"Let's go to Colorado!"

   It was July of 1975, and the Rocky Mountains were beckoning.  I had visited Denver in 1973, at the request of my friend, Don, and had made a four-thousand-mile journey through the west, northwest and Canada in 1974 with a pair of companions.  Now, a year later, a small band of six friends -- myself and five Christian young people -- were conversing eagerly about the idea of simply leaping into a car and heading west on Interstate 70.

   After two years of protesting air pollution, I had finally received my driver's license the previous spring, at age eighteen.  The experience of driving a car and trailer around mountain turns during the 1974 western trip had instilled within me a reasonable degree of confidence, and I was up for another journey.  Adding to my sense of adventure and freedom was the fact that on July 18 I and the girl I had been seeing, by mutual agreement, had decided to pursue separate paths.

   On that day in July I had found myself spontaneously making a promise to God:

   One morning in early August a rag-tag band of six Midwesterners shoe-horned their way into a well-worn Ford station wagon, crammed a mound of luggage into the vehicle's rear, and began rolling westward.

   I will resist the temptation here to introduce the reader to the unique mixture of personalities that graced that Ford station wagon for the next two thousand miles. Suffice it to say that a casting director in Hollywood would be hard-pressed to come up with a more -- ah -- shall I say unique -- mixture of colorful personalities locked together into a human six-pack as the ones that traveled to Colorado that summer. Friends and acquaintances from Belleville marveled at the rare and highly-combustible combination of human beings that made the trip, and still shake their heads in disbelief today, some twenty-five years later.

   I relate the story of the Colorado trip because it marked the final chapter of my thick-headed cluelessness concerning God's call to join Cathy and me together as a couple.

   As our vehicle rumbled away from my hometown, it did not take long for the proverbial cartoon light bulb to snap on over my head.  I can recall, even now, the precise moment when revelation came -- at a truck stop near Kansas City.

   If I remember correctly, we had rolled into the parking lot of the establishment for a rest stop, refreshments, et cetera.  For some reason, I and a friend, Diane McFarling, had stayed in the car.  Perhaps it was partially because of the sinking feeling that occupied my stomach, similar to that which comes after too many doughnuts.  I recall looking straight ahead, my expression a bit "green around the gills."  I was seriously homesick, and we were less than halfway to Colorado!  But why would I be so homesick?

   "I've got the strangest feeling," I confided to Diane in a kind of moan, "that I left my heart at 421 South Jackson Street."  Diane smiled knowingly.

   As the trip unfolded, it became obvious that something huge was missing.  Sure, we had loads of adventures, all the way from the rattlesnake that we saw at the property we were staying at to Diane's broken leg from being hit by a car in Colorado Springs. Then there was the time the station wagon began to roll down a hill in the mountains while one of the six (a rather meek gentleman who did not drive) sat alone and wide-eyed in one of its seats (we managed to run and stop the vehicle).  And there was the night we slept overnight at the "pad" of a huge, bearded hippie named Tiny.  Yet, despite a long string of memorable events, my heart ached a bit more each day to return home and see Cathy.

   I admit that the sheer force of these tender feelings caught me off-guard.  Somehow, in the miles between Belleville and Denver, Cathy had moved onto the center of the stage within my mind and heart.  Suddenly I could not imagine life without her.  Like a caterpillar to a butterfly, the relationship had been transformed -- nearly overnight.

   This is unbelievable!  I said to myself in wonder.  Have I been utterly blind?  I've been out looking for some kind of dramatic miracle to propel me into the arms of my partner for life, some sort of romantic explosion.  Yet, here she was, all along!  It's been Cathy all along!  It's as if a rare flower that I was desperately searching for has blossomed up between my feet!

   On the evening of August 18, the day we arrived back in Belleville, my first order of business was to rush over to 421 South Jackson Street and see Cathy.  On every previous occasion that I had visited the towering brick home it had been simply as a member of the prayer group or general friend of the family.  This would be the first time that I would be entering the front gate of the historic old homestead as a potential suitor to the fifth of the family's eight daughters.

   The moment Cathy and I met in her family's side yard that evening, it was clear that something completely new had taken place.  A bit nervous, I presented her with a pair of stained-glass earrings that I had purchased at an Air Force Academy gift shop in Colorado Springs.

   Soon we had moved over to a secluded area of the yard, near a red picnic table.  As if obeying some perfect script, a gentle light, spilling down from a full moon, splashed itself softly on Cathy's features as we laughed and chatted together.

   Within a very brief time we had draped our arms gently around each other, and were talking earnestly about the future.  We rather awkwardly hugged, but did not kiss.  By this time the moon had risen to a point directly overhead, and for several moments we lingered at the rear corner of her house, savoring the moment.  As I write twenty-four years (to the month) later, I clearly recall the joyful expression that filled Cathy's face, my own solid sense of "coming home," and a feeling of awe over what God was doing.

   To this day the mere thought of August 18, 1975, sparks a kind of electricity throughout my being.  What occurred that evening was rendered even more priceless by the realization that God Himself had orchestrated the events leading up to our moonlight encounter.  He had somehow managed to place my future wife -- and mother of twelve -- smack into my path, and me into hers.

   Over the years I have used the story of how God drew Cathy and me together as a solid example of His desire to give his children abundant life and a yoke that fits lightly and easily upon their shoulders.  If I had had access to the most sophisticated data bases in the world, and could have somehow screened and profiled all of the unmarried females on the planet, I am convinced that a better selection than Cathy could not have been found.  (God saved me a lot of trouble and time!)

   God is practical, and He has a way of bringing His children gifts that exceed anything that they could have come up with or dreamed of on their own.  When talking to others about the importance of being led by the Holy Spirit, I constantly emphasize that it is always a "good deal" to wait for God's best rather than to try to restlessly fulfill a given need on one's own.  After all, He created the universe, He formed us, and He knows all of the "short-cuts."  He is the Master of every person, of every dollar, of every circumstance.  It behooves us to consult Him about everything and to obediently comply with His leadings, rather than to trust in our own pitifully small minds.

   One more thought about being led by the Holy Spirit.  I have found that just as nature abhors a vacuum, so does the Holy Spirit.  When I made the firm decision on July 18 (one month to the day earlier) to cease trying, by my own puny efforts, to find "Miss Right," a space was cleared for God to move and act.  I have found, from repeated personal experience, that He rarely delays when one of His children makes himself utterly vulnerable.  It is almost as if He cannot resist our humility.  Put another way, it is as if our childlike trust -- the expression in our eyes of "I will trust in you, Daddy" -- releases in some wonderful way the miracles that God longs to bestow.

   Seen in this way, faith is less about pumping ourselves up in some positive thinking exercise or uttering a few "magic formula" prayers, and more a matter of letting ourselves fall backward into His arms and trusting him to catch us.

   Throughout the remaining days of summer I spent many contented hours with Cathy and her siblings, swimming at the YMCA lake near Belleville or playing softball on area playgrounds.  Although Cathy and I would participate in many group activities together, our meeting beneath the moon on August 18 would turn out to be one of the few moments of privacy that we were to experience for some time.

   The reason for this was simple -- and very understandable.  In August of 1975 I was nineteen years of age, Cathy fifteen.  The idea that her daughter, only two years into her teens, had settled upon her husband-to-be had inspired her mother to hastily lay down some ground rules.