Jamie woke up early on Monday morning. She had been restless all night and had not gotten much sleep. As of three days ago she had become Mrs. Michael Handford and now she was all alone again. Jamie started to question why she had agreed to marry Michael and travel half way across the United States, only to be left on her own. She was in a strange house in a strange town, living with people she didn’t know. Only a few days ago she had been in the house she had grown up in with her parents and friends, doing the things that she enjoyed doing.
Slowly but surely she came to the same conclusion that she had every day for the last two weeks, ever since Michael had asked her to marry him. Jamie really did love Michael. If this was the only way she could get him to commit to this relationship, she would take it. After all, they had been going together for the last four years. She knew that Michael loved her.
She had no doubts that he would spend the rest of his life with her, but he was afraid of the commitment of marriage. Michael's father had left and moved away from Colorado when Michael was very young. Michael’s mother had not condemned Jim, but she had not tried to explain what had happened either.
It didn’t help that most of the people they had grown up around had gone through divorce as well. Even when extra effort had been given to protect the children, these breakups still hurt the entire family. Michael had been running scared of the odds. If all of those people could not make it work, how was he supposed to do it? Michael had said over and over again, “I don’t want to leave my son in a miserable place like that.”
Now finally Jamie could start working to prove to him that things would be different. With the Lord’s help, Jamie was sure that they could have the kind of relationship that God had intended for a husband and a wife.
Jamie took a shower and then headed upstairs to see what the day would bring. Sara was in the kitchen getting Samantha ready to go to Kindergarten. Jim had just left for work. He had his own company as a general contractor and had three different projects going on.
“Good morning Jamie,” greeted Sara, as Jamie came into the room. “We weren't sure how long you would sleep this morning after that long drive.”
“Oh it wasn’t so bad,” remarked Jamie. “Besides, I wanted to get started right away looking for a job. If I can save enough money, maybe we could afford a small apartment so Michael can come home every night.”
“If that's what you want to do, you should be looking for a job up closer to the base, shouldn’t you?” asked Sara.
“If I was doing what I wanted to do,” returned Jamie, “I would have borrowed the money from my mom and dad and rented an apartment up there already. Then I would worry about getting a job and how we were going to keep things going.”
“I take it that Michael does not agree with that approach,” said Sara.
Jamie answered, “ Well somewhere along the line he got this hard headed idea that he had to be the bread winner. It isn’t such a problem that I can’t work, but Michael is not about to accept a “hand out” from my parents. I tried to tell him that we could just borrow the money and pay them back, but he wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Well he probably inherited some of that hard-headed stubbornness from his father.” replied Sara. “Jim and I have had more than one debate over this kind of stuff since we got married.”
“So who won?” asked Jamie.
“I’m still here aren't I” answered Sara, with a gleam in her eye. “The trick is to convince them that they are still wearing the pants in the family, while you get them to do what you want.”
“Now that's a neat trick,” laughed Jamie. “I’ll take any pointers you want to share.”
Jamie went through the want ads, and underlined several jobs that she wanted to investigate. Sara got Sam out the door and onto the bus that picked her up right in front of the house. As she came back into the kitchen, another one of those ads for one of the psychic phone lines came on the radio.
“Why do people waste their money on that kind of garbage?” asked Jamie.
“The Devil does a pretty good job of convincing people that they need him to guide their lives,” answered Sara. “There is a lot more to that kind of thing than meets the eye. I don’t care whether you're talking about psychics or astrology, or one of those board games. Demons or the Devil can use those things and even give some very accurate information to get people dependent on them. Then the Devil can use the different sources of information to ruin a person,or at the very least, stop people from following the Lord.”
“I never thought about it in that way before”, said Jamie. “But I see what you mean. It’s kind of scary to think how hard the Devil works to stop us from being with God.”
After this conversation Jamie used the phone to call the companies she had found in the want ads. She made several appointments, and by Wednesday she was hired to work as a receptionist in a doctor’s office. It was a small operation with one doctor and a physician’s assistant. Jamie would have to check in the patients and have new patients fill out information sheets. She would also answer phones and schedule appointments. They gave her considerable responsibility and Jamie handled the job well. Within a month they had already given her a raise.
