One year out of school, I asked a slender, beautiful girl to marry me. We had never dated. But time was of the essence, and I took a chance that she would say yes. She turned me down, of course. A year later I married the woman who would become the mother of our six children. Thirty-one years later the last of our children left the nest and I retired. And when my wife inherited a fortune from her parents' estate a year later, she got her divorce. Free to travel, I roamed the country, visiting friends and relatives for a solid year. I dropped in on the slender, beautiful girl to compare notes on our lives. She still had her beautiful smile but was close to being obese. When I told her about my six children she said, "We opted not to have children. I wanted to be a dancer, you know." I drove away with the words of a poignant ballad running through my mind: "One of God's greatest gifts is unanswered prayer."
My children and ten grandchildren don't know that they owe their existence to a slender, beautiful girl who said, "No." But I know how lucky I am that she did.
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