My Story - Mary Ann Mariani
I have a very personal relationship with Jesus Christ. The stronger it grows, the more drawn I feel to tell my story and teach others a better way to tell theirs. This is why I founded Kingdom Presenters.
You see, God loves to show His glory in our lives and He wants us to brag on Him and the amazing things He does for us, so that we can bring others to Christ.
Like you, I have many times in my life where God has made his love and direction evident. I want to now share one story as an illustration of God’s love, correction and provision for me that has drawn me closer to Him. Let me begin by sharing…
Our God is not a God of Statistics …
If the statistics in your life aren’t going as you want – hand them over to God and he’ll get the numbers right!
At this particular time in my life God focused me on Psalms 37:4
"Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart."
This verse showed me that I had to take the focus off myself and put it back on Him and in doing so, the numbers in my life would begin to look very different.
Let’s turn the clock back to when I was 40 years old and living in Dallas, Texas. Like most women I know, I wanted to meet a nice man, get married and start a family. Unfortunately, accomplishing this didn’t seem anywhere in sight for me.
Do you know what the statistics are for a single women getting married in Dallas are? Now add to that statistic, for women over 40 getting married to a man willing to start a family? In Dallas it is said that there are three women to every man, and the majority of these women are knock-out gorgeous. So let me tell you, I was feeling the statistics working against me every day! It felt like a one in a million chance that I would meet a nice man, get married and start a family – was I asking too much? That is what I’d say to God each night in my prayers.
But our God is not a God of statistics, He is a God of miracles. And He once again would remind me of Psalms 37:4.
He wanted me to delight myself in Him and let Him worry about the rest. So, at 40 years of age, He turned my eyes back to Him. He also told me, "First, you have to get two things clear: One, is you need to look for the right man - and with that He gave me a criteria. And secondly, you have to become the woman that man wants to marry."
With this in mind, I began to re-focus myself on what God wanted me spending my time on.
The criteria that Jesus put on my heart for finding the right man for me were the 5 Cs.
- Christian
- He needed to Love the Lord, and live his life in a way that demonstrated that love
- Compatible
- Shared family values, financial values and ways of demonstrating our faith and beliefs
- Communication
- We had to be able to talk to each other – and not just about the easy stuff
- Commitment
- Commitment to the Lord and commitment to our relationship
- Chemistry
- Letting God open my eyes to what makes lasting chemistry
Amazingly it took me two years of processing and practicing - especially the difficult conversations – to become committed to the five Cs and doing relationships God’s way (which also meant NO physical Intimate contact before marriage).
By using this criteria as a guide while dating, it enabled me to recognize God’s choice for me, versus what I may have chosen for myself (which had not worked in the past!).
It seems that God often works through others to accomplish his goals and he did that for getting Donnie and me together. Two ladies that probably never thought they would be match-making helped us meet, Don’s mother and a good friend of mine who happened to be her neighbor. They were talking about my wanting to return to San Diego when his mother said, "She should meet my son." So my friend started to plant the seeds for me to do that.
At first I wasn’t interested – he was 42 and never married – what was wrong with him? Well, how quickly I forgotten what God wanted me to look for, and the fact that I was 43 and not married either! But God is good, and patient, and he prompted me to go ahead. And on a beautiful February day we began our journey with a blind date at Starbucks in Del Mar, California.
As you can see, the Lord was saying the statistics don’t matter. You may feel like a one in a million to get married after 40, but God says "I don’t care, I’ll put you together when the time is right." And He introduced me to this wonderful man who happen to live 2,000 miles away from me.
This was my first statistic buster; meeting this wonderful man who not only met, but exceeded, all of the five Cs. We married a year after meeting.
Our second statistic buster was that Donnie and I shared the desire of wanting a family. Only the statistics were not in our favor because I was 43 and he was 42 when we got married. We had a lot of pressure from others and ourselves to go to a fertility specialist due to our ages.
Did you know the statistics say at age 44 you have a 2 percent chance of getting pregnant? The pregnancy statistics seem to take a nose-dive after 35, so we were already pretty scared about that. We had all the tests and all the statistics that were being thrown at us by fertility specialists and it was not a pretty picture. And then one day we were so frustrated with the whole process that my wonderful husband looked at me and said, “Where is God in all this? I don’t feel God in this.”
So we chose instead to leave the fertility process behind and started praying about what the next best steps were for us. At that point we explored becoming foster parents, attended a foster care meeting, picked up our packet of information and started going through it .. and the next week I was pregnant.
And so the Lord said "I don’t care what the statistic is out there, it may be 2 percent, it might be 1 percent, it does not matter if I want you to have the desires of your heart."
And for us this meant a child of our own. We were blessed on February 25th of the next year with a beautiful daughter.
When Donnie and I look at her, we know that God is not a God of statistics and we tell others: if the statistics in your life aren’t going as you desire – hand them over to God, make Him the Lord of your life and He will get the numbers right!
