The month before Shmoopy and I were to be married, we began to seek in earnest God’s will regarding where Shmoopy should go to work. He would be graduating from college at the end of December and we were getting married New Year’s Day. He had been offered a job in Tulsa at Ernst & Young and a job in western New York as the Network Administrator of a small Christian College, Houghton. I still had 3 semesters of college left. So we needed to decide quickly which job he should take so we could find a place to live and so I would know which college I would be attending.
The job in Tulsa paid 30-40% more than the one in New York. As a result, some of those we sought counsel from advised us to take that job, but we were not motivated by money. We truly wanted to be certain that we were obeying God’s direction for our lives. So we prayed. A Lot!
One day, a few weeks from our wedding date, we were getting anxious because we didn’t have an answer. So we went to our college pastor’s house and asked him to pray with us. When we left there, we went to a friend’s apartment and knelt at her couch to pray together for a long time (our dorms were not co-ed, so this was the only private place we could find.) We went back to our dorms that night still feeling no clear direction. I fell asleep that night begging God to give us a clear sign as to where He wanted us to go.
The next morning, I woke up to get ready for my 8am History class and I kept hearing, “Ubiquitous! Ubiquitous! Ubiquitous! Ubiquitous!” over and over in my head. I couldn’t make it stop! It was like when you get an annoying song stuck in your head and you can’t get it out. I thought, “This HAS to be from God.” I had no clue what “ubiquitous” meant or if it was even a real word. So I got out my pocket dictionary and the definition of ubiquitous read, “all-encompassing.”
…….
“Ummm, okay God. Thanks for that, but I need you to be more clear because I have NO IDEA what that’s supposed to mean!” Frustrated, I left for class. All I could think about through class was how frustrated I was trying to figure out what this message that was clearly from God meant. As soon as class was over, I went to Shmoopy’s dorm to talk to him.
He came down to the lobby all excited. Mind you, this was before everyone had cell phones, so we had not communicated at all since seeing each other the night before. Before I could tell him about my frustrating message from God, he launched into an explanation about how he had just finished a phone call with Will, the man who would be his boss if he took the New York job. They wanted to fly us up there to see the campus and look for a place to live. He also told him about how Houghton was going to be one of the first colleges in the country to provide laptops to all of their students who would be able to plug into the network from virtually anywhere on campus. “They call it a ubiquitous network!”
My knees almost buckled underneath me as he said that last sentence. “What did you just say,” I yelled. He repeated that it was a ubiquitous network. I said, “We’re going to New York. That’s where God wants us.”
We did, indeed, go to New York and I graduated from Houghton College. God has been just as faithful throughout our now 22 year marriage to give us very clear direction in what our next steps are and to make us #BeyondBlessed. He has ALWAYS been faithful to answer our prayers. He is a good and loving and faithful father. He can and will do the same for you if you make His desires above your own. Try it.
Beyond Blessed 