Yesterday, I had the opportunity to teach my Connect Group (a/k/a Sunday School class) from the book of Judges about one of my favorite heroes…Gideon! I love that guy! I think I love him so much, because I can relate to him so well.

Take a peek with me for just a moment…Judges 6:11-16 (NIV)…

“The angel of the LORD came and sat down under the oak in Ophrah that belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, where his son Gideon was threshing wheat in a winepress to keep it from the Midianites. When the angel of the LORD appeared to Gideon, he said, “The LORD is with you, mighty warrior.”

“But sir,” Gideon replied, “if the LORD is with us, why has all this happened to us? Where are all his wonders that our fathers told us about when they said, ‘Did not the LORD bring us up out of Egypt?’ But now the LORD has abandoned us and put us into the hand of Midian.”

The LORD turned to him and said, “Go in the strength you have and save Israel out of Midian’s hand. Am I not sending you?”

“But Lord,” Gideon asked, “how can I save Israel? My clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my family.”

The LORD answered, “I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.”

Did you see what just took place in the above passage? The Lord gave Gideon the name MIGHTY WARRIOR! Ok…sure…big deal, you might be saying. There were lots of warriors in biblical days. Right you are! But, Gideon had not yet served in one single battle! You see – God is calling Gideon by the name that He’s making him into. He sees Gideon differently than Gideon sees himself. To Gideon…he’s weak, “the least”, a simple wheat thresher and certainly NOT a mighty warrior. However, in Chapters 7 and 8 – Gideon takes on that name God has given him – He becomes that mighty warrior, as he and 300 men (only 300 men!!!) defeat the torturous, ravaging bullies – the Midianites! There was no human way possible Gideon could have done this with just 300 men. But, God was with him, just as He promised. God gets the glory for this victory that resulted from a man that simply stepped out in faith and took God at His Word.

Friends…I feel much like Gideon. The names that I sometimes place upon myself aren’t God-honoring and certainly NOT the names God has given me. I look at my life over the last 40 years and see a mess…disappointment after disappointment, and this most recent tragedy with Chris’ death seems to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. But God…

God keeps revealing to me that this “mess” I keep referring to is going to be THE thing that brings him the greatest glory out of my life. That actually scares me to death. What’s He going to require of me? What’s He going to ask me to do? Doesn’t He know that I’m the modern version of a “simple wheat thresher”?

But, I know one thing…He’s already given me the same promise He gave Gideon thousands of years ago… “I will be with you…”

He’s already told me it’s time to speak again, because I have a NEW story to tell. By faith, I’ve prepared my topics, I’ve listed my availability on my website, I’ve shared with certain groups of people that I’m back “in the saddle again”, and now I wait. But, I wait WITH God, because He promised me, “I will be with you…”

He’s also told me to keep writing. He’s given me a pretty big project to work on. By faith, I’m doing the research, I’m quizzing those that have gone before me on a similar path, I study a lot, and then I wait. But, again, I wait WITH God, because He promised me, “I will be with you…”

There’s something else I believe He’s calling me to do. Something that really scares me to death. Something that I’m not quite ready to share on this blog (until I’m done throwing out all of my fleeces, that is). But, if at the end of this time of prayer and fasting that I’m about to enter into, He tells me to still do it…then, once again…I will obey, and I will wait on Him to direct my steps, because He promised me, “I will be with you…”

God has also given me a new name…one that I have yet to feel the effects of just yet. But, if God says it…I believe it. What’s the name He’s given me?

He calls me…RESTORED! What name has He called YOU?

What a blessing this week has been for me! I’ve experienced so much JOY reading the stories about the husbands (Valentines) – now in Heaven – of some precious widow friends of mine. As I read their love stories, I smile…smiles of thankfulness for the blessing that God gave each of them in their special men. Even if that blessing ended for each of us – much too soon – it was a treasured blessing nonetheless!

Upon first planning this week of guest posts, I knew that I would end the week with my own Valentine story. And so…today…in this last post of my Valentine’s week, with tears streaming down my cheeks, allow me to introduce my Valentine…Christopher Allen Gillen.

Our meeting was unconventional by many standards, but God doesn’t always work in conventional ways. I “met” my husband on August 31, 2007 via eHarmony. Yes – you read that right – on eHarmony! I told a friend that I would never do the “online dating” thing. You know the saying, “Never say never!” About a year after that exclamation – I found myself in the online dating scene.

For me, eHarmony was a wonderful experience. I met a couple of men (before Chris) that turned out to be wonderful, godly men and resulted in cherished eHarmony memories, but nothing further. Upon meeting Chris (initially by email only), I discovered someone that I related to on many levels. My first three questions for him had to be “passed” by my standards or our communication ceased: (1) How did you come to know the Lord? (2) Do you feel you could ever love and help to parent a child that you didn’t father?, and (3) Describe your current relationship with the Lord and how it shapes your day-to-day journey through life. Chris “passed” with FLYING colors!

After several weeks of email communication, we finally agreed to meet each other in person. We were both so excited and yet so nervous at the same time. Chris lived in Southwest Virginia, 2 ½ hours away from my home in Asheville, NC. He made the first journey to meet me. We never even spoke on the phone until the moment he was getting off my exit to say he was almost at our meeting place. I wanted to throw up. I was a nervous wreck. I felt already knew him, in a sense, from our heavy email chats. And yet…I had never laid eyes on him (except for pictures).

When he stepped foot out of his Chevy Silverado truck, I made my way towards him with the biggest grin my face could possibly create. He was also smiling from ear to ear, and that smile…oh, that smile…I will never forget the tenderness in which he smiled at me with his whole face – not just his mouth. His crystal blue eyes sparkled as well. I felt like I was falling in love with this man, but I dare not admit that yet. It was WAY too early. We hugged each other. He literally lifted me off the ground with the tight, yet comforting, hug that he gave me. We couldn’t stop staring at each other. This day was finally here.

We had arranged to share a picnic together this day – September 29, 2007. I made chicken salad sandwiches, pasta salad, and homemade pita chips. Chris brought heart-shaped shortbread cookies with our names spelled out in dark chocolate in the center of each one (he was such a ROMANTIC, and he baked the cookies himself, from scratch!) He also brought chocolate-dipped strawberries!

We had a wonderful picnic and hike in Pisgah National Forest (not too far from where he would end his life just a few short years later). We ended up spending the rest of the day and evening talking and talking and talking. We couldn’t get enough of each other. And yet…he was such a gentleman and never made any inappropriate comment or move, for that matter. Our 10 hour-long date finally had to end {big sigh!}, and Chris returned home to Virginia that very night. That was the beginning of the best 3 years, 8 months of my life!

We saw each other nearly every weekend after that, with Chris either coming to Asheville or me going to his hometown in Virginia. We talked every night on the phone during the weekdays (until 1 am sometimes). Within just a few weeks of our first meeting, Chris was visiting in Asheville one weekend and told me he loved me. I still couldn’t say it. I was so afraid of being hurt again, as I had been married before, and my relationship ended in a way that literally broke my heart. Chris, on the other hand, had never been married. He said (and I quote), “I’ve been waiting for the woman that God has prepared me for me since before I was before. I’ve been content to be single if that’s what God called me to be, but I’m so glad He led me to you, Leah.”

Chris relocated to Asheville on November 16, 2007 to allow us the opportunity to live in the same town and make sure we were still compatible under those conditions. J That only made our love grow deeper! By this point, I finally admitted I was in love with him too. No going back now!

To speed up the story just a bit…Chris proposed to me in March, 2008, and we were married at his home church in Glade Spring, VA on August 9, 2008. I wanted to get married in his hometown, since he was the one that had never been married before. It was a beautiful, simple, wedding in a small, country town in a beautiful section of Virginia. It was a day full of sunshine outside and in my heart! The day I became Mrs. Christopher Gillen culminated years of restoration God had been cultivating in my life!

Chris was a dream of a husband. He treated me like a princess, and I’m not exaggerating. We celebrated our wedding anniversary on the 9^th of EVERY month. He always brought me flowers, and we watched our wedding video every 9^th. He massaged my feet (yes…my feet!) virtually every night! He cooked and baked (I did the cleaning, though!). Best of all, he did the grocery shopping every week (I HATE grocery shopping!). He spoke to me like I was his queen, and treated Anna like his own daughter.

I can count on one hand (literally) the number of disagreements we had (we NEVER argued really – just disagreements). He was so easy-going, funny, content, full of joy, and everybody he shared life with LOVED him dearly. To my knowledge, he never had any enemies (other than THE enemy – the Father of Lies). He was THAT kind of man.

He was a true “country boy” at heart…LOVED to fish (and was excellent at it, I might add) and loved to hunt (but fishing was his passion). In addition to fishing and hunting, scuba diving was another of his loves. He was able to fulfill one of his dreams (prior to us meeting) by diving the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia. He loved the water (like me!!!) and lived on his own sailboat on the FL Gulf Coast for two years. He truly achieved every dream he ever had or expressed to me.

But, something was void in his life on May 3-4, 2011. The days that will go down as the most painful days of my LIFE! His disappearance on May 3, and the discovery of his body on May 4, the result of suicide. My love, my king, my everything…now lived in the presence of the King of Kings!

I will never be the same again. But, this man taught me how to live and how to love – like I’ve never loved another. He taught me what true love looks like…what a biblical marriage consists of…and he blessed my life every single day we shared together on this earth.

Lord, please tell Chris how much I miss him, how much I love him, and how I can’t wait for our reunion in Heaven!

In the words of Matthew West, “save a place for me” babe!