Today I had the day off of work so I decided to take care of a chore we had been putting off for far too long - getting rid of some old clothes. We had bags and bags of them and as I went through some of the stuff, I couldn't help but get a little sentimental. After all, these clothes had been with us through a lot in our lives and letting them go, in some ways, was like letting go of a part of our past. At least that's how it felt to a sentimental sap like myself. :-)
As I was going through Neal's bags, I was reminded of a part of our love story in which God, once again, had been there to guide us to one another. Several years before I met Neal, I was already praying fervently for my future husband, asking God that we would meet sooner rather than later. As is sometimes the case with single people, I often worried that if I wasn't keeping my mind, heart, and eyes open enough, he would pass through my life without me knowing it. Yet, it was hard to keep my eyes open when I didn't really know what I was looking for, what he would look like.
This one particular day I was driving home and was sitting at a stoplight. It was a dreary day and I remember staring through the rain at the light, daydreaming about the future. Unexpectedly, I had what I can only describe as a vision, as the image of a man flashed before me in my mind. It was brief and I couldn't make out the features of the face but there were some very distinctive things that I remembered. He was tall, thin, fair-skinned, had sandy blonde hair with some sort of sideways bang in front, and wore a flannel, khakis, and brown shoes. At the time, I had never met someone that looked like this and didn't know what it meant that I saw a stranger in my mind. Yet, I held onto the image, especially, for some reason, the flannel shirt. Somehow I interpreted this vision to mean that my future husband would love flannel shirts.
Fast forward to December 2004. Neal and I met in person on the 17th and the following week I flew Omaha to meet his mom and sister. His physical features were already the exact image of the man from my vision, and you can imagine my surprise when, during my visit, he came out in the outfit below.
Coincidentally, this flannel shirt was similar in color to the one in my vision. Without wanting to read too much into it initially, I joked with him about how not many people wore flannels anymore and asked if he really liked them. Enthusiastically, he responded that he loved flannels and had a huge collection of them. If I wasn't convinced already that he was the one I was meant to be with, then this definitely sealed the deal. :-)
So, although Neal still only wears a couple of his flannels on a regular basis, this is one reason it was difficult for me to put the rest into a bag and send them off with Purple Heart. All together, I gave away 23 of his old flannels. Yet, even though they're gone they'll forever be for us a symbol of the mysterious ways God can work and how much He was there in our relationship even before it officially began.
