), struggles, rough times, disagreements, but with all of that I would do it again in a heart beat. As I look back on these years there are a few things that stand out in my heart:

1) God—not some generic "god," but the Christian Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—is what has carried us through and made us what we are. I can not thank Him and Mary Ann enough for the day when we sat in Pastor Bill Holdridge's office at Calvary Chapel in Monterey. We were engaged, deeply in love, and I was seeking God, but I wasn't a Christian . . . and Bill knew it. He had Mary Ann read the unequally yoked passage in 2 Corinthians 6:14. She got part way through and, with tears, turned to me and said that she would wait as long as it took, but she couldn't marry me until I became a Christian. I can not describe the anger and hurt I felt, nor, for Mary Ann, what a wrenching decision that was for her to choose to love God more than me. But, it was a catalyst to my seeking the truth about the man called Jesus until I found it . . . and it was the greatest moment of my life to date. I can not imagine if I had entered that marriage not being a Christian, and how much we would have missed together at a level it is impossible to share apart from that spiritual union.

2) Time together—making our relationship a priority—has been a rock of our relationship. I grew up watching my folks end each day after work taking an hour long cup of coffee together and sharing and catching up. Mary Ann and I have made our "coffee time" a priority that we don't let a lot get in the way of. I believe that has contributed deeply to our friendship, and I find that it is the time of day I look forward to most. In fact, given a choice with going anywhere in the world, but not having Mary Ann with me, or being with Mary Ann sharing a cup of coffee by our fireplace or on our screen porch, and I would choose the time with her every time (unless we felt God was calling me to go somewhere). In fact, I can't think of really anything that we would rather do apart than doing something together—be it stringing barbed wire on our fence, or going through papers and filing. We just love to be together.

3) Choosing love—by God's grace and help I believe that choosing to love the other over ourself has proven the turning point in many a difficult moment. Love is a force which God is all about and all over. He just comes in to its midst. When we choose to love the other more than ourself or our own flesh or rights or emotions, we have come well past half way in turning a situation around.

I could write for days on end about my marriage to my best friend, but I think I've said enough. Nothing I have written in any way says that other marriages with different choices are any less loving or true than ours—I am just sharing from a joyous heart a little about ours. Mary Ann has loved me, supported me, upheld me, and been God's voice to me more times than I can count—and I thank God for her more times than I can count as well.