Ted was clinging to me and felt closer to me than ever before. Our church felt healthy. That was probably the happiest time in my life up until that point. Although Haggard would hide the truth from the public for as long as he could, he came clean to his wife. The Haggards drove home and told their children. They also met with the church elders who would eventually strip him of his job and order him to leave Colorado altogether.
That night, Gayle allowed Ted into her bed, and when he reached out, she found herself struggling to decide whether to allow him to touch her. She writes about that moment in her book:. I knew the importance of physical touch … And I knew the damage rejection could cause. Broken people need to be touched, and by reaching out, Ted was pleading for my help. I had coached other women through this. Now it was my turn …. And so that night I began my journey of choosing … Choosing to love.
Vieira asked Gayle what led her to make that choice at a time when she had to be hurting so horribly. The idea seems silly now, but I was serious at the time. That afternoon, I fell asleep with that prayer on my lips and awoke with an image in my mind: a young man, standing some distance down a road marked by telephone poles.
But I could see that he had blond, blown-back hair and a ruggedly handsome complexion and that he wore blue jeans and a reddish plaid shirt. I never told anyone about that fleeting vision. I tucked the picture away in my heart, a little wary of believing it was a message from God. After our first date, Ted and I ate most of our meals together. In the evenings after classes, we took long walks around campus and talked about everything. That year, my birthday fell on a Saturday, and to celebrate, Ted asked me to pack a picnic lunch.
We planned to spend the day on a sandy beach bordering a nearby river. We were talking, not really looking around, when we noticed a shirtless, barefoot man with long, brown hair. He seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and without a word of explanation, he began to walk with us and eventually joined our conversation.
The man spooked me a little, but Ted seemed so comfortable with the situation that I simply followed his cues. When we decided to sit on a pile of logs beside the river, the stranger sat with us. At one point, conversation died, and we fell into a comfortable silence. Ted glanced at me, and when we looked back, the man was gone.
Once the sun sank toward the horizon, Ted and I built a campfire on the beach. As we warmed ourselves beside the flames, Ted shared what he felt God was calling him to do with his life. He told me what he believed God had shown him about his future. When he finished, he swallowed hard and looked at me, and then he asked if I would want to share that life with him.
My heart had been pounding as I listened, but now it skipped a beat. My love for him and excitement over what he was planning grew with every word out of his mouth. Life and Culture. Looking back at 20 years of Colorado Matters. To slow hospitalizations, Polis promotes monoclonal antibodies. But doctors say the treatment is hard to find. Climate Change. Back from UN climate conference, Neguse and Hickenlooper talk up environmental and economic benefits of Biden agenda.
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