A Sign of God's Promise

It was January 1990 when I had my own Aldersgate conversion experience. My marriage had broken up years before, and it had been a very long, painful process of learning and growing until I could feel whole again. Completely broken, I went into a Christian church and heard about the God of forgiveness, mercy and grace. I also heard that to receive these offerings all I had to do was ask the enabler, Jesus Christ, into my heart.

The church I had grown up in professed to be Christian, but stressed the wrath of God in place of God's mercy. Now, on this day many years later, I realized that my imperfect, undeserving self did not have to earn the blessings of Christ. I accepted Jesus that day and entered into the most wonderful relationship with Almighty God. My crippling guilt was being replaced with God's abundant graces. I committed myself to learning about God, devoting many hours per week to formal and personal Bible study and prayer. I had a new life.

Although I greatly desired to be married again, to a Christ-centered man, I knew that it would be awhile before I would be restored enough emotionally and spiritually to be able to identify someone who would be ideal for me, and I for him. For the next few years, my relationship with God grew by leaps and bounds. Simultaneously, I began to long more and more for that soul mate. As the desire in me grew, I found and claimed Psalm 37:4-5. I discerned that the longing I had would not be there if God was not going to fill it. I trusted that, in God's time, God would unite me with the appropriate person.

In March 1994, I came to a crossroads in my life. Several months before, I had finally begun dating a good Christian man that I thought could be this soul mate, but it did not work out, and we stopped seeing each other. Just after this breakup, I was driving home on I-95 from Myrtle Beach with my two grown daughters and had a terrible car accident. Although my car was totaled, thank God, my daughters were not harmed. I suffered some minor but painful chest injuries.

While I was home recuperating, the longing and loneliness I felt just increased all the more. Of course, I cried out to God, and God sent me a gift. It was spring, and a pair of mourning doves made a nest in a wooden wreath on my front door. They got used to my comings and goings, and would show me their baby dove. I became very attached to this little family. One Sunday they flew away, and I knew that they would not return. My loneliness became quite intense, and I claimed the Psalm passage again.

On the very next Sunday, God brought my soul mate to me. He also had been praying for a long time to meet his soul mate! We married the next year. We have grown together in our faith and our love. We are also dedicated to caring for the wild birds on our property. Among our bird family are many mourning doves, who I know mate for life. To me, they will always be a sign of God's promise.

— Pat Evers

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist