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I had a rather unique experience in January of 2006. At the time of my experience, I was seriously considering the fate of my marriage, which, to this point, hung in a sort of limbo. My wife and I had been separated for two and a half years and no sign of reconciliation was in sight. Should I go on to actively pursue dating as well as a divorce and annulment? Should I, a thirty one year old not getting any younger, continue to hold on to what seemed an improbable hope? Should I simply consider myself single and stay separated but chaste, which would also allow me to indefinitely string out hope? Should I pursue a divorce and, sometime down the road -- after Abby goes off to college -- join a monastery? These things were weighing heavily on my mind at the time the following events unfolded.
For about a week, perhaps longer, I had been playfully -- not at all seriously -- toying with an idea of expecting a sign from God concerning this matter. Now, so called �signs from God� are often meaningful to no one else but the person who thinks he receives them, and I am well aware that people can quite easily convince themselves that they have received them when, to an otherwise sober mind, they�re not at all convincing. So, up to this point -- to the very day the following events occurred -- this increasingly skeptical demand for what would make a really good sign, which I was half-heartedly toying with, kind of evolved into the idea of an author writing a book. I began to ask what in general an author would present which, by the beauty of the standard he chose for a really good sign, would satisfy the average reader. As I proceeded to think about this standard, I was convinced that it couldn�t be just one sign � it would have to be three. I was also convinced that these three signs would have to occur within a certain amount of time, otherwise they would seem just random, not as a product of an intelligent mind (which is what both a sign from God and a good story from an author are).
With no serious thought of a sign � or signs � from God in mind, I began a Friday workday in the middle of January like any other. I got to work on time (as I always do), did my work, and was especially happy because that particular Friday my company was having a catered lunch for all it�s employees as a reward for meeting a two day turn around goal. So far so good: nothing special about this day concerning the fate of my marriage � at least, as far as I could tell. When noon rolled around we all got into our vehicles and drove to a place called Hickory Lake Inn. I was familiar with this place -- my wedding reception had taken place there. Not thinking much of this, I figured the lunch would take place upstairs in the dinning room, a little off the main bar area. It was when we got there and were ushered into the downstairs party area, the very room of my reception, that my playful thought became a little bit more active. Yea, yea, ok, I thought, one coincidence, how many more can there be, and how can they possibly be related?
Aside from the cigarette smoke, lunch was enjoyable. We all ate, talked a bit and were then told we could go home from the party center. However, instead of going home I went back to work to use the workout facility. Like any other workout session, I changed into work out clothes, turned the radio on, stretched, and began to work out. Not long into my workout I took a glance outside only to see the most richly colored rainbow I'd seen in a long, long time. Hey, I say to myself, a rainbow in the middle of January on a partly sunny, unusually warm day -- with no rain in sight. A sign? How? What connection could a rainbow have to a wedding reception? I continued my workout until another thought hit me: isn't a rainbow traditionally understood to be the embodiment of God's sign to man? O.k. then, if I wanted to I could read this �sign� as an affirmation, something along these lines: hmm, Jesse, you're thinking about a decision concerning your wife, and a chain of events possibly initiating the three signs you seek has conceivably begun with you being placed once again at the very location of your wedding night, which you've only been to one other time (in ten years) since. Then you wonder, is this a sign, and, basically, the word "sign" appears in the sky.
At this point, I�m starting to think this is all getting �curiouser� and �curiouser�, and perhaps a bit more serious as well. Even so, I continue to remain playfully skeptical, for the third sign would have to be a good one, and it would have to appear sometime soon, within the same time frame as the other two �coincidences�; indeed, sometime before I concluded my workday by arriving at home after my workout. Otherwise, it would just seem like I was looking into things too much.
Thus I continued my workout, all the while keeping my ear open -- a little more than playfully now -- for some special song on the radio, perhaps our wedding song, or perhaps something completely unexpected yet obvious. Well, nothing yet, I say to myself � and my workout is almost over. Workout is over. O.k., I'm getting in my car now ...nothing. I'm arriving home now...nothing. Yet I'm thinking, what if I missed something? Was there another odd thing that happened? well, even if there were, it wasn't an obvious event, so to have to recall it from the time I started to notice these events up to the present would be a bit of a stretch; and to have taken place before the first coincidence just wouldn�t fit the criteria for a good sign from an author: it would also be a stretch. Good then, I thought, it would have to be some obvious thing, and I can think of nothing, so I can breathe easy -- ahhh, no more of this nonsense... My Friday continued as any other... But then�
I was driving with my daughter after picking her up from the bus stop. She was telling me about how all the kids were acting superstitious. �They wouldn�t step on cracks�, she says, �They thought they would break their mother�s back.� She goes on to tell me how she stepped on all of the cracks, much to the amazement of many children. "I'm not superstitious," she told them, "besides, (and this is something I'd completely forgotten) I was born on a Friday-the-thirteenth!" Wait a second, I�m thinking, today is Friday-the-thirteenth -- the very (odd) day/date combination on which my daughter was born. Then it all became clear: I was looking for a sign as an instance within a period of time when the very period of time itself qualified as the third sign! The third sign wasn�t just before the first and second signs, it was during and after as well; it was the very context of the whole thing � what an unexpected twist!
Indeed, and, to be more specific, the particular reason this qualified as the third sign was that this rare date signified the second most important event of my marriage � our daughters birth. And what was the first? That, of course, was the date of my wedding -- part of which was spent at the reception hall of Hickory Lake Inn!
Now, some may say that finding a sign (the answer to the choice God wants me to make) which takes place at a sign (the location of my wedding reception) at the time of a sign (the rather odd day/date my daughter was born) signified by a sign in the sky ( which just so happens to be the universally accepted sign of God) might not really be a sign; some may think that half heartedly seeking a sign when considering a very important decision about your wife which leads you, one particular day, to the very location of your wedding night, on the very (odd) date your daughter was born (the second most important event of your marriage) while essentially seeing the word �sign� in the sky, might not, in fact, be a sign; indeed some might say all of these things and more. As for me, well, the only thing I can say is that only God really knows, and only time can truly reveal whether I was right to act as if I heard His answer�
To be continued�