from Amintha Peterson
I suppose I was not the first wife in the history of the world to have no idea what her husband was up to. That was small comfort, however, when out the blue, he asked for a divorce. Of course there was another woman, but he didn’t tell me and I didn’t find out till some time later.
I was a Rosicrucian at the time. At an evening service in the temple about a month after my husband left, I suddenly got fed up with being sad. “You MUST help me,” I prayed. “I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want my daughter to grow up without a father. You MUST help me.”
While I was at it, I added a few conditions. I am Colombian and my husband had been from Mexico; but I said to God, “No more Latinos. My next husband must have white skin and blue eyes—and a good job. I don’t want to have to support him. And make him spiritual.” God had been important to me ever since I was a child.
After the temple service was a social hour. I was sitting at a table with my cup of coffee when I saw Jay walking in my direction. I’d seen him at the temple before, but didn’t know him. That’s the man I’m going to marry. It wasn’t an intention. It was a fact that announced itself from deep inside me.
I guess he must have felt the burst of energy that shot through me at that moment, because he walked right over and said, “May I sit with you?” Since I already knew I was going to marry him, naturally I said yes.
White skin: check. Blue eyes: check.
He reminded me that we had met at a family campout a few years before. He had come with a little girl about the same age as my daughter.
Oops! He’s married! I’d forgotten that important detail in my prayer. “God, I need someone who is available!”
As it turned out, the child was the daughter of his ex-wife. They had divorced eighteen months before. And he had a good job—check—and admired me for being a businesswoman. At the time I was driving a Cadillac, and he had noticed.
When he found out I was from Colombia, he started talking in broken Spanish, saying he once was fluent but had forgotten a lot of it now. His father had been sent by his company to Colombia, and Jay had spent seven years of his childhood in Bogotá and Cali.
A Spanish-speaking non-Latino who had lived in my own country: CHECK!
Two and a half years later we were married.
