Last week we learned Suzy had accepted a choker from an African immigrant to America for a one year trial period.
Suzy had not dated anyone for two years since the break-up with her other boyfriend, the one she dated five years. She was enjoying her work and single life.
I asked what caused that break-up.
“So many little things. Breaking up with him I prayed to the Lord, ‘Lord if you don’t want me with him, don’t let me hear from him again.’
I never heard from him after we broke up.
Suzy dated a man five years before she met Ari, the man who asked her to consider him seriously after his first meeting with her. He was her brother’s friend who lived in California, and had only come home to Africa for a visit. They began writing until she accepted his invitation to visit him in the States…
Suzy told the Lord if Ari sent her a ticket and she could get a Visa she would visit. It was very hard to get a Visa at the time.
But, the first person she visited at the embassy said, “You have the same birthday I do. Sit down. I’ll help you get a passport.” He returned with a six month Visa.
People asked me, “How did I get it?”
I said, “I told the Lord. He got the Visa and Ari sent the ticket.”
“I never heard from my first boyfriend after we broke up. I didn’t see him again until I was at the airport going to the states to visit my future husband. He was sad when he found out where I was going. I told him, ‘You had your chance.’
He said he knew he would have had to change.
“I knew I couldn’t change him--there were too many things….”
Suzy left for America in December. She arrived at the airport in LA Exec on Christmas Eve, December 1979. She stayed 3 months with a sister who lived near Ari and visited him.
I asked him again, still incredulous, ‘What did you see about me?’
“It was something about you,” Ari said. “I didn’t know. I felt something about you was for me. Something different from your other single sisters.”
Suzi returned home and continued to write letters before planning their wedding. She joined him in California where they had the joy of bearing and raising children. Today they continue strong in a relationship that kindled a lifelong fire decades ago.
It's clear as she tells her story, it still leaves a sense of wonder to her, even after all these years. She knows God was in it.
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