His name is Steven, and he told me last March that I could tell his story.

I met Steven in front of the old Rylander Theatre in Americus, Georgia, last March.  He was holding a single white rose.  

Steven said that I could take his picture and tell his story and ask everyone who cares to pray for him and Leann, the woman for whom he was carrying the rose.

Steven is the son of a now 82 year old pentecostal preacher from whom he’d been estranged until recently, just like Steven had also been estranged until recently from Jesus Christ, the Man his father has preached about all of Steven’s life.  

Leann has brought all three of them back together.

Steven’s first wife died some years ago.  Her favorite flower was jasmine, and Steven loved her dearly.  When she died, Steven thought he’d lost his faith in the Jesus Christ he had known since he was a boy.  

Steven raised his children alone.  He let his faith die and be buried along with the mother of their children.

When the children were raised, Steven felt ready to love again, but he was too impetuous.  His father told him to be careful and to be patient, but Steven was neither.  

Steven’s second wife was a raging alcoholic, all of which she’d successfully hidden from Steven until they were too soon married . . . and as soon divorced.

When Steven met Leann, she was a recovering opioid addict who had found faith in Jesus Christ in her recovery house.  

Leann’s marriage had been horribly abusive, and she lost her children to the state before she found her sobriety from the drugs that her former husband had forcibly injected her with just so she would fail her drug tests just so she would lose her children.

Steven wanted to marry Leann, but Leann never wanted to marry again.  Steven still wants to marry Leann, and Leann still never wants to marry.

Steven and Leann are celibate in their love for one another.  This is why Steven brings Leann a white rose every week.

The signs and wonders Steven told me about were surreal, including an early morning old time televangelist preacher that came on Steven’s T.V. that Steven couldn’t shut off with either his remote or the knobs on the television and when Steven pulled the plug on the T.V. his house shook like an earthquake followed by a text from his father who never texts to tell Steven that God had got the old man out of bed with the sudden irresistible urge to pray for his wayward son!

Then later at home with his father, a woman in white appeared out of nowhere with the fragrance of jasmine all around her who touched Steven on his tattooed forearm and told him that Leann has freewill but that it was right for Steven to pursue her while his father and an old black friend of their family began speaking in tongues which Steven’s father hadn’t done in years and when the woman in white had vanished, the old friend’s grandson who was watching everything asked, “Steven! Did you see her WINGS!”

The mystical signs and wonders that Jesus Christ has performed and used to bring Steven back to Himself and to encourage Steven to lovingly pursue Leann, whether or not they ever do marry each other, are too wonderful for me to adequately describe here.  You may not even believe me when I tell this story about what Steven told me as we stood there together on the sidewalk in Americus, Georgia, a few steps down from the old Rylander.  

All that matters is that reconciliation has taken place through and with Jesus Christ in the lives of these three believers in Him and by their story and by His Grace many more may yet be reconciled in and with Him.

So why am I telling you this story today some nine months later and about a month after I thought that I had completed what I had wanted to write here on this blog that I started last May?

It’s because Steven texted me this morning to tell me the following and also because the miracles brought about by Jesus Christ that he and I talked about in our cross country Thanksgiving Day phone call so much encouraged me that I could NOT keep it in!

This is what Steven texted me today on this 24th Day of November in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and Twenty-Two.

“Here it is Thanksgiving morning as I sit in my house all alone, and I’m struggling in my head with what I believe God has told me to do in the promises I’ve made him and I read this about you and Karen and the portrait that your artist friend painted of you two from that old photograph when you two were young and I know that I know we do not know God‘s will and we do not know God‘s timing but I do know in my heart what God has promised and I stand firm on this. This gives me encouragement your words that you send me in your posts on a regular basis gives me incredible encouragement please don’t stop.”