by Jennifer Wells

Created on: August 19, 2008

I have always admired clouds. In fact, as a teenager toying with her first camera, I was known to take random pictures of the sky just because it was a lovely day. Those photos sit, untouched, in a box somewhere in my storage shed. That all changed seven years ago when I saw a truly inspiring cloud that touched in my life in a most unexpected way.

My husband and I began speaking September 18th, 2001. Twenty-seven days later he proposed. Four days shy of one year later (September 14th, 2002) we were married. So began the rest of my life. What does this have to do with cloud shapes? Please allow me to explain.

Chris likes to say that the first week we met we were acquaintances, by the second week friends, by the third we were in love and in the fourth we were engaged. It was during that third week I saw the best-shaped cloud I have ever seen.

I was home from college on the weekend and we were talking on our cell phones. This was to be the most common habit of our engagement, and consumed most of the time we were apart. We had already spoken our love for one another and found ourselves on the topic of marriage. Nothing heavy, just that it was a nice idea. We agreed that, being Christians, we would let the Lord tell us when He wanted us to make that commitment. Chris then made a very common statement: "We will cross that bridge when we come to it." I agreed.

I was lying on my stomach on my bed, and repositioned myself to sit leaning on the wall so I could talk more comfortably. I also wanted to see out the window, as my parents lived in a very remote place at the time and the view from any window was both incredible and peaceful. As I rolled to my back so I could sit up, I saw something in the clouds that startled me: a bridge! As clear as anything, the Lord had used wind to arrange the clouds into what looked like a very quaint bridge; perhaps like something you might see in a Thomas Kincaid painting.

I laughed at the site of it, and when Chris asked why, described to him what I was looking at. He was not a commitment-phoebe and knew that I was not a pushy individual in that regard, so he too had a good laugh over it. He told me I needed to take a picture so we could capture the moment forever, so I rushed to the living room for the digital camera and out onto the back deck. By the time I got there it looked like a broken bridge, but the shape was still very distinct. To this day the photo remains in our collection, a beautiful reminder of those first days of new love and promises unspoken. We cherish it greatly, and have yet to see another cloud shape that replaces its beauty, or its impeccable timing for that matter!

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