A Love Story Redeemed: Leigh Jacob's Testimony

Some stories you don't tell so people will applaud. You tell them because someone out there is holding onto a thread, and they need to know the thread holds.

This week on Connie's Corner, I sat back down with my dear friend Leigh Jacob to continue her story. If you missed her first session, please go find it on our YouTube channel before you watch this one — what God did in her childhood sets the table for everything she shares here. But what came out in this second conversation about her marriage, her health, and her husband Chuck is one of the most God-soaked stretches of providence I've heard in a long time.

She walked away. God didn't.

Leigh is honest about it — she left her first marriage. Not because of any one terrible thing, but because she got tired. Tired of being the one who initiated the hug. Tired of being the one who said “I love you” first. Tired of dancing alone in her own kitchen. So she gave it eight months as a test, and when nothing changed, she said “I've had enough,” and walked.

Twenty years later, she was on an eight-mile training run, listening to her Jesus music, when the Lord interrupted her stride with a question:

“What was his story?”

She sobbed her way through the rest of that run. Because the moment she asked, she already knew. Her first husband's story was the mirror image of her own — my wife doesn't hug me anymore, my wife doesn't say she loves me, my wife doesn't dance with me, my wife doesn't initiate, and I don't know why. Twenty years of distance, and God brought her to her knees on a Saturday long run. She asked forgiveness right there on the trail.

That's the kind of God we have. You can walk away. He doesn't.

The God-winks that became Chuck

Years later, an old friend from her Maryland childhood — Chuck — reconnected with her on Facebook. He flew down to take her on a date, accidentally typed her own line back to her with what they're convinced was Holy Ghost interference on the keyboard, and her son-in-law looked at her daughter after one meeting and said, “He's the one.”

Two weekends together in December. By April, Chuck proposed at the Greenbrier in West Virginia — on April 3rd (4/3, his favorite number is 43), in the chapel, at 1:43 pm (because 143 means “I love you”).

And then Leigh said, “Why not today? Let's get married right here.”

The Greenbrier couldn't marry them. The courthouse sent them across the street to a Mr. Hunter (her grandson's name — she took it as a sign). Mr. Hunter wasn't home. They were ready to give up at 4:30 in the afternoon when the attorney's wife looked at them and said, “Can I text him? I'm sure he'll be home by 8:30. We'll marry you at our house.”

He did. They did. In his living room. With Chuck answering “Are you ready to love Leigh like Christ loved the church?” before he even sat down.

Leigh wanted that date for a reason. She'd been teasing Chuck she wanted twenty years with him. And the year on the calendar? It was going to be 43 years out from their wedding. 43 — again. As she put it on the show: you cannot make this stuff up.

The hospital miracle

A year into their marriage, Leigh wasn't feeling right. Bloodwork at the ER was off. An intern she'd never met before said, “I don't like your risk factors. Let's get you in the heart cath lab tomorrow.” She nearly laughed him off — she runs, she trains, she was on a marathon plan. But she went in.

Her widow-maker artery was 80% blocked. She had been running alone at night training for that race.

They placed a stent and admitted her overnight. Chuck flew down from Maryland and refused to leave her side. Around 11 pm, she looked over at him and said, “You look terrible. Do I need to call the nurse?” He said yes. He'd been quietly wondering all day whether you could have sympathy pains for a heart attack.

It wasn't sympathy. He had a blood clot in his heart. Twenty percent of his heart was dead. If he hadn't been in her hospital room that night, he would have died.

God put Leigh in a hospital she never goes to, for a stent she didn't know she needed, on the exact night her husband was about to have the heart attack that would have killed him at home alone.

And the God-winks kept coming

They ended up with a husband-and-wife doctor team — hers at UF North, his at UF downtown. Her anesthesiologist was working both campuses on the days she needed them. The cath team offered to give Chuck a stent with the same serial number as hers, so they'd have matching ones. (They said yes.) And the nurse running Chuck's stress test, when Leigh told her the wedding story, turned white and said her own anniversary was April 3rd… her 43rd anniversary that very year.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
— Romans 8:28

What I want you to take from this

Walking away doesn't put you out of His reach. Leigh left. She wasn't proud of it, and she's the first to say it was selfishness. But God didn't write her off. He waited twenty years to bring her to her knees on a long run, and another decade to put her in the right hospital on the right night.
When God restores, He doesn't rewind. He didn't put Leigh back together with her first husband. He built her a second marriage with Christ as “the third cord” — devotions every morning, even when they're apart — and that one, she says, is unbreakable.
Your story is somebody's lifeline. Don't bury what God has done. Someone is drowning, and your story might be the rope.

Chuck's prognosis from all of this is heart failure. We talked off-camera about some of the things he can do to take care of his body, and I told Leigh we're not done with this conversation — we'll have her back to share what they learn. Please pray for them both.

If you're walking through something hard right now — a marriage on the edge, a diagnosis, a regret you've carried for twenty years — please hear me: you are not alone, and your situation is not beyond His reach. Reach out. Call the church. We'll pray with you. We'll sit with you. That's what we're here for.

He's the God of second chances. Third chances. He doesn't care how badly you screw it up — if you belong to Him, He doesn't leave you. He waits.

Praying for you today,
Pastor Connie