On 8th June 2022 I had an email from “Be Still with God”, advertising a Residential Weekend in Llandudno that was to take place on the weekend of 9th to 11th September 2022. I like to do “Godly” things on special anniversaries and, as 10th September is the anniversary of my marriage to John Wilson in 1988, I booked it, not knowing at the time about the event that was to happen on 8th September 2022, but God knew of course.
On 8th September 1997 I received the Decree Absolute, dissolving my marriage to John Wilson. 8th September was also John’s father’s birthday and on 8th September 2022 it was to become Queen Elizabeth II’s death day.
Queen Elizabeth II was more than just a queen, she was a Christian, so it felt like a family member had died or, more importantly, gone to be with Jesus, on 8th September 2022. I have previously written about Prince William in my blog post entitled “I believe We are Special People at a Special Place at a Special Time in History” and on his grandmother’s death he became the Prince of Wales, at the time I was travelling to North Wales for my “Be Still with God” retreat.
I also noted that when he flew to Balmoral as the Queen was dying there, he flew from Northolt (the town where I spent the first 4 years of my life and where I was christened on St David of Wales Day in 1953).
It was interesting that my sister-in-law, Lorna Wilson, whom I had gotten back in touch with because of meeting her again at John’s funeral, finally contacted me on the evening of 8th September 2022 to arrange to meet up.
I was born the year that Queen Elizabeth II’s father died and she became queen and thus this year she had celebrated 70 years on the throne and I will be celebrating 70 years on the earth.
After my Christening, the next thing to happen in my Christian walk was my Confirmation. I was confirmed in Surrey on St Joseph of Nazareth Day in 1965 and at Whitsun (Pentecost) that year we had a family holiday at Llandudno, using Llandudno as a base to travel to other places in North Wales, one of which was Llangollen. I was later to find out that Llangollen was where my future mother-in-law had been brought up and where my future husband, John Wilson, was Christened on 21st May 1961.
The last photograph I have of John and myself was taken on 21st May 1994 at a Hog Roast at our best man’s farm.
Another place my family visited in 1965 was Swallow Falls. We visited there on 10th June 1965 and it was on 10th June 1997 that I began to journal, which led to my writing a blog. When I think of Swallow Falls, I am reminded of this “Forget-me-Not” story from 26th August 1997 (3 years to the day after I awoke from taking an overdose when John left me). I now celebrate that date as my “Born Again” day.
On the afternoon of 9th September 2022 I travelled to Llandudno. 9th September was the anniversary of my selling my final home in Lincoln in 2004 and, at the time, I was very sad about having to do that. But God had moved me on, back to Surrey. Interestingly, the lady who leads “Be Still with God” has the surname Surrey and I learnt from Lorna that her parents had honeymooned in Llandudno!!
One of the ladies on the retreat was the President of Aglow Manchester North and so I told her one of my favourite stories, from my first visit to an Aglow Conference in March 2001, “Psalm 139 (Southport)”, before we went into silence for the weekend. The idea of the weekend was that we would each be listening for God’s voice and thus talking to each other would be a distraction.
What we didn’t know until we arrived was that the Theme for the Weekend at the Lorento Centre in Llandudno was the Faithfulness of God. I was reminded that it was my distress at my husband’s unfaithfulness that had led me to Jesus in 1994 and that I had learnt soon after that my own family motto is “Always Faithful”, so Faithfulness is one of my “key” words. On the first evening of the “Be Still with God” weekend at the Loreto Centre we were given Psalm 121 to meditate on.
Psalm 121 immediately reminded me of my 50th birthday holiday (nearly 20 years ago) at the Flora Hotel in Lardos, Rhodes. I went there alone on a Master Sun Christian Holiday, since I had no one to organise a 50th birthday party for me, I booked on this holiday expecting that God would provide my party guests. The name of the hotel amused me, since my husband and I enjoyed butter on our bread, whereas the woman he ran off with served Flora spread rather than butter and I jokingly said to him “I suppose you will become a Flora man”.
The Flora Hotel had a beautiful position facing the beach and the sea beyond and as we worshipped of an evening we would see the sun going down over the water. So stunning. In the other direction was a “mountain” and that is why I was reminded of the words of Psalm 121:
Psalm 121
A song of ascents.
1 I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
2 My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and earth.
3 He will not let your foot slip—
he who watches over you will not slumber;
4 indeed, he who watches over Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
5 The Lord watches over you—
the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
6 the sun will not harm you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord will keep you from all harm—
he will watch over your life;
8 the Lord will watch over your coming and going
both now and forevermore.
10th September was the anniversary of our wedding in 1988
As I awoke in my little room at the Loreto Centre on this day in 2022, I was reminded of the Alpha Holy Spirit weekend that I attended at Bramley, near Guildford in Surrey in 1995 and how God had spoken to me there about my life being an Adventure. I speak of that here
I believe that John came into my life for a purpose – not to be, as I had hoped for, my husband and father to our children (we had none since he was unable to give me babies), but to show me love. He had loved me when he first met me at my cousin John’s wedding and he had asked God for me that night when he went to his bed after the wedding reception, even though he didn’t know that God was real. His leaving me 7 years later had broken me because my life had revolved around him, but that brokenness led me to know that God is real. And now my life revolves around Jesus, who gave his life for me on that cross – that is, of course, real love. But God also used my wedding to teach me things about Jesus and the Bride of Christ. Some stories of which I have written in this blog.
11th September was the anniversary of my mother’s death in 1999, a sad occasion for my sister and myself, but a mercy for our mother because she had suffered much in her life. It was also the anniversary of 911 in 2001, an event that had touched many lives. I write about that here.
The next anniversary to come up is my 70th birthday on 18th October 2022. I had been wanting to do something special on that day, perhaps a Mediterranean cruise as I have never done one before; but I had no one to go with, so I discounted that. Just a day or so before I went on the “Be Still with God” weekend in Llandudno, I had seen on the Skills Holidays website that there was a 5 day coach trip to Oban, the Isle of Mull and Iona the week of my birthday. I questioned as to whether that was what God would want me to do. This holiday had caught my eye because in 1994, when my relationship with my husband John was terminated and my relationship with Jesus really started, the word Iona came up a lot and I had thought that God wanted me to go there sometime. I speak of that here.
So, I said to God that if the word Iona came up on my weekend in Llandudno, then I would know that He wanted me to go on the coach trip. Well, I think it was on the 10th September that the lady from Aglow Manchester North mentioned the retreat as being “a thin place” and I recognised that as a term that had been used of Iona. However, I said to God that that term was close to what I needed, but I wanted the actual word Iona. On 11th September we had a Holy Communion service and God gave me what I had asked for – on the bottom of the card with the Liturgy for the Communion service it said “Taken from Iona Liturgy”. That made me smile, because of course that Liturgy had been chosen for the Llandudno weekend long before and the word Iona came up in a way I had not expected.
So ….. as soon as I got back from Llandudno, I booked the coach trip to Oban, the Isle of Mull and Iona. And then God showed me (from my blog about Iona that I had written more than 10 years ago) that the body of the Labour Leader John Smith had been buried on Iona on 20th May 1994. And, 28 years later, on that same day my husband, John Wilson’s body was buried in Chesterfield.
The Cross is in the Field 
Thank you for sharing your story, Jacqui. Happy Birthday for Tuesday and have a wonderful adventure! Please share your photos. God bless you x