". . .Rain in due season. . .".

I remember it like it was yesterday - rather than 46 years ago.

The preceding summer I had accepted Ray Parker's proposal of marriage.  After the Fall semester of our Sophomore year at Bryan College, I had elected to forgo my education for a while and spend that second semester getting ready to get married.  We were going to be married on my parents' 25th wedding anniversary, August 5, 1967.

However, once I got home to Jacksonville, I began to have doubts.  Doubts that convinced me that I should "break" our engagement and I did.

And then I began to wonder...did I do the right thing?

It was a Sunday morning in the middle of April.  I walked into the church I had been raised in and was handed a bulletin.  On the front was a picture of a darling little girl, with an umbrella over her shoulder and a bouquet of flowers in her arms.  These words were included:  "If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; ⁴ Then I will give you rain in due season. . .". (Leviticus 26:3,4a)....

Oh my.

From the time I was 15, I knew God wanted me to be a minister's wife (now in another economy, I know that might have meant I was called to be a minister, but this was the sixties and girls didn't do that).  Ray Parker was called to be a minister. 

Were we different?  Yes.  But maybe that would make our lives together better.

And so a phone call and a trip to see Ray where he was finishing his Sophomore year and the wedding was on again.  August 5th arrived - and there was a beautiful wedding where we said our vows "in the providence of God".

Fifteen years, four states and three children later, that marriage would end.. . much for the same reasons that I had wondered if it should really begin - we were very different.

But . . . I was still glad that I had read that scripture and headed it in 1967.  I had gained many blessings through that marriage, none the least of which would be a little girl named Becca and one named Renee and a son whose name is Tray.

Now here we are.  Who would have ever dreamed that 30 years ago this month, that marriage would end in divorce?  And somehow both of us have survived - and now we share seven grandchildren and we are even Facebook friends.

Life, at its best, is hard.  There can be no denial of that.  However...I still believe if I obey what I believe God is calling me to do...then the blessings are out there for me to appreciate and enjoy.

Reminds me of a verse in I Samuel...to obey is better than to sacrifice...but that's for another day.