It was Sunday afternoon, October 27, 1974. Lori and I found a parking spot at the Sonic Drive-In in Altus, Oklahoma, and ordered two drinks. We were nervous teenagers on our first date. We listened to the music over the drive-in’s intercom as I sipped my Dr. Pepper and Lori her ice water (always with extra ice). It was a song just released by Olivia Newton-John, “I Honestly Love You.”
Fifty years later, to the day and hour, Lori and I pulled into the same Sonic and ordered the same drinks. They no longer played songs over the intercom, so I used my phone to listen to our “first-date song.”
“I like that song,” Lori had said when we first heard Olivia singing it. And I agreed, even if a bit bashfully. Lori was a sophomore, and I was a senior at Altus High School. Our conversation flowed, we connected, and our nervousness evaporated. Too soon, it was time for me to leave for a Sunday afternoon team football meeting.
Our romance lasted three and half years, quite remarkable for two kids in their teens, especially considering that I left for Waco and Baylor the next year while Lori remained in high school, graduating two years later.
It’s something of a mystery how God works in our lives. Just the other day, I saw a friend at a meeting. He was grieving the death of his wife.
“We were high school sweethearts,” he said in a low voice. “But the Lord miraculously brought us back together 60 years later, and we had six good years together before she passed.”
I felt a pang in my heart for him as he stood there, tears welling up in his eyes, his voice cracking. I saw the parallels between his story and mine; only Lori and I have had twenty years together.
“Life’s ‘what ifs,'” I thought as Lori and I drove away from our Sonic anniversary date, with Olivia singing, “If we were both born in another place and time…”
Would Lori and I have found each other again if I hadn’t returned to Altus over twenty years ago? What if I had not suggested to my family that we eat fried catfish instead of Chinese? And what if Lori had not been in Altus for a doctor’s appointment that same day? What if she had gone to another restaurant? We would have missed meeting each other; the “cosmic tumblers” would not have “clicked into place” (Ray Kinsella, Field of Dreams).
But we venture too far down an imaginary road to nowhere when we ponder it too much. The proverb says, “The Lord directs our steps, so why try to understand everything along the way?” (Proverbs 20:24.) Another translation of that verse is, “Even a courageous person’s steps are determined by the Lord, so how can anyone understand his own way,” the implication being that even if the strongest aren’t in absolute control of their steps, how can anyone claim complete mastery of their life? But we are responsible for making wise decisions and understanding the consequences of choices: “The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways” (Proverbs 14:8).
God gives us a moment: we choose to live it or lose it. Each moment is pregnant with possibilities, each of which has the potential to carry us in a myriad of directions. Instead of regretting the past or fearing the future, we do best when we are determined to live life in all its fullness, for all its worth.
Oswald Chambers observed: “We can all see God in exceptional things, but it requires the culture of spiritual discipline to see God in every detail. Never allow that the haphazard is anything less than God’s appointed order, and be ready to discover the Divine designs anywhere.”
Driving away from Sonic fifty years after our first date, thankful for the “Divine designs,” I could have sworn Lori’s smile was more beautiful, her eyes brighter, and my Sonic drink sweeter than fifty years ago.
And for that moment and the next, wherever it leads, I am forever grateful as I sing in my soul, “I honestly love You.”