Wanna hear a good story? Okay! You got it. This post is going to be all about how I ended up with my life partner, best friend, and ultimately, my husband. It might be a little sappy and, overall, not fitting to my true, slightly sarcastic, personality, but everything you read here is factual and I think it's a story that should be told.
What inspired me to tell you this one? Maybe it’s because I’ve been watching a lot of One Tree Hill reruns lately and I’m feeling sentimental. Or maybe it’s because it’s a story I know I can tell well. Or maybe it’s because he is a great man and he deserves a post all about him. Actually, it’s probably all of the above.
This post is lengthy, you may only truly appreciate it if you know us, personally or if you're just looking for something to read. If you're more interested in the short list of how I knew he was the one, I created a separate blog post for that. Click hereand you will be spared. Haha!
So prepare yourself for several throwback pics and a walk down memory lane.
The backstory:
You may remember the post I made a few weeks ago about a letter to my teenage self. I kinda hinted around the fact that I was pretty “boycrazy.” But I was only boycrazy because I wanted to find the man I was going to marry. I put a lot of myself into each relationship because I wanted every one to be “the one.” Every rejection cut me to the core and each time I handled it a little differently, and rarely in a good way. Ya know how girls tend to change their hairstyle after a breakup? I had a lot of different haircuts in college….
So anyway, at the end of Summer 2010, I was trying very hard to stop trying so hard. I was spending a lot of time with my friends having a lot of fun. A few of those friends had really been there for me during some of those depressing times so I’m sure they were happy to see me loosen up a little. That summer wasn’t without a few relationship hiccups, but I had finally figured out how to let it be about fun rather than jumping right to the conversations about the future.
Then, in the midst of it all, I get a message on Facebook from a guy I went to high school with. He and I ran around with completely different crowds back then, and I think we'd only spoken once before in a class we had together.
Now, here’s where you might laugh. I went to Oklahoma Christian for college with the underlying expectation that I would meet my husband there. I expected to meet the perfect Christian dude who I wouldn’t have to try to change or drag to church. They had a joke at OC about getting a “ring by Spring.” A lot of people met their significant others at that place…just sayin.
So here I am, reading this message from this guy back home and trying to figure out what his reasons were for messaging me out of the blue. I’m actually going to share with you some screenshots of some of our first messages… a little cute, a little weird, and a little embarrassing, but I can’t do this post justice without them. They won't all go together into the full convo because I'm only showing you a few of the highlights. 😉
Before I move on, I need to note the weird and creepy fact that we talked about our life in Texas long before we ever even knew we would end up here.
So shortly after the last messages you see, phone numbers were exchanged and we moved on to texting and talking on the phone. At some point between that and our first date (which wasn't a big gap) he asked me about my faith.
WHAT?!?! Someone from my hometown, where the Christian pickings were slim, was asking ME about faith before I had to bring it up?!?! I was in shock. I stuttered through that whole conversation telling him about my beliefs and about my church. It's usually that conversation that would send guys from back home running away, but not this one. See, he was brought up in his grandmother's church and already had some knowledge about the Bible, but he was eager to talk with me about my beliefs and the church I attended/attend. I knew he was different from that moment forward. He even asked if he could go to church with me sometime. Ummm, YES!!! Please!!!
Our first date happened soon after that when I made a trip back to Kansas for a night or two. Before I left campus the day I was headed home, I was in the car with my best friend and I asked her if it was weird to wonder if this would be my last first date.......... She probably thought I was in over my head already and I hadn't even been on a date with him. She had helped me pick up the pieces of my broken heart more than once before, so it's only natural that she would go there. I tried to rein my eagerness back in, but the anticipation was definitely making me schoolgirl giddy.
The closer I got to Kansas, the more antsy I got. I kept thinking about high school and how unlikely it seemed that we would end up going on a date. It was so crazy because he wasn't the guy I thought he was...at all. Or maybe he was that guy and we had both grown into different people who weren't so different after all.
I grew more and more nervous clear up until he drove up the driveway at my parents' house. I couldn't bring myself to even go outside right away when he got there. I let him get out of the car and have a conversation WITH MY PARENTS before I came outside. I was 23 years old and I still made my date meet my parents before I even came outside.... I'm shaking my head at myself right now as I type. But I will say that he left a VERY good impression on them.
Our date consisted of meeting a friend of mine and her boyfriend/future husband, then hanging out with a few of his friends, whom I had already met back in high school. While we visited with his friends on the front porch of the house we were at, I remember how much I just wanted to hold his hand. (You can giggle at this. I do!) Those first date butterflies were fluttering like crazy!
I have no record of what time it was but in a normal situation, the date probably should have been coming to a close, but we both knew neither of us were ready to end it.
If you didn't laugh earlier, you are even more likely to do so now. He asked me if I wanted to go see his house and meet his dog, Caya. (She's now my dog too 😉) I still laugh when I tell this part of the story. We legitimately played with his dog and stayed up talking until 3 or 4 in the morning. I still wasn't ready for the date to be over but I knew my parents would be wondering where I was.... I was still their little girl, after all, even at age 23 and living away from home.
He took me home but I have this memory from the drive back that I have never forgotten. I'm fairly certain we were holding hands now and I just remember being completely on cloud nine. There's no way I can do this story justice here, but I wish I could explain how "right" it felt.
This part is kind of a blur but it was either the next morning before I left or like a week later when I made the trip back home again (totally as an excuse to see him again), but I went garage saling with my mom and invited him to come along. He was amazing. He was so willing to hang out with me that he didn't care how.
Those next few weeks we spent a lot of time talking on the phone and even had our first awkward almost-fight before we ever made ourselves official. But we DID make it official in October and began seeing each other exclusively.
A few months later, we were engaged (that story will have to wait for another time) and before we'd even been together for a year, we were married!
I really believe that God just wanted me to stop trying so hard to control my love life that when I'd finally let up on it, He sent me my husband. It was like He was saying, "See? Here ya go!" And of course my parents and I spent a whole lot of money on a private Christian college for me to find a husband from back home. (Okay, that's not the onlyreason I went there....)
God makes everything in our lives fit together like a puzzle. If I'd crossed paths with Kyle again sooner, he may not have been ready to have the conversations about God or been ready to make the choice to get baptized. He tells me he felt God moving in His life at that time also.
I feel like I close every post with this same thought, but if you take nothing else away from this, please just TRUST. GOD. He has a plan for you, even if you don't see it yet.
Now, was our relationship completely blissful like our first few weeks? Uh, no. We had our fair share of fights and hiccups, trust me. But I know he's the one God picked for me, and it's funny because he met all the requirements I had listed on a piece of paper from my late teens/early 20s.
Do I still get butterflies? Well, our lives look quite a bit different now than they did back then, with little feet running around taking all our energy and time; but when I pause and think about the moments we had back then, yes..... the butterflies arestill there.
If you are still reading, I am either a really good writer, or you must really love me. But either way, I'm so happy you made it this far. I have always loved writing and this blog gives me a chance to share my writing with others. Hope you come back for more!
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