As I approach my five year wedding anniversary, I look back in awe on what a beautiful love story the Lord created for me. As always, when the Lord speaks, He keeps His Word. This story is meant to encourage those of you who are waiting on the Lord for that special helper that God is preparing for you. Be patient and persevere, because the Lord will always keep His promises. Although our stories may not be similar in any way, be assured that our Father in heaven has a beautiful love story designed especially for you. I write this today in honor of my husband, Johnny, and the God who gave us His Word and kept it.
It was spring of 2001 and I had just moved from Phoenix to Wisconsin. I had just given my heart to Jesus December 21, 2000 and right after that, I lost my apartment, my job, my car, and mostly my sanity. I would only look back later and realize I was right where the Lord wanted me, totally and utterly dependent on Him.
Soon after starting my new job as a dental assistant, I started dating a man at work. I was a new Christian and not going to church. I was just reading the Word by myself and really had no one to help me grow in the Lord. I thought I was doing the “right” thing dating someone responsible who could provide for me. After all, he was a really nice guy. He was a dentist, well respected in the community, settled with a nice house in the suburbs. As I continued to be in this relationship, the Lord continued to convict me over and over. I would plead with him and reason with God about how this should be the person I should marry. He had everything together, unlike me. But the conviction got more and more until I could not leave a date with him without being in tears. I knew the Lord was telling me this wasn’t the person he had for me. At that point, we mutually ended our relationship.
It was a week after I had ended this relationship. I had just tucked my boys into bed and was sitting on my couch. I began to cry and call out to God. I was asking Him, “What about me, Lord? Do I need to raise these kids by myself? Is that what you have for me?” I just sat there in the dark and sobbed on the couch. Little did I know that God would speak to me so powerfully that it would literally change the course of my life. I sat on the couch a little while longer asking God these questions over and over again. All of a sudden, the Lord caused me to hear His Word. He said, “If you only knew what I was preparing for you, there would be no tears.” I jumped up off the couch literally and said, “Yes, I believe you! And from this day forward, I will not entertain any relationships or friendships with any men until I hear from you.”
This was the start of a faith walk that would challenge me and my trust in the Word of God. I had in my mind it would only be a little while before the Lord brought this to fulfillment, but I would wait almost two years before He fulfilled His Promise. Many people would say to me, “I have a friend and he’s a Christian and I want you to meet him.” I would look to the Lord and say, “Lord, if this is you, you will bring this to fulfillment.” Every time, nothing would come to it.
I had a married couple that lived down the road from my parents’ house. I would go over there with my kids on Friday nights. We would sing praise songs on the piano. We would read the Word, pray and just glorify the Lord. It was such a sweet time for me. About a year and a half after the Lord spoke to me on my couch, I was visiting with them. I just sat there and started crying. They were so compassionate. I will never forget it. They asked me what was wrong and I told them that I just didn’t understand why I didn’t have a husband. I know God spoke to me, but I just didn’t understand why He was waiting. It was then that they opened up the Word and God spoke to me again. My friend Paul said, “Let me read you a story.” He opened up to bible to Genesis 24. It was the story of Isaac and Rebekah. This story has such a deep significance as it is a foreshadowing of the coming of Jesus Christ. Isaac had just lost his mother and his father, Abraham, wanted to find him a wife to comfort him. So he sent his servant, Eleazor, which translates “Comforter” (also the Holy Spirit) to go to his land and find a wife for his son. Eleazor tells Abraham he will go but questions Abraham on what he should do if the woman will not come back with him. Abraham tells him that if the woman doesn’t come, then he would be released from his obligation. So Eleazor goes to their land and he comes to a well. When he reaches it, he says in his heart to the Lord that the first woman who comes to draw water and asks Eleazor to give him water and to water his camels would be the woman that God has chosen for Isaac. So he does, and before he finishes this thought in his heart, along comes Rebekah who draws water and offers it to Eleazor’s camels. Eleazor proceeds to tell her who he is and why he has come and that he was sent by his master, Abraham, to find a wife for Isaac and she is the one. Rebekah takes Eleazor to her family and shares this story with her father. The father knows that it is from God and says that he will ask Rebekah directly if she would like to go. Rebekah had never seen Isaac, had no idea who he was, what he looked like, how he acted, but by faith, she says, “Yes, I will go.” So Eleazor takes her back to their land and on the horizon Isaac sees her and they continue walking to each other, meet, and immediately get married and Isaac loves his wife.
After reading this story, my friend Paul says to me, “Isn’t this a beautiful story?” I agreed that it was a beautiful story, not understanding how this related to me or my life. Then he said something so profound…now we are going to pray together and ask God to do this for you. I agreed, not knowing quite what I was agreeing to. Paul, Anne and I all prayed together and had this powerful time in prayer asking the Lord to go before me on my behalf.
What came next really shocked me. Paul and Anne told me, “We think you should join eHarmony.” I laughed thinking why do I need eHarmony? Does God need eHarmony to give me a love story? We talked for a while and they convinced me that it was a Christian-based service, bathed in prayer, and what did I have to lose? So I went home and filled out all 200 questions and signed up for eHarmony.
I would continue on there for four months. Every time I would see Ann and Paul they would ask…so how are things? They really wanted to know if I had met anyone. I would communicate with some matches, but it would end after a couple of days. I was discouraged and not real excited about it at all. This went on for a few months.
The whole time this was happening with me, my husband was living happily with his family in Tucson, AZ. He had been married to his first wife, Hilda, for 18 years. He had two beautiful children and life was pretty much great for them.
Ten years earlier, John had a dream. In that dream, this woman came up to him and kissed him on the mouth. He remembers waking up and looking over at his wife and just feeling really guilty. He shared it with a friend of his at work who laughed at him and said, “No you kissed her.” John argued, “No, she kissed me.” His friend tells him, “No, it’s your dream, your thoughts, your desires, you made her kiss you.” It really skewed John’s thoughts and the truth that God speaks to people in dreams. He became just cynical about anyone who said God spoke to them in a dream and would repeat to the dreamers the same things that his friend told him. What he didn’t realize was what the Word says, “Do not stand in the counsel of the ungodly.” This friend of his wasn’t a Christian and he had no knowledge of the Word, but John took his advice anyway.
John’s first wife, Hilda, had been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 27, just months after they had gotten married. It was a very aggressive form of rheumatoid arthritis and no treatments helped her. Through the years, she became more and more debilitated. John didn’t even notice it, until one day he saw her reflection in a window. He said to himself, “Oh my gosh, my wife is completely disabled.” He loved her and just never looked at her like she was disabled. She started to have problems with uncontrolled blood pressure and just several issues with her heart valves. The doctors said it was completely treatable and they just went on with their lives.
It was in January of 2004 when John would have a really amazing dream. John has a degree in math and he always thinks in terms of math. In the dream, he was sitting in a classroom and there was the teacher who wrote out an algebraic equation on a board. In the dream, he started to simplify the equation and then the teacher said, “and the answer is 24.” He remembers thinking in his dream, if it’s true that I control my dreams, then why do I know the answer before I figured it out. He was perplexed. He remembers the whole equation and the answers were 6 and 24. In the dream, God spoke to him and the impression was, “Not all dreams are your own thoughts and ideas, I speak to you in dreams.” He woke up and immediately told his wife. It had been 10 years since his friend squashed the truth that God speaks to people in dreams and the Lord confirmed it. That night, he went to his bible study that he was teaching and he showed them the algebraic equation and he explained to them what God had spoke to him. It was much later that God would give John the full understanding of the dream.
Several weeks after this, the Lord started speaking to his heart that the time he had with his wife was short. It was totally contrary to what the doctors were telling him. They were telling them that everything was fine and that what his wife had was totally treatable, but he continued to have this lurking feeling that the time he had with Hilda was short. He would start asking her things like, “Have I been a good husband? Have you enjoyed your life?” She didn’t understand it, but he needed to know how she felt. He would go up on the roof and pray at night and plead with the Lord to give him more time with his wife, but the feeling continued.
It was June of 2004, and he was teaching a bible study. He was in the book of Daniel and they were studying Daniel 3 where Nebuchadnezzar told Meshach, Shadrach, and Abed-Nego that if they did not bow down and worship him, that he would throw them into the firey furnace. These three men of faith told Nebuchadnezzar, “Our God can deliver us, however, if he doesn’t we will still follow him.” (Paraphrased) This really spoke to John and he stopped the whole bible study and for an entire night they talked about this. He asked them, “If God doesn’t answer your prayers the way you think he should, will you still follow Him?” He said it was an awesome study and it really got them thinking. Little did he know, he would be faced with this very question less than a week later.
Later that week, Hilda went into the hospital for a two day procedure. John watched as they inserted the tube down Hilda’s throat and he saw her heart. One side of it was huge and thick and pumping so fast. Then he looked to the left and saw her heart valves atrophied and it was sluggishly pumping the blood. The doctors assured him that this was totally treatable with medications and it was nothing to worry about. John went home that evening to get the kids settled. He planned to go to work the next morning and then about 11 in the morning, he would come back to the hospital for the rest of the procedure. About 8:00 that morning, he called Hilda’s room at the hospital to talk to her. The nurses told him that she was in the bathroom and couldn’t talk. He hung up the phone and five minutes later, the hospital called to apologize to John, “We are sorry. Your wife has gone into cardiac arrest.” John slammed the phone down and ran out of his work and into his car and sped down the road to get to the hospital. On the way there, he talked to the Lord. He said, “Lord, I know my wife has died, but I know that you have the power to raise her from the dead. But if you don’t, I don’t need to question you, and I don’t need to know why. You know everything that is best for me and I am still going to follow you.”
He ran through the hospital and up the elevator and into her room and there she was, lying there like she was sleeping. Hilda had passed away and left the man I love devastated and broken. For four hours, he prayed that the Lord would raise her from the dead, but God made it clear it was time for Hilda to come home.
Everyone was there for the funeral and bringing food and ministering to them. But days after the funeral, everyone goes home, but John and the kids’ lives were completely changed forever. They had lost their mom and John lost the love of his life.
A couple weeks after the funeral, the Lord started speaking to John that he would meet someone and remarry. This was not a welcomed thought at all for John. He had no plans to start over and get remarried again. He was still wearing his wedding ring and feeling sad and devastated. Over the next several weeks, Words from the Lord continued to come and over and over again. The Lord continued to assure John that this was in his near future.
Day after day, this feeling of meeting someone consumed him. He didn’t understand it and didn’t want it. One night, he got up on the roof and cried out to the Lord. His prayer was three fold. He told the Lord that he didn’t know what was going on and what his future held. He asked the Lord to reveal to him a little bit of future. What was going to happen to him? Then he told the Lord to reveal this woman to him that he was going to meet. “How am I supposed to know who she is?” he asked the Lord. The third part of his prayer was that he was going to wait on the Lord. He wasn’t going to go out and do anything stupid, but that he would wait on Him.
A few weeks after his wife’s funeral, John returned to work. He was standing in the lobby of his work, and all of a sudden he heard a huge crash. He looked out to the street and there was a huge car crash. He ran out to the scene and some other people came out after him. There was a woman and her two kids in one car and an older woman and her son in the other car. He came to the woman with her kids and she was crying and John helped her and her kids to the side of the street. Then John looked at his friend pulling the other woman out of the car. He yelled to John that he needed to get some help because the woman wasn’t breathing. They started CPR on her. The woman with the kids started screaming. She started telling John in Spanish that she didn’t have a license and had no insurance and she didn’t mean to hit the lady. She just was coming to visit her husband who was in prison. This woman started screaming and scratching John and John was talking to her and telling her kids to turn their heads because they didn’t need to see it.
Soon after they started CPR on the woman, they pronounced her dead and they put a yellow tarp over her. When the woman in the other car saw that she had died, she was just completely out of control. She was screaming and crying. John took her by the shoulders and said to her, “It’s ok. No one lives or dies without God. God knows you and He knew what was going to happen today. God knows this other lady. God chose you to live and for your kids to live and now you have to keep going. God chose you to live and now you need to keep living.” Immediately, as if he saw the words coming out of his mouth and entering into his heart, he knew that God was speaking those words to him. He walked away from the accident sobbing, knowing that God was telling him, “You have to keep living.” You are alive and I want you to live.” It’s amazing how God speaks to us in such simple, but profound ways. After this, his heart was settled. He was to keep living and continue on. As wonderful as his life was with Hilda, it was complete and God had a new chapter for him.
One night, his sister, who was living in South Africa at the time, emailed him. After he read the email, there was a popup and it was for eHarmony. He thought to himself, “That would be a good way to meet friends. I would be able to talk to some people.” He signed up for eHarmony and started talking to women who he thought were just friends. He started talking to a woman from Washington. They would text and email and talk on the phone. One night, she called and she was upset. She said, “What’s going on here?” He laughed, “What do you mean?” She said, “I texted you and you didn’t respond, I emailed you and you didn’t email me back, I left a message and you didn’t call. What’s going on here?” He knew immediately what he had done. He was hoping for friends, but these women were looking for something more. He apologized to her and told her that he thought he told her in the beginning, all he could be was a friend.
The next day, he talked with his friend at work. Pat, bless his soul, told him, “You’re in the wrong place to meet friends, Homer.” John thought he had totally gone out of the will of God. He vowed to himself that as soon as he got home, he was going to email everyone he had been talking to and apologize to them and get off of eHarmony.
That night, about 11:30, he started emailing all of the people he had talked to and started closing them out. In order to close them out, you have to open up their profile, go to the bottom of their profile and then click on “close out.” He closed everybody out and then there were three new matches. He went through the first two matches and closed them out. The third match was me. He opened it up and then went to the bottom to close me out, but something caught his eye. I want to say it was my picture, but that wasn’t it! He saw that I felt called to be a missionary. He thought in his heart how I must have really loved God. I love it that he had those fond thoughts of me.
He tried again to get to the bottom of the page but something else caught his eye. One of the questions on the profile asks, “What do your friends know about you that no one else knows? “ I wrote that I had letters written to my husband and that on my wedding day he was going to be able to read them. The Lord started giving John an impression that he was going to read the letters. He was reasoning with himself that the only person who would read the letters would be her husband. But he had this strong impression he would be the one reading them.
Next, he saw my pictures. I had four pictures and all of them were pictures of me and Charlie and Chad. He knew immediately what I was saying, “It’s a package deal and don’t even contact me if you aren’t interested in the package.” The picture was of me and Charlie and Chad peeking around a tree. He said it was then that God impressed to him that this family was important for him. He was confused and without understanding.
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He tried several times after that to go and close out and cancel out of eHarmony, but he continued to be drawn back to my profile. It was 11:30 at night and he remembers it like it was yesterday. He had his chin in his hands reading my profile. He was perplexed by the feelings he was having and then he said aloud, “I wonder if this is the one.” It was totally quiet. There was a small light on in the hallway and then he heard it, the voice of the Lord. The Lord caused Him to hear His voice and He said, “This is the one.” John was so shocked he swung his head around and looked around. He thought someone was in the room with him. He wondered if he might be going crazy, but it was then he realized it was the Lord speaking to him. He had never heard it before in his life. He started shaking and his face was flush. He thought to himself, “Well if this is the one, then I can say anything to her and she will be the one.” That night, he sent a request to communicate with me.
The afternoon before this, I saw that there was a Johnny from Tucson, AZ who was a match. I thought to myself, “I hope he wants to talk with me.” There was nothing special about his profile and he was pictured with another gentleman on his profile photo. I didn’t even know which one he was, but something in me wanted to talk to him. It was the next afternoon that I got the request and I was kind of excited.
We started chatting back and forth on the email. I had done this a few times with other matches, but this was different. That afternoon he wrote to me that he had posted a photo for me to see. When it started to load and I saw half of the photo loading, God spoke to my heart and said, “This is your husband.” I was shocked.
Several other things transpired where God continued to confirm my feeling. Charlie and Chad were 6 years old at the time. Several weeks before I ever was matched up with John, the babysitter said to me that Chad had told her something interesting. I asked, “What did he say?” She shared that he had told her that someday he was going to have three dads; his dad Jesus, his dad Rick (their biological father), and his step-dad John. She looked at me with anticipation as she told me looking for any clues that I would have an idea of what he was talking about. I shook my head and said, "I don’t know any Johns and I don’t really know what that means." Amy, my babysitter, smiled and told me to be watchful because many times God will speak through the children. I treasured that in my heart and as these next few weeks unfolded, I realized that the Lord spoke through my six year old son long before the Lord caused these events to happen in my life.
A few days passed with exchanging emails and then John asked if I would like to talk on the phone. I was excited. He gave me his phone number and asked me to call. The first night we talked for almost three hours. About the third hour of conversation was when it happened. Out of the blue, I asked John, “Has God spoke to you about me?” I had no idea where that came from, but I realized that God was speaking to me about him and I wanted to know what God was speaking to him. There was a long pause and then he said it, “I consider myself to be a reasonable man. I am not crazy. God has spoken to me.” Then he told me how God spoke to him when he saw my profile and my picture. I then shared with him what God was speaking to me. Then I said, “So, I guess we are getting married then?” The very first time we talked and before we ever saw each other face to face, John asked me to marry him. We decided where we would live and where we were going to get married. It was so amazing.
A couple evenings later, John and I were talking and I asked him when his wife had passed away. We had never really talked about it and I had never asked. I guess I had no idea that it had been just a few months before. When I heard “June 24,” I was so upset. All I could think was how would I explain to people that just a couple of months ago, John’s wife died and now we were getting married. Following this, there was another confirmation from the Lord. While we were sitting there talking about it and I was freaking out, God gave John remembrance of the dream he had that past January. The answers to the algebraic equation were 6 and 24 and that was the month and the date that his wife passed away. This experience just caused us to glorify God. In God's Word, it says, it's the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter. God gets all the glory. He concealed it for a while, and then revealed it, all to His glory. He is an awesome God!
John called a couple of days later. He had a huge step to make in this whole thing. He needed to let Cilicia and Johnny know what was going on. They had just lost their mom a few months earlier and this would be very difficult for them, especially with the circumstances of how we met and what God was doing. He took the kids out to Wendy’s that evening and started to share with them what God was doing. Little Johnny was so excited. He said, “I knew you were going to meet someone.” He was thrilled. John was not so sure about Cilicia. When he told her, she started to cry. He asked her, “Cilicia, I need to know what you are thinking.” She said, “I’m just thinking that God is so awesome.” She proceeded to tell John that she had had a dream and she believed it was from the Lord. She had mentioned this dream to John a few weeks before, but she didn’t share the whole dream with John. But there at the Wendy’s table, she told him the whole thing. She told John that all of them were in Hawaii and that John was with a woman with short brown hair and he was married to her and there was a little girl there with the lady. John was perplexed. He told Cilicia, “Well, Stacy has two little boys but she doesn’t have any girls.” He really wasn’t sure how it all related, but it really gave Cilicia comfort knowing that God had already showed her that this was going to happen.
This was like nothing I had ever experienced before. Quite frankly, when I asked God to make the meeting of my husband something supernatural so I wouldn’t “miss Him,” I had no idea it would be like this. But as the days went by, I started doubting it. I’d say, “Is this real?” The last thing I wanted to do was miss God and marry someone I wasn’t supposed to. I talked to John and told him that I was going to go on a fast and pray about it because I just had to have confirmation from the Lord. That’s when it got even more exciting!
About two years before, I had this awesome dream. In the dream, there was a man there and he put a ring on my finger and it was a diamond ring. Then he slipped off the diamond ring and went and washed it in a bucket and when he brought it back and slipped it on my finger, it was kind of a pink color. I remember thinking in my dream that this ring looked like the color of the ring my parents got me for my 16th birthday. I thought it looked like a June stone. So when I woke up, the month of June was impressed on my heart. I woke my friend up and told her about the dream. She suggested we go on the internet and try to find birthstones. So when we went on there, I saw the February stone and recognized the stone I saw was an amethyst. I told my friend, “Maybe I am going to meet my husband in June and marry in February. We were both excited because I knew in some way the Lord had spoken to me. Then June came and went and February came and went and nothing happened. The next June and February came and went and nothing happened. When the next June came and went, I started asking, “Lord, I know you spoke to me. Did I miss you? What does this dream mean?”
It was August of 2004 and I was in a nursing lecture. I had been fasting for three days and asking God to confirm whether this whole thing that just happened to me was from Him. I was sitting in my lecture and the instructor just got done talking. I can’t explain it any other way, except that five seconds before I didn’t know something, then all of a sudden I had a flood of knowledge from God. The impression was that in June I would get married and on my honeymoon in Hawaii, I would conceive a daughter and she would be born in February and her name would be Grace. The Lord told me that she would live a life of glory for Him. I was so out of it after I had heard the Word of God that I could barely make it back to my car. I was car-pooling with several friends who already thought I was crazy for even believing that this was God. They were saying, “What’s wrong with you?" I must have looked like I'd seen a ghost. I then told them what God had told me. To my surprise, they believed it! I realized that the months of June and February were very significant for me and that the little girl in Cilicia’s dream was my daughter! I was the woman that would marry her dad. It was all so amazing because John and I had not even decided when we wanted to get married and we had never even talked about a honeymoon. When I told John, he started crying and said he had in his heart to ask me to have our honeymoon in Hawaii!
We shared this story with many people and they watched and waited for it to be fulfilled. The amazing thing was, that all of this happened before I ever set eyes on my husband in person. It was a faith walk from the very beginning. I was amazed at the faith of John’s kids…they believed with all of their heart. In fact, when John’s church was remodeled, they ripped up all of the carpet and under the carpet everyone carved their names on the floor before the new carpet was installed. There under that carpet says “In loving memory of Hilda Gallego” and there carved on the floor is “Grace Gallego.” Before she was ever conceived, her name was written on the floor of a church. Faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen according to the Word of God. This was the real thing.
A week later, I went to the airport to pick up my husband to meet for the very first time. It was like a perfect Isaac and Rebekah. I had only seen one picture of him and wasn’t even sure I would know what he looked like. I sat there in the airport and it all came flooding back to me that God had fulfilled His promise to me on that night when I prayed that God would give me an Isaac and Rebekah love story. It was true. I came to pick up my husband by faith, not knowing what he looked like or what it was going to be like. It was all faith in God’s Word.
It was a beautiful day in June 2005. John and I were married in front of all of our friends and family. We said our vows and the next day arrived in Hawaii. Several weeks later, upon returning home, it was confirmed, we conceived our little baby Grace in Hawaii. God keeps all of His promises. When February came and went and Grace was still not born, we were completely shocked. We had expected our little girl would be born in February and I reminded the Lord that everyone was watching. Would the enemies of the Lord laugh? I started to question myself, "Did I hear you Lord?" Did I miss You? You know, the Lord is always on time and He is completely faithful. February 1, 2011, my daughter, Gracie, just one month shy of 5 years old, sat on her bed and invited Jesus Christ into her heart and was born again. I realized God had brought His promise to fulfillment with her second birth. This birth is even more important than the first. God had kept His promise to me and every tittle of that prophecy was to be fulfilled in His time.
The Lord has put together a beautiful family. One of the things that I prayed for before I met my husband was that God would not only bring me a husband, but a father for my kids. People would tell me don’t be surprised if that doesn't happen. But I believed God. He never does anything half way. The very first time my sons met John, they asked if they could call him “dad.” They have never called him anything else but “dad” and from the very beginning John told them that everything he has is theirs. They have been included in his inheritance, just like we have with God. Johnny and Cilicia also call me “mom.” They, by faith, believed that the Lord brought me as their mother and that is all they have called me.
God had fulfilled everything and He created a beautiful family. There were so many things that the Lord gave me that I asked for in a husband, but most of all he gave me so many things I didn’t even know I needed. My husband is perfect for me and we have a beautiful family, solid in the Word of God. I thank God for giving me a new life and making my love story to memorable.
I give thanks on my fifth wedding anniversary for a wonderful husband, six beautiful children, and an inheritance in Jesus Christ that I can never put a price on.
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