With our third wedding anniversary coming up (tomorrow!) I'm feeling so very nostalgic. I probably get this way every year, but this year especially, I'm remembering little things from the very beginning. For the first time, I want to write it down for my own sake - my perspective, feelings, mindset, etc. so that I don't forget.
Our story is a unique one, and with our unique story, there's a level of fear that comes with it. Very rarely have we shared the full version when telling "How We Met". To me, it is an amazing, wonderful fairy tale of two people drawn together by God for a greater purpose, and I'm ready to tell it. =)
It all started 8 years ago. I just had to do the math and boggled myself! I was 18, graduated from high school, gearing up to go to college. I had a health history a mile long and a list of indoor hobbies and activities to match, including a game website that no longer exists. It was a simple game site - seriously, the games consisted of things like memory, cannons, checkers, chess, pool, etc. There was a chat option that I rarely used (warnings from my father strongly rooted in my brain), and then usually used it for things like "GG (good game), 1 more? if I felt I had a good opponent. One evening, my sister asked me to babysit my niece so she could go out, and after my niece was all tucked up in bed, I passed the time playing these games. Early in my playing, I got a request from someone to play and accepted, though I don't know why, because I think it was for pool and I'm wretched at pool, whether electronic or not. I warned said person via chat that I was a novice and instead of being a jerk about it, said person went on to give me pointers at various key moments in the game. I still lost, but it was a good experience. At my loss, said person offered that the next game would be better, did I want to try again? So we rematched, more advice ensued, another loss, another rematch. Eventually the advice turned into innocent chat, the chat to banter as the games changed in my favor. Winner challenged the losing player to whatever game they wanted and we each complained when the other played to their personal strengths, but it was all lighthearted and terribly fun - I distinctly remember chuckling to myself throughout the evening - hours passed! I heard my sister's car in the driveway and did something my dad had always warned me about and that I would never do again: I asked if he had Verizon, as I did. He (as I learned throughout the night, was named Nick) did indeed have Verizon, and I remember his comment being, "Plus, it's a night and a weekend, so it would be a free call anyway!" (that dates it!). I, to my current astonishment, actually gave him my number... after I got his, but still! I can't believe I did that!! I told him I had to go because my sister was coming home, but it had been a fun night. I actually didn't expect him to ever call, and I definitely didn't expect him to call that same night, but he totally did! We talked on the phone for 3 hours that first night, about so many things. Music: our tastes didn't really overlap, but our enjoyment of the medium did. Movies: this was a better fit, lots in common. Our age: me 18, him 22 (swoon, an older man! =P). Families: both big, both the youngest. Relationship status: me single, him not. This last one was what sealed it for me as strictly a friendship, but it was so amazing to me to be talking to someone I had never met, but had a lot in common, and that somehow I knew we could be friends.
In the next couple of months, I can't remember how often we talked, but I know it was often because our friendship steadily grew. When I went off to college, I had a gap in my class schedule from 2-3:30 and at that point we were good enough friends that we talked every day. He called me on his drive home from work (he worked an early shift at that point) and we chatted until I had to get to choir rehearsal. For me, there was definitely "something more" there, a connection to this long-distance guy that I didn't really want to think any deeper on because he was taken. I started "talking" to another guy and didn't hold back any information from Nick. I'd never dated in high school and I wasn't really dating then either, but it was nice to talk to a guy about guy things and he continued to give me good advice on a subject I knew little about. I started asking him about his relationship with God - a walk with Jesus was (and is!) really important to me, and when Nick told me he didn't really have one, I knew why our paths had crossed. We had more conversations about anything and everything and deeper conversations about what it meant to be a Christian as the time went on. I wrote a journal entry the night Nick accepted Jesus as his savior on the phone with me. It was something I wanted to remember for sure! The thing with the other guy fell through and my friendship with Nick grew deeper. It started to worry me, actually. I felt uncomfortable when he would say, "I've never told anyone that before" to me. Uncomfortable because he had a girlfriend and I was the person he was talking to every day - uncomfortable because of how much I liked him and how great I felt that I was his confidant! I needed to get out of the way so that he could make other things a priority over me. I told him I thought it was time to go our separate ways, that we had crossed paths for a reason and now it was time to move on. I wasn't expecting him to put up such a fight about that but he did. It was New Year's Eve and I was at my sister's house getting ready for a party when we finished that phone conversation. I walked inside, dumbfounded, and told her, "I feel like I just broke up with someone I wasn't even dating..." (Nick later told me it was that feeling of 'breaking up' that made him think about what his feelings for me really were.)
We didn't talk for months. I thought about him all the time. On the way home from completing my first year of college, I called him. He was at a bar, had deleted my number (ouch! I couldn't bring myself to do that!) but recognized my voice right away and we chatted for a few minutes before he had to go. He called me later that night after he was home and we talked like no time had passed. He was still taken, I was still single, but I didn't feel like the Lord was done with Nick being in my life yet. This is the part that gets a little fuzzy in my memory. I know we talked and talked often, but I think his schedule changed and my schedule changed once I was a sophomore, so I don't think it was every day. Plus, I was still feeling uneasy that we were closer than ever and growing closer every day. I know it was this year that we exchanged pictures of ourselves for the first time and he was so close to what I'd put together in my mind it was scary! The world of boys and relationships was still new and bewildering to me, and I shared a lot with Nick about my insecurities and fears - that "the guy I like never likes me" and all that, because it was true about any guy but mainly about Nick. By now, I was sure that I really liked Nick. I was sure I was jealous of this girl he was dating because she didn't seem to know what she had. I was sure that I'd shared more about myself with him than with anyone and I was also sure he was doing that with me. We both admitted, after reconnecting that year, that we sorta kinda maybe had a crush on the other - when we first started talking, of course. Always past tense. I was lying by omission - the crush was real and it was current. I cut things off again when I called him one night and he answered the phone and talked to me for several minutes before mentioning he was out at dinner with his girlfriend. I was horrified!! "You're one a DATE and TOOK MY CALL?!? I'm hanging up right now, talk to your girlfriend for crying out loud!!" Again, we didn't talk for months. We sent each other the random, "Miss talking to you" AIM's (dates it again!) but nothing more. I started my junior year and got my heart broken that fall. Came home for the holidays and got a surprise Christmas gift: Dad added texting to the family phone plan! I sent out a mass text to everyone in my contact list that I'd finally gotten texting, yay! and who would reply back but Nick. I had, of course, very intentionally kept him in that mass text, but I felt better that I'd sent it to multiple people and not singled him out. We started texting, a new communication medium for us.
One day of break, we were texting and I mentioned I'd had a super weird dream that night (dreams, both actual and figurative were a common topic for us). When he asked what it was, I told him it was too complicated to text. The next minute, he was calling me. Again, we picked up right where we left off, except this time, the feelings had been there all the while and were full force right away, for me. I was confused. How could I feel this strongly about someone I'd not yet seen face-to-face? I didn't understand it and it frustrated me. I was also frustrated that he was still unavailable. I knew I wanted him to be single and that meant that I wanted him to be single so that he could be with me... impossible, as we were a very very long distance from each other, but it was what I wanted. One night, I watched a movie with my mom and dad and one sister that scared me so bad we had to pause it so I could calm down and that sister had to accompany me to the bathroom so I wouldn't be alone with the mirror in there. Mirrors in scary movies are the most terrifying thing to me and in this instance, the person sees something behind them in the mirror that is there one minute and gone the next, aka, the stuff of my nightmares. Still freaked, I went upstairs to bed but was dreading it because my closet doors back then were floor-to-ceiling mirrors!! I can't remember who called whom, but I was on the phone with Nick through my whole getting-ready-for-bed nightly routine, he was talking to me as I was still too freaked out to fall asleep... and he talked to me until I did finally fall asleep. That was when I knew I loved him. This man who could calm me with just the sound of his voice, who called me in the morning to make sure I was okay. This was the man I wanted to love forever.
