Three became two!

One other major thing has happened to me recently. I found true love and got married on the 3rd of November 2002! When I gave up trying. When I handed the matter completely over to God. When I started putting my priorities in order, then God moved! I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to stand there on that Sunday afternoon and kiss my new bride for the first time. When God has something prepared for you it’s worth the wait!!

Ruth, my Christian wife, and I are both completely certain that God has handpicked us for each other. Ruth’s son, Seán, lost his father before he was born and now has a dad for the first time in his life and I have the joy of being a parent. We get to raise up our son in the ‘fear and admonition of the Lord’, as the Bible says. We get to share in all the familiar aspects of married life, too. The ups and downs. The fun and the pain. The joy and the grief. In fact, for Christians, marriage is often the same as it is for everybody else. Except for one incredible difference. God is in control and we know it! We have the assurance that no matter how tough or how severe it gets we will always have the help of God and His people. Even in the short time since we got married we’ve found that help to be invaluable.

I’m also discovering the wonder of sharing my spiritual life with another like-minded person. Ruth was a great encouragement to me when it came to putting this story down on paper. She has put her story in print and passed it to all her family, friends and former neighbours in the village of Blackrock outside Dundalk. I had wanted to relate my dad’s testimony to many people but knew it would be so difficult to sit down with each one and try to remember the details clearly. This seemed like the best way of doing it. The Bible has examples of this way of telling the Good News and also encourages us to, ‘always be ready to give a defence to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear’ 1 Peter 3:15.