The girl with the rose became my wife, and a few years later she became a mother to our delicious Jolie Liana. I've written about that little story before. Later, by the grace of God, we were expecting again - another story that I shared a wee while back.
But the thing is, when you follow Jesus, you find that the stories keep on coming. Little miracles, inexplicable coincidences, and a thousand subtle signs of the hand of God at work in the life of a very ordinary little family.
A lot has happened since that last post, too much to write here, so let me cut it to the highlights.
Expecting a baby, we needed to move. We found a house we loved, and we noted our interest. Friends of ours who we shared our flat with were going to buy us out. We prayed and prayed that they would get approved so that our plans could go through. They didn't.
So onto the market we went. The sellers told us the very latest they could hold our new house for us was the end of June. Our solicitor told us there was absolutely no chance of getting our flat sold in that time.
But we prayed.
Our flat sold in just over 4 days. The offer came through - a really generous offer - with one condition: can we guarantee to be moved out by the end of June? It couldn't happen... but then it did. So there we were in our new home, absolutely amazed.
God spoke to us (hear me out) and told us we were having a boy. Seriously. Roxy saw a picture in her mind's eye, and someone else came right up and told us the same thing. We were having a boy. And the thing was, it was only boys names we could come up with... and one in particular stuck, that we really liked.
I'm the skeptical sort so I'll be the first to say it: any guess has got a pretty much 50/50 chance of being right. But, for what it's worth, the scan in due course confirmed: it's a boy!
So we started planning for this baby. Roxy wanted to take a full year's maternity leave. I (being the party pooper) started to look at the finances of it all, and really wasn't sure we could manage it.
But we prayed.
And out of the blue came a generous gift from someone who didn't know anything about our situation. And suddenly the pressure was off for maternity leave. We couldn't afford it... but then we could.
I mentioned that we'd chosen a name. Ezra. It's from the Hebrew language, and means "help". You can see why we were keen, given what God had done for us over the summer, to mark and remember how he'd helped us!
Weeks and weeks later, the name had really stuck. It was decided.
And then, clearing out one of the last boxes from our move, we came across an old bible. And opening up that old bible, we saw an old rose, pressed into the pages. And beneath that old rose, we saw a name.
10 years ago, when our relationship was just weeks old, God knew the name of our little boy.
I don't know where you are with God. Maybe you think I'm crazy. Or maybe you think it's all part of some great nebulous spiritual mystery called "the universe". But I reckon it's got the fingerprints of Jesus all over it.
You see, that's why I write down these stories. It's not just to get all soppy, and it's certainly not to airbrush my life and pretend that it's all sunshine and rainbows. It's because I want everyone - and especially my kids, reading these one day - to know. My God isn't a concept of mythology. He's not a figment of the unenlightened imagination. He's not a force for the subjugation of the masses or a crutch for those unable to face a world devoid of meaning. He's real. He's alive. And if you're honestly looking for his presence in your life, I honestly believe you'll find it.
I don't want my kids to live off of the God-stories that Roxy and I tell them. I want them to go and live their lives with Jesus and experience their own God-stories every day. I want them to discover for themselves that God is way bigger than we realise, way nicer than we think, and loves us way more than we can ever deserve.
10 years ago I bought a girl a rose. The rest... is His story.
