My Special Guest Today is ANITA KLUMPERS!
Read her own true love story below.
By the time I was twenty-five my mother had
given up on the hope that I would marry. She bought me pots and pans and
Pfaltzgraf and flatware because, she reasoned, even single women need to live.
And, Lord willing, I wouldn’t live with her and Daddy forever.
Dad wasn’t too concerned. After all, he
hadn’t married Mom till he was in his early 40’s. And if God didn’t want me to
wed, then I could follow in Cousin Angie’s footsteps and be a missionary in
Africa.
The idea of a single life filled me with
dread. Please, please, PLEASE God, don’t be equipping me to remain
unmarried. I developed crushes. Friends tried setting me up with their
relatives. I went out dancing with friends. To bars. After all, I was a nice
Christian lady at a bar. Why couldn’t there be nice Christian guys there too?
Maybe there were. I never met one.
A few months shy of my 27th birthday I
decided I was tired of looking for potential mates. Although not at the point
of picking up books on how to enjoy the gift of singleness, I figured it might
be time to focus on my relationship with God. So, along with several wonderful
single girlfriends I went to a spiritual winter retreat for young adults from a
dozen churches across our state. Did I mention I’d determined not to check out
every eligible young man also in attendance?
I meant it. So when I took note of a
devastatingly handsome man with dark eyes and a dimpled chin sitting across the
room, it wasn’t his good looks that got my attention. Arms crossed, looking
bored, he was the only one sitting out the square dance mixer. In gracious and
generous Christian-girl fashion I thought ‘Jerk,’ and went back to dancing my
little size 9’s off and trying to remember my allemande left from my do-si-do
right.
Later that night, after devotions, a group of
us played cards. A game I didn’t know, called euchre. I’m a dab hand at Old
Maid but this one had me flummoxed, and a group of generous friends tag-teamed
trying to teach me to play. It was hilarious. Really hilarious.
Later that night a group of us went into town
for coffee. The dark-eyed square-dance-boycotter came too. He sat across from
me and told me he got a kick out of watching me laugh over euchre. He flirted
just enough to make me feel interesting but not so much as to make himself look
insincere or lecherous.
We went our separate ways after that weekend
and didn’t meet up till early summer. It took him till late summer to ask me
out and in the meantime one of my major crushes from the previous few years, a
Christian marathon runner and photographer I’d met at work, finally returned my
interest and began asking me out. After I lectured God about his timing I
realized maybe He knew what He was doing. I had to make a decision between two
attractive men (my daydream back in the days before I realized it would be
painful) and I chose the right one.
Wouldn’t my story make a fine romance movie?
Sort of an ‘At Long Last Love’ type of life? But now, three sons, four
grandsons and countless prayers and tears and rejoicings later, I realize that
my entire life has been filled with love.
From birth, before my birth, my parents loved
me, and continued until their last breath on earth. Aunts and uncles and
cousins by the dozens meant extended love and the kind of safety net children
long for but don’t always enjoy. Then there is my family in Christ. Brothers
and sisters more than the sands on the shore, and wherever there are God’s
children there is my family, and we love each other. We don’t always play well
together, but the love is there.
My friends—oh, my friends! When I bemoan my
limited practical skills and meager dose of common sense I remember my glorious
friendships with some of the most godly, delightful, gracious,
fault-overlooking women as can be found. I would rather have my friends than an
artist’s eye, a singer’s silver tongue, or an athlete’s supple limbs.
On all this abundance of love God set a gem
of a husband. He is as attractive, open, and affirming as when I first met him,
and he still refuses to dance. Those three sons love me in spite of a plethora
of faults and mistakes and my little grandsons still give me smooches in
public.
Do I know I have been gifted far and above
anything I could think or ask, much less deserve? You bet. But what if God had
not seen fit to give me a husband, children, grandbabies? What if my parents
had been cold, negligent, absent, and I didn’t have some sort of strange
ability to find wonderful friends? Would I be any less blessed? No. Not a bit.
God loves me. God has loved me before I knew
what love was. If I had never known human love, God’s love would be beyond the
heights and depths and breadths of what I think I need. Jesus prayed for me the
night before His death and prays for me today and the Spirit intercedes for me
with sighs too deep for words and the Father’s love is vast beyond all measure.
What wondrous love is this?!
Family, friends, husband and children have
all hemmed me in love, and the love that comes from God is greater than these.
Check out Anita’s contribution to Prism Book Group’s new
Love Is series…
Hounded
“Love is patient…” 1 Corinthians: 13:4
Elise Amberson’s husbands always die before she can get
the marriage momentum going. At least this last one left her with lots of
money. Now she can hang out with her dogs, avoid men, and try to keep off God’s
radar.
But her dogs are behaving oddly, a pesky pastor can’t
keep his hands off her soul, and God is backing her into a corner.
It’s all more than a rich, beautiful young woman should
have to bear. But when someone begins targeting Elise, she’ll have to figure
out why before she becomes the late Widow Amberson.
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