One Grand Author...One Peculiar Story

The two greatest gifts in my life have each come through unusual circumstances. I’ll start with the runner up on my list.

Exactly six years ago tonight, Ashley and I were circling the mostly frozen lake behind the Broadmoor. It was beyond cold, and due to my intense stalling, we went around time and time again. I finally located the courage needed to get on bended knee and propose (read a more detailed account here). The sound of her “Y-E-S!” was music to my ears.

I proposed a short five and a half months after initially meeting her. Although our dating experience was brief, it was filled with unpredictable moments—like the day I collapsed while running and ended up in the hospital with kidney failure. 

Not only was I surprised to find out that 75% of my kidneys had shut down, but I was also caught off guard when they wheeled me into a tiny little room that carried an anything but tiny smell.  My hospital roommate was a man in his 80’s who happened to be experiencing severe gastrointestinal issues. The only thing separating the two of us was a small retractable curtain—which did little to keep the foul smells and sounds on his side of the room.

Despite the barely bearable smell, Ashley remained at my bedside the entire time. She even slept in a hard chair at the end of my bed, bending over to lay her head by the source of another unpleasant fragrance—my feet.  I knew in that moment she was no ordinary woman.

My recovery was nothing short of miraculous, which is how I also describe the fact that Ashley agreed to marry me after that experience. Come to think of it, miraculous is a fitting term to describe how our paths initially crossed.  

Whenever someone asks how Ashley and I met, I usually respond by saying, “Through mutual friends”. There’s more to the story, but we’re both a little embarrassed to share the details. I think it’s time to come clean.

A few months prior to meeting Ashley, I was walking into the church when a seemingly random person carrying a computer approached me and said, “Gabe, let me show you something. There is a new website called myspace where you can create your own webpage. You gotta sign up for this!”

“I don’t think it’s really my thing,” I told him as I walked away smiling. It sounded kind of nerdish to me. While I actually made fun of the idea at first, I had my own page within a month.  And I thank God I took the plunge.

Shortly after I signed up for what is now the red-headed step child of social media, I was pleasantly surprised by an email that appeared in my myspace inbox. Actually, I rubbed my eyes in disbelief as I stared at a picture of a blonde haired, blue eyed beauty who had just emailed me out of the blue.  She had written to introduce herself after realizing we had mutual friends.

 I glanced back at her picture again…and again…and again…and eventually broke out into a loud and exuberant rendition of “Handel’s Messiah”. I think all of heaven joined in. The hallelujah chorus playing in my heart only intensified as I saw her for the first time, and it grew even louder as I witnessed her character and love for the Lord in the days that followed.

For those of you who know Ashley well, I’m sure you’ll agree that sending an email on myspace to a guy she had never met was extremely unusual for her. She often laughs when she says, “I can’t believe I did that. Something came over me.”

The more I walk with God and experience the story He’s telling, the more I’m aware of His unconventional methods. He is authoring a grand story. It’s a story filled to the brim with the element of surprise. He is surely the same “yesterday, today, and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), but it’s amazing how unpredictable He can be.

I think He simply likes to keep us on our toes. He wants us to lean in and pay attention to what He’s doing.  The events of our life may not make sense at the time, but we have to view them through the lens of story. Aren’t some of the greatest stories the ones with unpredictable twists and turns? Isn’t this what keeps us engaged in the story? The brilliance of an author is often seen in the way one can take peculiar and highly unusual circumstances and bring all the details together to make perfect sense.

Which brings me to number one on my list of gifts.  

A small baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, surrounded by animals, and placed in a manger.   What an odd experience for any baby, not to mention the King of Kings.  The very One who carved the ocean’s deep, formed the mountain tops, stretched out the vast sky, and breathed life into us came as a baby and found Himself lying in a feeding trough.

Bizarre.

Strange.

Peculiar.

That’s the only reasonable response….Unless we understand what He meant by saying, “I am the bread of life.”

Brilliant.