An Incredible Gift

Dede Eshleman

One Saturday morning some years ago, I didn't know I was going to meet the man I would fall in love with.  I was only planning on "doing my job" as a youth leader for the Episcopal Diocese.  My assignment was to take a group of teenage girls to St. Mary of the Angels for a Diocesan-wide volleyball tournament. We expected to have fun -- not to win any awards.  That day I was also dog-and-house sitting.  

After the tournament the plan was for the girls to come back there with me, hang out at the pool, and order pizza.  Later we were to join other youth group members for a dance at the Cathedral of St. Luke.  This was a pretty typical Saturday for me when I was a youth leader.  

The activities for the day began.  I was playing volleyball with the kids when one of the girls asked if she could invite the youth group from St. Gabriel's to join us for the pool party and the dance later in the evening.  I readily agreed, since I was a friend of their youth leader, Marcia.  Later Marcia told me she'd have to run a couple of kids home, but would send her assistant, Jamie, with the teenagers.  

It wasn't until we were loading into cars around three o'clock that I realized 'Jamie' was not a girl!  Within a few minutes I learned that the girls in my youth group had hatched a plot over lunch to set me up with Jamie. In the process, they set themselves up with the guys from St. Gabe's.

A year later, when Jamie and I started our pre-marital counseling, we realized one thing--had we not met that day, it would have been incredibly unlikely that we would ever have met at all.  Jamie was along to help Marcia because he liked to play volleyball.  I was just “doing my job”.

Sometimes God’s most incredible blessings come along when I just show up for work