A Time to Love: Living a Miracle

By Lillie Johnson

Once in a lifetime, the most beautiful love story you will ever know is the one you’re living. From love discovered as teens, to love rekindled as matured adults with grown children, this book takes you on the journey of two people who overcame extraordinary challenges, including a thirty-year separation, intense emotionally-protective barriers, and living over nine hundred miles apart, to ultimately claim an everlasting love. Now married over five years, read not only about the phenomenon of the love that brought them back together, but also of the faith, gratitude, and day to day practices that hold them together. Told in a two-person narrative filled with tender, heartwarming moments, humor, and practical wisdom, their story will make you smile, cry, and realize the beauty and power of love between two people and the mystery some call destiny. It will encourage you to revere God’s ability to “make all things new” in His own time. More than anything, it will inspire you to believe in miracles, particularly the miracle of love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Inspiring Voices
• Release date: Feb 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781462403974

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Copyright © 2013 Lillie Johnson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Cover Design: Lillie Johnson

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0398-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4624-0397-4 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013901108

Inspiring Voices rev. date: 02/11/13

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgement

Chapter 1 The Beginning

Chapter 2 The Romance

Chapter 3 Keeping in Touch

Chapter 4 Mysterious Ways

Chapter 5 It was Love

Chapter 6 After Thirty Years

Chapter 7 The Proposal

Chapter 8 The Wedding

Chapter 9 Major Life Changes Minor Adjustments

Chapter 10 Fear, Faith and Happiness

Chapter 11 About Michael About Lillie

Chapter 12 Living a Miracle

This book is dedicated

To Michael, Frederick and Elizabeth

Of all the lives in which God could have placed you, He chose mine. Words do not exist that can ever fully express my love, joy and gratitude.

And,

To those who dare to believe in miracles.

May you be blessed.

Acknowledgement

IT IS WITH SINCERE GRATITUDE that I acknowledge the following persons who contributed greatly to the realization of this book: Caleb VanDeman, whose insights and inquiry, If you’re going to write about this kind of story, why not start with your own? challenged me to take this adventure; Jessica Jacobs, Jennifer Slaybaugh, and Lisa Murphy, whose valued interest, and continued professional support and editing helped keep me on point; my dear friend, Effie, whose grace, wisdom and kindness has always been an inspiration, and whose loving reminder, You know, you really do need to write a book, remained in my heart; and most of all, my beloved husband, Michael, whose love, patience, endless enthusiasm and encouragement allowed me the time and space to share our story.

Chapter 1

The Beginning

Lillie

I FIRST MET MICHAEL THE summer following my sophomore year of high school. He and my brother, George, attended the same college and had become good friends, and my brother brought him home one day. They were eighteen, almost nineteen, years old, and I was fifteen. I had met nice guys before, but there was something different about Michael; I knew that from the very beginning. Initially, I spent more time observing him than talking to him, but I liked Michael immediately. He was not only handsome and very smart, but also very nice. I loved his manners, his demeanor, and his voice, but there was something else that radiated from him. He was unlike anyone I had ever met. Something about Michael’s character spoke to me. I was not only drawn to him, I could see a lot in him. Although I did not understand where the feeling came from, I knew in my heart that Michael was going to be a great man.

Michael and I soon discovered that we had a lot in common. We both came from relatively large families—mine was a family of five children, and Michael’s was a family of nine. Our siblings were in the same age range, and we had similar family histories. Both of us came from Catholic backgrounds and attended Catholic schools. We had been taught similar value systems, and held the same principles to be important. Education was very important to us, as we both planned to finish college and pursue advanced degrees. We found out that we shared a love of music and movies, and from there we moved on to an even broader range of topics. Our personalities were very much in sync, from the way we looked at life, to our interests, goals, and hobbies.

Michael visited us a lot that summer, and although I tried not to appear obvious, I always looked forward to seeing him. Our home seemed to light up with laughter and conversation whenever he came by. Sometimes Michael visited when my brother wasn’t home and would