Weeping to Joy

Joy in the Morning

I love testimonies. They lift my faith. I love to hear the stories of how God has blessed people with a miracle or two. Testimony proves, if ever proof were needed, that there may be tears for a night but joy comes in the morning.

Linda and I both have such a testimony. So totally different of course yet still valid and proving the point for all the differences. One coming from abuse and hatred, and the other from a lost battle with cancer. With both of us, we had one plan, our own personal plan, but God had another. In both our cases, God completely surprised us with each other. We both went through dark tearful nights yet God, in His infinite love and mercy to us both, brought us joy in the morning. Which morning? That would be Friday 5^th November 2010 in Castleberry Chapel in Harris Methodist Hospital, Fort Worth – when we married.

Prior to that day, Linda had come through years of abuse and had told God, in no uncertain terms, “It’s you and me Jesus. I don’t want and I don’t need any man in my life any more – thank you very much.” I am sure that God chuckled quietly as He listened to those words. I had been widowed three years previously and was thoroughly engrossed in a ministry wandering all around Europe. I had been told that God had another wife for me – but I really didn’t want to know. Linda was in Texas, I was just outside London. There were 4861 miles between us. How could we even know the other existed?

Enter that wonderful, esoteric social media platform called Twitter. We met very gently. Then I was hospitalised with Labyrinthitis (basically a mega version of vertigo). Linda missed me !! My friends came round and prayed for me when I got home again and, significantly, one of them prayed for the wife God had promised three years earlier. Well, let me tell you that God has a sense of humour. Within 3 weeks, Linda and I were in love and we knew it. No doubts, no real questions, we were in love. It was as if God led us unsuspecting into one of His rooms then slammed the door shut behind us.

The rest, as they say, is history. Oh, it was never plain sailing but although all our secular friends and family though we were completely mad, all our Christian friends had a good witness in their spirits. I went to America and married my bride before bringing her home to England. Still it wasn’t plain sailing, so, eventually, we moved 150 miles North and settled in our present home in Sleaford in Lincolnshire. For those of you outside the UK thats about 40 miles West of Nottingham in the area of England known as the East Midlands.

We were welcomed here with great warmth and love by our new church and by the neighbours, and our joy was complete when Linda was finally baptised properly last November.

So, tears do come in the night, but joy does come in the morning. Of course the story is longer than I have related here but I think you get the gist of it all.

Thank you precious Lord for your joy and your peace. Your Grace is certainly sufficient for both of us.