In Search of a Peach Along the Broken Road

Sheila and I singing with Jack Allen at the nursing home
before God smacked me upside the head...

.

I'm a mess tonight. I know my Sweet Baboo is coming home from Louisiana, but I'm worrying anyway and will till I get her home. Except for a quick trip home, she's been gone for three months. I lent her to someone who needed her and they nearly broke her. The song below really hits me in the heart. When I was a teenage kid, I just knew that my heart was out there wandering around looking for me too. I used to sit in the top of trees and wonder where she was and what she was doing and why I couldn't find her. And boy howdy did I ever walk that proverbial broken road. I used to sing that John Denver song, "She Done Stomped on my Heart" a lot and I sang it with feeling let me tell you.

Pastor Mike Hansen forced his way into my VGA dorm room after one of my old girlfriends broke up with me and sat me down and told me this. "Tom," he said, "God has someone who is your match. He's already picked her out and if you'll just let Him, He's going to send you a real peach." Pastor Mike was absolutely right. 

Unfortunately,I'm kind of a bull in a China shop relationship wise and girls were terrifying to me. There was even a rumor floating around the Girls Dorm at SWAU that I was, you know, "Not the marrying kind," and not in a good way. Truth was I was scared of them.

Sheila actually had to ask me to sit with her on the bus to Bible Camp where we eventually got together. She asked me mainly because she wanted someone to play guitar with and I was too chicken to suggest it. She had no evil designs on me. It was really cool not to have any expectations - just two friends making music. We'd already been playing on Sabbath afternoons at the local nursing home where we worked. So we had 8 months of guitar playing together already. So it was just a friendly invite and completely unthreatening for Mr. Chicken. I'd never met a girl like her before. No games. No manipulation. Just says whatever she thinks. I loved that.

In fact, like me, she'd just gone through a breakup only hers was with a fiancee. She was looking for company. We even got invited to sing one of her songs together at one of the meetings. I think God was hinting, but I was still too dim to get it. We talked a lot that weekend. We'd both been hurt pretty badly and we wound up feeling sorry for each other which actually helped.

Even then, by the time the weekend was over, we were on the bus going home and still wondering if we should get back with our exes. Turns out God had other plans. We experienced the moment differently. To me it felt like God had smacked me on the back of the head and said, "Pay attention, boy. This one right here beside you is the one. I love this girl and I'm giving you the job of taking care of her. Got that?" All that went' clearly through my mind.

Sheila meanwhile was seeing visions of she and I and our kids and our family like a sort of vision. We impulsively grabbed each others' hands and have been hanging on to each other for dear life ever since.

And she's coming back home to me on Sunday!

God is very good to me, even when He's whacking me upside the head to get my attention.

© 2016 by Tom King