Divine Intervention

June 11, 2009

There's this train of thought I've been having lately. It left the station last week in therapy when I was talking about my faith with Dr. N and sorting through some thoughts on how involved I believe God is in my life. I had it all figured out until we came to my relationship with Jeremy.

He had asked me something about me marrying Jeremy as the result of sound reasoning and decision making on my part. While I didn't want to argue against myself on that (smile), my response was, "Well, no, I guess I do believe in divine intervention sometimes." I grinned.

There were things about Jeremy that I was very aware of when we started dating. They were the things that drew me to him, that I knew I needed in a life partner. The first thing was that he was passionate. He had a passion for music (still does) and I loved that. I needed that for some reason. I needed to be with someone who had that inner fire. And as I'm writing this, I'm wondering why that was so important to me. I guess all I can say is that I was attracted to that.

The next thing was that he made me laugh. I knew I had to be with someone who made me laugh. I wanted to have fun in my life after all. I knew enough about myself then to know that I could be pretty intense sometimes. I knew I needed the balance of humor in my life. And boy did Jeremy have that. He jokes with me now saying, "Oh, remember the good old days when I could make you laugh?" Of course he says that after he's made some super stupid joke that I snark-laugh at because of how stupid it is and that's exactly why he told it to begin with. He still knows how to make me laugh.

The final thing was that I respected Jeremy. I watched other people interact with him and I knew that others respected him too. He was and still is an honorable man. There aren't a lot of those out there these days. I knew to grab on and hold tight when I found him.

So when I look at our marriage, which I consider the gift and blessing of my life, I would like to attribute it to my own good judgement and moral character. But who am I kidding? Do I really believe that those three attributes gave me enough criteria to know how Jeremy would fare in the trials and tribulations that lay ahead of us? Absolutely not. I was young when we got married. 22 years old. I look back now at how little I knew then. I know, we all do that as we age, don't we? But when I look back at myself then, I think there is no way that it was anything but divine intervention that allowed me to "end up with" Jeremy.

So this is another way my experience is shaping my faith. Because the best explanation I have of Jeremy in my life is divine intervention, I am led to believe that 1) God must have some good feelings towards me to give me such a wonderful gift; and 2) that he must be involved in my life sometimes on a very personal level. I just haven't figured out how frequently or why yet. But I guess I have a lifetime to figure that out, huh?

It couldn't have just been dumb luck. At least I don't want to believe that anyway.