By Kenneth Kersey
I know that God was working in my life when He answered my prayers about getting married. For several years, while I was in high school, I prayed and asked God to provide three things when it was time for me to find the girl with whom I would spend my life.
First, that I would know her when I saw her, love at first sight.
Second, that I would get married when I was young.
Third, that we would have kids while I was young enough to play with them.
Once I thought He had answered my prayer, because I met a girl and just knew she was the right person. But, she wasn’t. She and I drifted apart.
During the spring of my sophomore year (1959) at Northwestern University, a group of the guys from my fraternity, Theta Chi, and I were walking back to our dorms after church. We passed by the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority house where Donna (the girl I would marry) was a member. I didn’t know her. As far as I recall, I had never seen her before.
Yet, to this day, more than fifty years later, I clearly remember seeing her that day. She was on the front porch of the sorority along with about a dozen other girls. She was in the back row on my right. My recollection is that we didn’t even stop or say anything to one another.
It wasn’t until early the following December, as I was waiting to cross a street after taking a final exam and looking especially grungy, that I even saw Donna again. We made some small talk, got one another’s names and went our ways. Donna remembers both scenarios also, and marvels that we ever got together!
Even though it wasn’t exactly love at first sight, I remembered Donna. We were married two months after graduation from Northwestern in August, 1961. Our family of two children was complete by the time I was twenty-seven. So, all three of my prayer requests were answered. After more than fifty years of marriage, I still know for sure that God answers prayer.
“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9).