The rest of the story...

Yesterday I started a week long blog link up, where you write a post every day based on a particular subject. I thought it sounded like fun, so I thought I'd try. To be frank, I didn't enjoy it. It felt forced... since I started this blog the stories have pretty much just flowed out of me... it seems like as soon as I write one, the next is bubbling up behind it... ready to burst forth. I try not to post more then once a day as that would be exhausting for both of us, but I could. I have so many words inside of me, waiting to burst forth, sometimes I write posts and just save them in a folder for the day when I run out of ideas...I could stop writing tomorrow, and still have something to post for the next 40 or so days.

I have said all of that to say yesterday's post took me hours to type and never felt quite right. I do have a stomach virus right now and thought at the time, not feeling well had something to do with it. I realised that wasn't the case, as I started dreading... really dreading not only today's post, but the rest of the week... I do this for fun... for me... this little blog is... well, my corner of the world... a place to help me find my voice... yesterday it felt like a job... so I will not be completing the week... but I didn't want to leave you hanging... so here is the rest of the story....

I should warn you, this is a long one... continue at your own, forewarned risk...

Yes, we met in that seedy little bar and he took my friend and I out to lunch the next day. That night we went out on our first official date... we went to see a movie and then to dinner. The movie was ok, but dinner was a defining moment for us... I knew right then he was someone worth spending some time with. That week we spent every available moment together... lunches if we were both free and as soon as he got out of work, he'd head on over and pick me up.

The following Sunday (one week later) he proposed and I said yes. I know what you are thinking... I think the same now. Especially as I look at my 17 year old daughter... but this is my story and I am not sugar coating it for you. We were too young, but we were in love, and marriage seemed like the next step. A few days later P got this orders for Desert Storm... the first gulf war. We found out he was leaving in about three weeks, just a week before my birthday.

We spent every available moment together and talked of eloping... but I wanted a wedding. At the time I went to church regularly, but wasn't saved, and wasn't making good choices about my purity... I don't know how else to say that in a more delicate way, but it is important to the rest of the story.

He shipped out for the gulf on schedule, and I moved into my first apartment... a tiny efficiency for a whopping $200. a month. Why the move from home... that is a story for another day. Anyhow, having P in the war and being on my own was stressful to say the least. These were the days before internet and we could only speak on the phone about once every six weeks for about 30 minutes, and these calls cost about $300. each... ouch... (more then my rent...) We did write every day, but the lag time on our letters was about two weeks... I never know what was happening with him and he worried about me a lot. During that time I met a group of young people who invited me to their Bible Study. The were with a local Navigators group and were preparing to be "prayer counselors" at a contemporary christian music concert. I had gone to a few weeks of their studies and Friday "fun nights" at that point so I guess it was assumed I was saved... I wasn't.

P in Saudi Arabia durring "Dessert Storm"

One night at a fun night a couple days before the concert the leader of the group asked me if I'd signed up to be a prayer counselor at the concert yet... I told him no... he wanted to know why and I told him it was because I wasn't saved... Long story short, a few minutes later we he, his wife and I prayed a prayer that would change my life. (I actually met him again a little over a year ago and he had no memory of me or that night... funny how the most important night of my life wasn't even a blip on his radar...I think that is how God works sometimes...)  I wrote P about my new found faith and shared what I could in writing...I just knew for sure once he heard what he'd been missing he'd pray with me right away. I also told him I thought premarital sex is a sin and wanted to wait for marriage before we had sex again.

So he spent six months in the dessert and I spent a good part of it getting to know the Lord. He came home on April 14, 1991 and I'll never forget that moment. When he walked into the hanger at the airfield, my heart burst open with joy and love...there is really no other way to explain it. In fact during our darkest moments it was the memory of that feeling I pulled up to remind me. I literally jumped over a barrier (think ropes outside night clubs...that kind of barrier.) knocked over an armed MP (there for crowd control) to get to him.

Later when he was released to go home we drove back to my apartment, on the drive he asked if I was going to stay there with him. I told him, "No, I'd be staying with a friend." He then asked if I was serious about the whole "no sex" thing and I assured him I was. After dinner and I got him settled at the apartment I asked him what he wanted to do the next day...He replied "either laundry or we could get married." (He did have four duffel bags of sand filled uniforms, but the order in which he said this still makes me chuckle... it's so practical..so P!)

Wedding Day

Clarksville, TN 1991

You guessed it... we eloped. We called a local pastor and asked him to marry us the next day. He said they were cleaning the church carpets, but he could come to us. The next morning we went downtown, got our marriage license, stopped at a florist shop for some flowers, called my neighbors and asked them to sand up with us and by 1:00 on the 15th we were getting married on the lawn beside my humble apartment.  (Yes, we married on April 15th... tax day... that is what happens when you elope...)

At a reception my mom had in Maine after we married

We will celebrate our 19th anniversary this year. It was a bumpy road...he didn't get saved right away like my immature mind predicted... But he did get out of the Army... and went back to school...we were married three long years before he got saved and even then, I wasn't even with him when he prayed... I ended up pregnant less then two months into our marriage... KK was a "pleasant surprise" and it was fun watching people do the mental math about her birth date... Al came along three years later... another surprise... we spent the first six years of our marriage in a constant state of flux... neither of us wanted a divorce, but it was always on the table... We eventually took it off the table, and the last twelve years we have been really solid.

I don't want to give you the wrong idea... we have had a roller coaster of successes.. failures... joys... unbelievable sorrows... weight fluctuations.... serious illness...seasons of  financial poverty... seasons of spiritual poverty... seasons of comfort... then back again... and seasons of great happiness... but we have spent these seasons together. We have grown in the Lord and our relationship is strong. I've learned how to step back and "submit" to my husband the hard way and he has never once held it over my head or forced me to back down... He is an amazing man... sometimes he is "amazingly" frustrating, but most of the time he is just amazing. He has grown in the Lord in ways I could never imagine... I have become domestic in ways he could never imagine...

In short.. I love him.

And as the late Paul Harvey would say... That folks is "the rest of the story."

Again.. sorry about the picture quality...

Thanks for listening,