“How I Met Your Mother”

(An open letter to Daniel and Micah)

I wasn’t cool, suave, or good looking. I certainly wasn’t confident. I wasn’t sure where I was going. But I was sure that no girl would ever be interested in me. The only two girls I got the nerve to ask out turned me down.  Those were tough days for an otherwise normal young man.

But the Lord was at work. He was at work bringing me to a saving knowledge of Him. He was at work preparing me for life, although I could not see it then.

As is the way of God, He was at work in the life of someone else as well: someone I did not know nor would not know for a few years. Ironically she dated very little as well, although I cannot imagine why. Although she was not a genuine Christian at the time, she was chaste and a young woman of strong principle. Out of high school she became involved in a church youth group where she came to know Christ. She began to grow and wait on The Lord. Though she dated some, she had high ideals and did not get in a hurry.

When The Lord led me to Memphis, Tennessee, I had every intention of joining a particular church. But The Lord seemed to lead me in another direction. I joined another church and got involved in the Lord’s work there. I met a very nice young woman who was serious about her walk with The Lord: nice but not interested. We became friends, but I dated another young woman for a while.

Meanwhile, that growing Christian young woman mentioned above continued to wait in a church with few or no male prospects. She was urged to join another church, but she was convinced she was where the Lord wanted her. A new young man began to attend and soon joined. He loved the Lord but was a bit intellectual for her: nice but not interested.

She and her roommate needed a guy to jog with them, so the new guy volunteered. The friendship grew and deepened. Not interested became interested and interesting. I was the new young man who just “happened” to come through the door of a church I had no intention to join and met a girl who was in a church everyone thought she should leave. In the providence of God, we came to be friends, close friends, then… Two young people who were waiting on the Lord wondered if they would ever meet the right one. But the Lord was at work, as He always is, bringing to pass His will for the good of His children.

May the Lord do for you all that he has brought to pass for your Mother and me, and much more: “that the generation to come might know ‘Christ'”.

Charles Cavanaugh