BY JE’DON HOLLOWAY-TALLEY
Special to the Birmingham Times
“You Had Me at Hello’’ highlights married couples and the love that binds them. If you would like to be considered for a future “Hello’’ column, or know someone, please send nominations to Erica Wright ewright@birminghamtimes.com. Include the couple’s name, contact number(s) and what makes their love story unique.
SHARON AND DON BEASLEY
Live: Pinson
Married: May 22, 2017
Met: Sharon and Don were introduced by her oldest brother, Sammie, who had been friends with Don for more than 30 years. This was the first week of January 2017. Sharon was at work when she received a phone call from her brother requesting permission to give her number to a “great guy named Don”, but she wasn’t convinced he knew or understood what she wanted in a man. “I told him, no, I’m not interested, I’m at work and I’ll call you back,” Sharon said. “I was celibate, I wasn’t lonely and I had become settled in my life and helping my daughter with my grandkids…and wasn’t interested in nobody unless it was my husband sent by God…”.
Don remembers being told about Sharon before, but knew “I had some things I wanted to correct in my life before I met her,” he said. “The same week, the day before we met, God had placed in my heart to send her some flowers to her job before our date, and the card I sent with the flowers said ‘To be the man God called me to be to you, I have to first love God, then I can love you’.”
First date: Applebee’s in Center Point. Sharon wasn’t thrilled about the date, but the flowers and her daughters’ advice to see if he was sent by God gave her a push.
“I was still trying not to go anywhere with him. When he came to the house to pick me up, I told him to just go to Exotic Wings and get us some fish, but he told me, no…”.
“She didn’t want to go,” Don chimed in,” and was giving me all these excuses, and I told her ‘I didn’t drive all this way to not go nowhere, and I’m not going to buy some fish, we’re going to dinner.”
“It went real nice,” Sharon said, “I had gotten a prophecy in 2016 that I was going to meet my husband and be married in 2017… and he confirmed everything I was told [in the prophecy], so I was just listening that night, seeing what was adding up…the Holy Ghost told me he was a minister before he did.”
“I was feeling her out as well,” Don said, “my purpose was to get to know her spiritually before naturally. I don’t eat seafood, so the enemy was trying to block then…”.
The turn: At the end of January the pair went to Tuscaloosa for a Bobby Rush concert and spent their first night together in a hotel room with separate beds.
“I was going see who he was that night [and] if he was really the minister that he said he was…I was going see if he was going to stay in his bed or try to creep in mine, but he stayed in his,” Sharon said. “You try the spirit by the spirit, he was a gentleman and I knew then I could trust him. He never got out of line with me.”
“That night we began to get more open with each other,” Don said. “What I felt in my spirit was that she was going to be my wife… God had shown me before we even met.”
He added “She says she was trying me, but she didn’t have to…when God gives you something you don’t have to defile it because, with God, great things come to those that wait. And while we were in Tuscaloosa we went ring shopping and she picked out one she liked and I went back and bought it later.”
The proposal: Valentine’s Day 2017, after church at her home with close family and friends. They attended More Than Conquerors in West End at the time.
“I went old school, I had asked her son and daughters’ permission to date their mother and marry [her].” On Valentine’s Day Sharon had cooked dinner and some church members came to the house and [they all] knew [he was going to propose], but she didn’t.
“We were all sitting down eating and I said ‘I got a song I want you to hear that I want to play for you’. I played ‘Share My Life’ by Kem, and when the song was halfway through, I got on my knees and asked her to marry me.”
Sharon said she was so overwhelmed “I couldn’t do nothing but scream and shout because I was shocked. I was so happy… I had no clue any of that was going to happen. Then me and my girlfriends started posting it on Facebook,” she remembered. “I was thinking we would have a September wedding, but he said no, May. And as it turns out, everything we needed, the venue, the minister, my niece (she’s a wedding coordinator) — the only time they were all available was May.
The wedding: At South Park Baptist Church in West End officiated by Mary Freeman. The couple’s colors were purple, white, and gold.
Most memorable for the bride was when she made her entrance: “Everyone gasped and told me how beautiful I was. That was the happiest moment of my life, I had the biggest smile of joy on me,” Sharon said.
Most memorable for the groom was his new reality: “God gave me my heart’s desire, sent me a wife I could go into ministry with,” Don said. “And that He touched the hearts of people…somebody paid for a Rolls Royce for us to go to the reception and to the hotel…and it came back to pick us up [from the Embassy Suites in Hoover] the next morning.”
Words of wisdom: Put God first, it is a must, and love one another as Christ loved the church.
“You have to put God first and seek His face, His will and His direction for your marriage because that’s what makes a marriage.,” Sharon said, “without God you don’t have a marriage and doors will be open for anything to happen.”
She added, “Spend quality time together, you also have to understand each other because it’s important to communicate, and communication keeps a relationship growing strong…”.
Don said, “First, a man must love God, and then second, you must put your wife before your family… I have to love my wife as Christ loved the church… I teach men that they need to know their woman, they got to know their wife and her heart’s desires, and you got to keep doing what you did to get her to keep her.
Happily ever after: The Beasleys run a 5-Fold deliverance ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip believers in Christ to do the work of service in West End called End Time International Center.
Sharon, 59, is a New York native but moved to Camden, Ala before her senior year in high school and graduated from Wilcox High School. She attended George C. Wallace Community College in Selma, where she earned an associate’s degree in business management. She has been in Property Management for 35 years and manages several apartment communities in Birmingham. Sharon has two adult children, Tina, 39, and Brian, 32, from a previous relationship.
Don, 59, is a Pratt City native and graduated from Jackson Olin High School. He attended Southern Junior College, a former downtown community college, before joining the U.S. Army and becoming an SP-4 Operative. He is retired from the Army and runs their ministry. Don has three adult children: Don Jr, 36, Angela, 33, and Lattorria, 30, from a previous relationship.
