The One That Got Away

By: Lolo Anderson

This is another story that you had forgot all about until one day last year. After it just kind-of popped into your failing brain. You had just taken two Xanax to be calm enough to meet with 4 precious Christian teenage girls. These girls and their loving mother will be the subject of a whole other story. For now, let’s just say this meeting was very significant event for you.

You knew you wanted to give them something inspirational and you had not talked to anyone for months without shaking and crying like a baby. Plus, their amazing mother was sitting right across the table form you and all of her teenage girls. The vision of a girl you once loved for one day, just came to mind on the way to the meeting.

You did your very best to tell the story about the one that got away from you. Beside breaking down and crying like a baby you needed to blow your nose. Somehow you got through it and made a B-line to the bathroom. You can’t remember how much of the story you actually was able to tell them. There must have been a couple other girls besides the 4 girls from the church portrait classes. They seamed to be listing very closely and that made you even more nervous.

After reading this story about the one that got away. You will see why the Holy Spirit would want these precious sweet Christian teenage girls to hear that story.

The One that Got Away……

You were just 17 and had just got married to your high school sweetheart. Your first home was the caretaker’s home/office in the Ocean View Cemetery. You had been the caretaker and office manager for past 3 years. The owner gave you a deal you could not refuse to live in that caretaker house after you got married.

The cemetery owner, Wayne Rose is an important part of this story. You started to work for him at a very young age. Just cutting grass and mowing the lawns at first. Then more and more inventory and ledgers. Meeting with clients to sell grave plots and picking out markers. Mr. Rose was so inspirational to you not just for teaching you the entire business but his Christian life as well.

The final year you worked for him he was able to take whole year off to go on a mission to the South Pacific. He left the entire business to his 17-year-old caretaker, you. He came back from his mission to tell you so many stories and showed you so many beautiful pictures. “Who is this girl in this photograph, Mr. Rose”? She is my niece, the one I had hoped you and her would have got to know each other. She lives with my brother in Hawaii and she has been on all my missions.

Jo-Ann is still here visiting for a while before going home. Would you like to meet her? He invited me for dinner at his house with several other people from his church. He introduced me to Jo-Ann and we hit it off together right away. If anyone ever tells you that there is no such thing as love at first sight, they lie.

From the instant our hands touched to shake hello our eyes were fixed on each other. No other way to explain it like distant planetary soulmates physically touching each other for the first time. Don’t lie, it was more that just spiritual. She was the most beautiful girl with the most beautiful eyes and face. She was sexy with a mind-blowing figure and the sweetest smile you had ever seen. It was not you or her but something bigger that both of you was pulling you together that night.

We were the first to leave the dinner table to retire to the garden. You sat all alone with her talking all about her love for the children back at the mission. She described the pure joy of holding an orphan while she cried herself to sleep. The joy in the eyes of the little children over a bowl of corn flakes. You could see God’s love in her eyes for the work she had done with these precious little children. It made you fall so in love with her that night in the garden.

The next day she came by the cemetery office to talk to you. My wife of 3 months was inside the house, so opened the door between the office and the residence to tell her you were going to meet with a customer out front. You sat in her car alone and opened up your hearts to each other.

She had felt the same shock wave that hit you last night. You told her how much you had dreamed about being a missionary and living in an orphanage just like the one you and your uncle had built on your last mission. She began to cry and said she had a vision of you and her in love and running that very orphanage.

Her uncle had told her so much about you and how he had wished you would be part of his family one day. When we got back from our mission and found out that you were already married I cried my eyes out, she said. She said she liked me even before we met because of all the things her uncle had said about you. Now that we have met, she no longer liked me at all, she said she was in love with you.

You reached out and softly held her hand and told her that you were in love with her to. Then, the tears began to fall and you both cried for a very long time. With all your strength you mumbled the words, but it can never be.

You were still so very much in love with your new wife. The tears ran down both our faces and a million words passed between our eyes as we said our last good-bye. After she drove away you went back to your wife in the caretaker’s house.

Your sweet wife asked what was wrong, honey. Just lost a very good friend. Did you know her? No, it was just someone I had been dreaming about. She didn’t ask any more questions. Just wrapped her loving arms around me and kissed my tears away.

To understand what happened next you have to remember things about that house. I had been working there for years and you had the key to that house for a very long time, even before getting married. This is where your new wife and you first had sex.

That night after that encounter with the one that just had gotten away. Let me tell you the passion and emotion making love with your wife was amazing. Even greater than our first time. It had been a very rough start to our marriage and that broke the dam of emotion and feelings that lasted our whole marriage. Maybe you were thinking about another woman but you were making love to the mother of your babies yet to come.

Your love for your wife grew greater every day. Years later you forgot all about Jo-Ann until that vision of her sitting in her car crying popped into your head on the way to see the teenage girls.

Well that is what I wanted to tell tem.

You told the girls your fastest summary of the story above. You did not have time to tell them why you wanted to tell them that story. Your emotions were taking over and you were losing control. You may have said something like, please just wait. God has already chosen your soul-mate for you, or something like that.

If you were writing a story instead of trying to talk, you might have a deeper reason for telling them that story. You would have told them that the Evil One will try his best to temp you away from God’s path. The Evil One is not red with horns and a tail. He appeared to me like an angle. The entire package of everything you would ever dream of. Vows made before God are meant to be forever. You could say that God protected you from that temptation.

The fact here is that God used the love from you wife to protect you from evil. The love of a God loving wife is more powerful that evil itself. Only days after Jo-Ann God blessed my home with a 51 year career at PG&E.