A Life Changing Moment

Jeremiah 29:10-12

This is what the LORD says:

"When seventy years are completed for Babylon,

I will come to you and fulfill my good promise

to bring you back to this place.

For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD,

"plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

plans to give you hope and a future.

Then you will call on me and come and pray to me,

and I will listen to you.

Did you ever notice that a life changing moment arrives with a whisper that is almost inaudible? In retrospect you think that you should have heard trumpets heralding the moment or at least a digital sound that something was happening. Such a moment occurred in my life in late September of 1965. I was at my first working experience…teaching First Grade in an inner city school in New Haven, Connecticut, having just graduated from college the previous June. One of my co workers at the elementary school was a former college classmate of mine, and she showed up in my classroom late on Friday afternoon to tell me that there was a Mixer at the Yale University Graduate School the following evening. She was going, and she wanted me to go with her.

I had always hated mixers, but for some reason I decided to go. I was kicking myself standing there. It felt like such a meat market to me. I noticed one young man standing there and started to wonder about him. He was not American, but I could not place where he might be from. He was Asian but looked different from all the stereotypes I had in my mind. Some of the possibilities that I considered for his origin included Korea, Japan, Thailand and some others. My guesses were not correct, and I knew it. He just looked different.

He saw me staring at him and walked over. He asked me to dance. He told me he was from Bangladesh. He did not look like your average Asian Indian…and it is my suspicion that there was something in his genetic pool from Myanmar...hence the more Asian look. We danced the night away, but I cannot ever claim it to be love at first sight. At the end of the evening he wrote his name and phone number on a napkin, and I wrote mine. He tore the napkin in half, and we each went home with our own half.

We dated. At one point he had asked me out for something or other, and I told him I was going to a conference. I said I would call him if I was back in time to go out. There was no conference…I wanted to leave my options open. I just did not enjoy being with him. At the end of the day I did not want to go out…and I did not call him. He did not contact me either.

Come the following February….it snowed! I found my half of the napkin in the silverware draw in the dining room. I called him to ask him what he thought of the snow. He asked me out, and I asked myself, “Oh what have you done now?” He had changed over those several months, and I found him fun to be with. We started seeing each other all the time. I fell in love with him, but he kept saying that our cultures were too different for us to marry. He said that it would never work out. He had bought himself a stereo. It was one of those stereos that was in a big piece of furniture that resembled a buffet. He promised to give it to me when he left, and I wondered if it was my consolation prize. I dramatically pictured myself as an Edith Piaf figure of tragedy walking around in a long black dress and singing the kinds of sad torch songs she always sang.

What looked impossible became possible. I could not understand why he thought that I could not adjust or make a life with him. I understand that now. Life and culture in Bangladesh is so very different. Yes, I understand his reasoning. Still when I am in Bangladesh I love it and love my family there. My Bengali family also loves me. In fact, my father-in-law once said that I was the best of all his daughters-in-law. It turns out that, although I am different, I am able to fit in.

God had a plan for us that was not what It seemed it was going to turn out to be. I was suffering and feeling that the whole thing was hopeless. I prayed, but I had basically given up. He was making plans to return in a year or so alone. I have to believe that God had stepped in to orchestrate what I had been praying for.In the end he changed how he felt. My best friend and I married in 1968.

 I have visited Bangladesh many times, and life has been something I never expected. A few years ago my final prayer was answered when my husband, who is by nature a very private person, accepted Jesus as his Lord and savior in front of our entire congregation…an amazing example of God answering prayer.

Oh, by the way, I also got to keep the stereo as well.

©Corinne Mustafa