The Hand of God

There they stood at my apartment door. I use the word apartment generously to describe my sub-leased second floor rooms on Mountjoy Street South. I knew one of the three young women from a recent date that was not to be repeated, but two had come along to meet the new guy in town. As I invited them in on that beautiful warm spring evening in 1968, I had no idea of what God had orchestrated just for two of us in that room. My eyes and my interest immediately rested on only one of them. She was the most talkative and animated of the three and with the exception of her good looks, I could not logically understand at the time why she was so very appealing. She was dressed in shorts and indeed her feet were bare despite the fact that she was the driver who had transported my guests in her father’s early sixties Valiant. There was what could be best described as an aura around her. I could not look away. She infuriated me and my careful and cautious ways even as she began to capture my heart.

Stupidly, I chided her for driving without shoes. I was, at least in my own mind, a mature twenty year old who thought he could correct the behaviour of this seventeen year old beauty. My protestations that driving without shoes was unlawful and dangerous seemed to have little effect upon her. I have no idea why I started what was to become a lifelong relationship with a correction. I suspect that I just didn’t know what else to say given her profound effect on me. As I was soon to learn, our personalities were about as diametrically opposed as is possible. The adage that opposites attract became a sizable understatement in our future relationship. Even as I upbraided her, I was drawn to her lively good humour and ability to ignore my uptight nonsense when required.

The next night the same three visitors appeared at my door. Since they were on foot, I offered to drive the threesome home as it became dark. I consciously made sure that the formerly bare foot young lady was my last stop. I was to learn later that she had me drop her off at the wrong house down the street, because her parents would not have approved of a university student who owned a car as a prospective boyfriend. Indeed, I did ask her out to see the movie “The Graduate” the next night and of course the young woman who was soon to become my wife and the mother of my four children said yes. I still to this day remember the blue dress with white trim she wore that night.

We have spent a lifetime of being different. We complement each other. Her strengths prop up my weaknesses and my strengths, I hope, do the same for her. The aura that surrounded her in May of 1968 is there to this day. I have written before about my firm belief that the hand of God is always upon those who are destined to believe later in their lives. I came to town to work at the Kamiskotia Mine for only a few months as a summer job that was elusive anywhere else that summer. Except for leaving to attend school, I have never left since, nor have I left her side. The words of Psalm 139:1-5 make it all so clear. The LORD laid his hand on us both. Lozanne and Mark were predetermined long before the spring of 1968.

1 ¶ For the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David. O LORD, You have searched me and known me.

2 You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off.

3 You comprehend my path and my lying down, And are acquainted with all my ways.

4 For there is not a word on my tongue, But behold, O LORD, You know it altogether.

5 You have hedged me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me.

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