Real Life Romance: Part Seven

Welcome to the last installment of the series. If you need to catch up, click here.

The End (or Maybe Just The Beginning)...

After 10 months, 4 weeks and 1 day of anticipation, our day had finally arrived. On a beautifully warm and sunny Saturday, in the midst of a picturesque garden, my father took me by the hand and led me down the aisle to the one who would become my husband.

There with our friends and family present, the fabulous dude and I committed our lives together in Christ. Our wedding was such a blast. It was honestly the best day of my life. I have written about some of the details of our wedding before so instead of revisiting that, I would like to share with the words that were spoken by my cousin (our officiant) as we exchanged our wedding rings and made a public commitment to each other. We found this online but adapted it to fit with us. I don't take credit for the original piece but I don't know the source of it either.

Lucy, please face FD and hold his hands so that you may see and cherish the gift they are to you.

These are the hands of your best friend, young and strong and vibrant with love, holding yours on your wedding day as he promises to love and protect you all the days of his life.
These are the hands that will work along side yours as together you build your future, as you laugh and cry, as you share your innermost secrets and dreams.
These are the hands you will place with expectant joy against your stomach until he too feels his child stir within you.
These are the hands that look so large and strong but will be so gentle and soft as he holds your baby or the first time.
These are the hands that will work long hours for your and your new family.
These are the hands that will passionately love you and cherish you through the years for a lifetime together.
These are the hands that will countless times wipe tears from your eyes, tears of sorrow and tears of joy.
These are the hands that will comfort you in illness and hold you when fear or grief overwhelm you.
These are the hands that will tenderly lift your chin and brush your cheek as they raise your face to look into his eyes, eyes that are completely filled with his overwhelming love and desire for you.
These are the hands that will give you support as he encourages you to chase down your dreams.
Together, as a team, everything you wish will be realized.
These are the hands that will connect your hearts as you kneel before your Father in prayer.

FD, please face Lucy and hold her hands so that you may see and cherish the gift that they are to you.
These are the hands of your best friend, smooth, young and carefree that are holding yours on your wedding day as she pledges her love and commitment to you all the days of your life.
These are the hands that will work along yours as together you build your future, as you laugh and cry, as you share your innermost secrets and dreams.
These are the hands that will hold each child in tender love, soothing them through illness and hurt, supporting and encouraging them along the way and knowing when it's time to let go.
These are the hands that look so small and timid, yet will be bold and strong as they protect your children from harm.
These are the hands that will work long hours to care for and keep your family.
These are the hands that will passionately love you and cherish you through the years for a lifetime together.
These are the hands that will hold you tight as you struggle through difficult times.
These are the hands that will comfort you in illness and hold you when fear or grief overwhelms you.
These are the hands that will give you support as she encourages you to chase down your dreams.
Together, as a team, everything you wish will be realized.
These are the hands that will connect your hearts as you kneel before your Father in prayer.

God, bless these hands that you see before you today. May they always be held by one another. Give them strength to hold on during the storms of stress and the darkness of despair. Keep them tender and gentle as they nurture each other in your wondrous love. Help these hands continue building a relationship founded in your grace, rich in caring and devoted to reaching for your perfection. May Lucy and FD see their four hands as healer, protector, shelter and guide. We ask this in your name.

Over the past seven weeks, I have had the joy of sharing 'our' story with you. Over the course of the real life romance series, I have found myself reliving each of these pieces of the story and falling in love with him all over again. But, I must tell you, this is not the whole story. This story is incomplete and constantly being rewritten as we share our lives together. There is so much of this story that cannot be spoken into words but is held in my heart.

So, today as we honour our third anniversary, I celebrate the life I share with this man who holds a piece of my heart, without whom I would not be complete, and I give thanks to my God for bringing us together.

The Real Life Romance series is being linked up at MM&Ms at Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife

Real Life Romance: Part Six

Alone in the Field - October 8, 2005

To check out the first five parts of the series, click here. I don't have great pictures to go along with section because I didn't have a digital camera yet and I can't locate the CD with these photos on it. I pictures of my scrapbook but I know it isn't great.

We arrived to his parent's house to celebrate Thanksgiving with his family. I was unsure of the status of things at this point. If you remember, the fabulous dude had recently confessed to me that he wasn't 100% sure he wanted to marry me (at least right now). However, the weekend seemed to be going as usual. He was busy doing things around the house with is dad and I was busy helping his mom get things ready for Thanksgiving dinner. On Saturday morning he left early with his dad because they were helping a friend with some moving and so I didn't see him at all that day. Let me just say that this is not unexpected or surprising. Since we started dating, it is kind of the norm for him to be out and about with his dad and for me to be spending the time with his sisters and mom when we go to visit. That's just the way it goes.

However, as the day progressed, some strange things started happening. We had been busy getting things sorted out for Thanksgiving dinner but his mom didn't seem at all concerned with what we were going to be doing for dinner that very evening. I remember asking her a few times if there was anything she wanted me to pick up or prepare for supper and she just kept saying, "Oh we can worry about that later". This is when things got strange. You see, it is pretty standard for his family to eat at around 5:30 on the dot. So when 4:00 came around and we still hadn't even begun thinking or preparing, I started wondering what the heck was going on.

About that time, the FD rolled back into the driveway in his dad's truck. But, when he came in, his dad wasn't with him. I asked him where he was and he said he had dropped him off at the barn on his way home. This made sense, the door to the barn faces a different road than their driveway, so it would be normal for him to drop him off there instead of bringing him home and having him walk out to the barn.

He came over to me and said, "Sorry I was gone all day. Do you want to go out to the cabin and go for a walk and take some pictures of the fall leaves so we can spend some time together?"

"Sure", I said, "but maybe we should wait until tomorrow because dinner will probably be soon".

His mom interjected and said not to worry about that. They could wait and eat later or we could just grab something when we got home. That made sense to me, so I agreed. Again, he reminded me to bring my camera to take pictures out there. No big deal, I take my camera everywhere and since autumn is my favourite season, this would be no exception.

He ran upstairs to change and I noticed he was taking quite a long time. When he came back down I could smell that he was wearing cologne and had shaved. Umm, yup, that's when I knew I was getting the ring that night. This guy isn't exactly one to care too much about his appearance or hygiene. So, to clean himself up just to go for a walk in the woods must have meant something.

We headed out to the cabin and his dad was still nowhere in sight. Apparently, he was still in the barn. I don't remember what we talked about on the drive out there, but I remember as we were pulling down the lane, I spotted a large object on the side of the road.

"What in the world is that?" I said. "I think someone came back here and dumped a washing machine." I was thinking that it was quite rude for someone to do such a thing.

The fabulous dude kind of let out a chuckle and said that he wasn't sure what it was.

(You see, at this point, I was fairly confident he was going to propose but I didn't really have a clue what he was up to).

As we got closer, I could make out the shape of the "washing machine" a little bit better and realized that it was not a washing machine, but rather, his dad standing in front of a trailer instead.

"What is your dad doing here? I thought he was at the barn?"

FD just smiled.

We got out of the truck and his dad was beaming, "Hi, Luc".

Evan took my hand and walked me around to the other side of the trailer, where two Clydesdale horses were waiting. I had never been horseback riding before, and he knew it.

He helped me onto the horse and after he and his dad got over how ridiculously scared I looked, he got on his and instructed me how to get the horse to move. We rode on for a while. I was trying to admire the leaves and enjoy the views (although it was hard since I was scared for my life) and he was mocking me and telling me I looked ridiculous riding a horse.

We finally got to an open field. He asked me to stop and get off the horse to go for a walk. He tied the horses up and took my hand, leading me through a path. We got about halfway through the field and he stopped.

I don't remember exactly what he said, but he pulled the ring from his pocket and asked me to be his wife. I was so nervous, I started laughing. I don't think I ever even said yes. I just pulled out my cell phone and started to call people to tell them I was engaged.

We had to quickly ride back because it was approaching dusk and he didn't want me to have to ride in the dark. We got back, tied up the horses, took them back to their owner and headed to his parents house, where more surprises were waiting.

When we got there, his whole family was there waiting for us with an ice cream cake that had a tractor on it. Since it was Thanksgiving weekend, Dairy Queen was limited in the selection of ice cream cakes so his sister had picked this one and it said "Congratulations [FD] and [Lucy]". Everyone started hugging us and congratulating us and as I moved from the kitchen to the living room, I glanced into the dining room and saw that my parents were there! What a surprise! They were on their way to my mom's sister's for Thanksgiving and made a quick detour to join us in celebration. It was fabulous!

I could not have asked for a better proposal. There were so many aspects of it that were so significant to us. First and foremost, autumn is my absolute favourite season. FD knew how much I wanted to get married in the fall but because of school, if we were to do that, we'd need to wait quite a few more years. So he decided he'd propose to me in the fall, which was the next best thing. The cabin is his favourite place on earth and so it was special for us to be there.

Second, the horse back riding is significant not just because I had never been on a horse before but because in a letter that he wrote me early in our relationship he had written...

"When I think of a team, I think of a team of horses. They stand side by side and each has to pull its own weight or else the load cannot be carried. I want to pull the load of life with you by my side".

Somewhere in the actual proposal, he repeated something along those lines.

Also, I could not get over how much planning he had put into the whole thing. He had obviously snuck behind my back at some point to buy the ring. I'm not so easy to surprise, so this was an impressive feat. And since we had already started saving money together, he had to lie to me and tell me he was lending money to a friend ... I never even suspected it for a second. I also found out later that he had asked my parents for permission the week before. Lastly, he and his dad had gone to great lengths arranging to borrow the horses, pick them up and get everything ready for our ride.

So, the whole deal about not being sure if he wanted to marry me was all just a big hoax so that he could be off my radar and have a better chance of surprising me. And, surprise me, he did!

To be continued...

The Real Life Romance series is being linked up at MM&Ms at Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife

Real Life Romance: Part Five

Need a refresher? Click here for parts 1-4 of the Real Life Romance series.

Lucy Got Lucky

I am very sorry, but this installment of the RLR series is very lengthy. I tried to condense it, but there is just so much to tell and our story just would not be complete without the details. If you need to take a break and rest your eyes part way through, I completely understand. But please bear with me and stick it out until the end. Trust me, it's worth it. I tried to break it up with some of my favourite photos of us while we were dating. They have no real relevance to the story - just a visual to break up the writing :)

If you are catching up you will remember that the fabulous dude had just arrived home from summer camp after leaving me hanging for a grueling 6 weeks. As soon as he returned to his parents house, however, the very first thing he did was call me and ask if he could come visit. Of course, I was ecstatic and said yes. It was a three hour drive and I had an afternoon/early evening shift at the restaurant so I knew he'd be at my house when I got finished. In the last post I said it was a Saturday but now that I think about it, I think it was a Friday and he was planning to stay until Monday or something. I asked my parents if it was okay if he came over for the weekend and everything was all set. I was a nervous wreck during my shift at work!

I got home and he was there waiting for me. It was somewhat awkward because neither of us were really sure what we were supposed to do or say. We headed down to my parents boat where we would stay for the weekend. We spent the day on Saturday enjoying the sun and the beach. We stayed up late catching up and talking. Somewhere in the midst of our convo, we talked about the bed-wetting problem he had until he was about 8 years old.

Apparently this conversation struck something in his subconscious because he woke up at about 3 am and realized he was wetting his bed (don't worry - I have his permission to share this story). Remember - we were on my parents boat. Boats don't have a lot of room. My parents were asleep in their bed, he was in the other bed and I was on the floor between them. If I stretched, I could literally touch the base of my parents bed with my fingers and the base of his bed with my toes. Apparently he woke up, rushed out of the boat and tried to think about what to do. Finally, around 5 am, he woke me up and asked me to come outside. He took me for a walk and said he had a surprise for me and that he bet me $100 I would laugh at his surprise. I took the bet and he proceeded to tell me that he had peed the bed on my parents boat. Needless to say, he won the bet. When my parents woke up and were on the dock making breakfast, I quickly stripped the sheets off the bed. Luckily, he was sleeping on top of a sleeping bag and so the pee didn't soak through onto the sheets or, worse, the mattress. I loaded all the bedding (including the stuff from my parents bed so as not to look suspicious) into my car and told my mom I'd wash it all and bring it back because they were having more company the next weekend.

So, you may be wondering why in the world, other than to embarrass my husband, would I tell this story? Well, because, as I'm sure you'd agree, if a girl agrees to sneak around her parents and clean up a guy's pee sheets on their "first date", and the guy isn't too ashamed to show his face around the girl again, there is no doubt that they are meant to be together. After that incident, he basically had no choice but to marry me. (As a funny aside, over the next couple years, most of our friends and his family found out about this story. But, miraculously, we managed to keep the incident a secret from my parents and my entire family, until he confessed it to my father at our wedding reception - the way he told him is quite funny - perhaps I shall share this story another time...)

After the weekend of holding hands and laughing together and cleaning up pee sheets (but NO kissing - not for his lack of trying), he headed back to his parents house. He stayed there for about a week, bought his first truck, and then moved back to the town where we went to high school to return full time to the farming job he had during high school. It seems as though we never really looked back. There was never a time when we "officially" started dating, it just seemed as though we both had the understanding that now was our time. We sometimes questioned why we didn't start dating during high school but both of us agreed that there was a reason and that God timed it perfectly for us to begin our relationship.

Somewhere around the beginning of our relationship, he nicknamed me Lucy. There was also a song on the radio at the time that said "Lucy got Lucky and Lucky got Lucky, too". So, we became Lucy and Lucky. To this day, I am Lucy to him and some of his family members.

In September I moved into my sister's apartment and began university (I was about 1.5 hours away from him now). Thankfully, the farm he worked at shipped out of a town about 15 minutes away so he usually was able to visit about once a week (I've got some really cool stories about these visits too - another day). We got really serious really fast and he started talking about marriage. Believe it or not, he wanted to get married at Christmas only 4 short months after we began dating!! I quickly put an end to that idea. Yet, I knew that marriage was in our (near) future and living 1.5 hours apart wasn't going to cut it. After my first semester, we decided that we were serious enough to make some drastic changes. We started weighing our options. He could quit his job, move to my city and find a new job. I wasn't enjoying my time at university and I hated living in the city (small town girl) so, instead, I applied to transfer to a university closer to him for my second year. By May, the plans were all set for me to move in with his cousin, who lived in the same town as him, the following September.

At this point, we started seriously saving some money so that we would be able to afford to get married. His father was skeptical of us talking about marriage when we were so young because of financial constraints, so we wanted to show him that we could do it. And we certainly did show him, I might add. I was almost certain that the proposal would come at some point over the summer, before I moved back to GL town.

The summer came and went, and I did not have a ring. We had started looking at rings and had picked out a few that we really liked. I was starting to get impatient although now I have no idea why I was in such a hurry. I became almost obsessed with talking about getting engaged. If you know me at all, you know that I am a planner, an organizer and perhaps a control freak. The idea of not knowing what was going on and having no control over it drove me bonkers. The FD started to get really fed up with my constant bugging.

Just before Thanksgiving, he took me for a walk and told me that he thought we were moving too quickly. I was so angry with him. Wasn't he the one who had wanted to get married right when we started dating? Wasn't he the one who suggested we move closer to each other? He apologized and told me that he just wasn't ready to think about marriage. He said he wasn't doubting that he wanted to marry me. He was simply doubting when he wanted to do so. He said all the pressure was making him uncomfortable. I was sure he was having second thoughts about our relationship. I was scared, confused and insecure. However, he stilled invited me to come home with him for Thanksgiving. I agreed and so as we headed up north to his parents house to celebrate Thanksgiving, I had no idea what was going to happen to us.

To be continued...

The Real Life Romance series is being linked up at MM&Ms at Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife

Real Life Romance: Part Four

Click here to read the first three parts of the Real Life Romance series

The Summer of '04

After leaving GL, we all said our goodbyes and left for the summer, this time knowing we wouldn't be coming back in September. I moved back home, returned to my summer waitressing job and began to think about all the stuff the FD had said to me over the past few weeks. As I mentioned, I was currently in a fairly serious relationship, that FD clearly did not think was right for me. He pointed out a number of reasons why he didn't think the relationship could last and, try as I might, I could not disagree with him.

So, summer began, I was at home and FD left to spend six weeks at camp. Without really knowing what was to come of the FD and myself, I made a very difficult decision and I broke things off with the boyfriend. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done because he was kind and sweet and, well, perfect. Just not perfect for me. He was a great guy but my heart was no longer fully committed to the relationship. Many people thought he and I were meant to be and could not understand why I was making this choice but I knew he was not meant to be my future husband and so the answer was clear to me. In the weeks following the break up, I was often asked if I broke up with him for the fabulous dude. I told them no and I still believe that this was an honest answer. Although the FD played a role, I believe the relationship would have ended regardless.

I spent the next six weeks wrestling. I wrestled with feelings of loneliness. I was away from my friends. After spending four years at boarding school, I had lost touch with most of my friends from town. I struggled with confusion over the next step in life. I was lined up to start university in the fall at the same school my brother and sister attended and the same school that the ex-boyfriend would also be attending. It was the only university I had applied to because I thought I knew exactly where I was heading and I was starting to doubt that decision. I wrestled with God. I prayed hard, I immersed myself in the Word and I was searching for answers. Looking back, I now realize I was closer to God at that point than I ever had been, or have been to this point.

Over that summer, I became closer to my parents than ever before. Along with waitressing, I also worked for my parents so I spent a lot of time with them, especially my mom. It was just the three of us at home and they knew I was struggling. At first they were upset with me about my decisions but they quickly realized that it was for the best. We tackled these issues together and decided that I would, in fact, enroll in university in the fall and if after a semester I wasn't happy with the decision, I would come home and re-evaluate my goals.

For the six week period that the FD was working at camp, I had no idea what would happen when he returned. I wrote him letters almost every day, sent him two care packages and even sent him a raspberry pie (his favourite) when my mom went to camp as a volunteer for a week. When my mom came home the first thing I asked her was if he sent anything for me. He hadn't. Over the whole summer I only got one letter from him. There where days when this really bothered me and then other days when I didn't care. I tried not to think much of it because I knew how busy camp was and I knew that he wasn't exactly the type to sit down and write letters (Remember when I mentioned that I did his homework and typed his reports in high school?).

When I finally received a letter from him, it was short and mostly consisted of small talk. But the last line read "I think of you often". I pondered the meaning of these words for days and days. I was certain that he wouldn't carelessly write that. He was a sensitive and thoughtful young man. I was sure it meant something for him to say that he thought of me often. This one simple line helped me to feel secure that it wasn't a big deal to not be getting letters upon letters upon letters from him. Looking back, I think I knew there was no need to be insecure because I trusted God had a plan and I would be content whether or not it involved the FD. And then, one Saturday, when I got home from work, mom told me he had called on his day off. I knew that the phone call meant he was missing me too.

So, I continued to wrestle.

August arrived and I knew that camp would soon be over, but I wasn't exactly sure when. I was surprised when I got a phone call early one Saturday morning from the FD. The conversation was fairly quick but went something like this, "I'm home from camp and my parents are on vacation. Can I come visit you?"

I said yes.

To be continued...

**Sorry about the lack of photos in this post but there are really none to share.

The Real Life Romance series is being linked up at MM&Ms at Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife

Real Life Romance: Part Three

Click here to get caught up on the Real Life Romance Series

His Confession

We were now nearing the end of our high school career. With about two weeks left of school, the fabulous dude made a shocking confession. He was deeply and madly in love with me. Well, not quite.

BUT, he did tell me he was disappointed that nothing had ever happened between us. I was shocked by this revelation because I had always felt as though he had no interest in me as more than a friend especially considering he had not pursued anything after the Beauty and the Beast ballet weekend. Apparently, his impression was that I had not pursued anything following that weekend. "Umm, hello?", I was thinking, "Don't you realize that pursuing something would have been YOUR job?".

At this point, we were both dating/seeing other people (me seriously, him not so seriously). He wasn't asking me to drop everything I was doing and start a relationship with him but he thought he should lay everything out on the table before we left GL and let me know that if the time was right in the future he would be interested in me. At this point I did not know that he had already told his best friend that he intended to marry me.

He pointed out some issues that he saw as problematic in the relationship I was in. At first I got very defensive and thought he had no right to tell me why he didn't think I should be dating this guy. Then, as time wore on, I realized that many of the things he pointed out were very true and that perhaps he was telling me simply because he knew me so well.

This "confession" made the last few weeks of high school very difficult and confusing for me. I was already an emotional basket case as I was swiftly approaching the end of what seemed to me like an era. I was preparing to leave GL, which had been my home for 4 years. I was preparing to say goodbye to my friends who came from all different parts of the province and country and even some from the US. I was trying to focus on my studies, to ensure that I successfully completed all my exams. I was busy finishing the yearbook and taking care of end of the year student council events. I had more to worry about than deciding what to do about the new information I had just received from the fabulous dude.

He told me to spend some time thinking about it and talking to the people I trusted. So, I did. I talked to my mom and dad, I talked to my mentors, T and S, I talked to my best friends. They all had opinions about what I should do, but no one could give me a clear answer.

Exams came and went. I tried to act as though everything was normal. I helped the fabulous dude study and typed up a couple of his final reports. Our Spring Banquet came and it was announced that we had been selected for the citizenship award: Mr. and Mrs. GL (think prom king and queen at a school that doesn't have prom). That meant that for the entire day of commencement and graduation we would have to be together.

I wasn't sure how I felt about this because I was still an ounce mad at him for unloading all of his feelings on me at such a horrible time. I was so dreadfully confused. In the meantime, my current boyfriend knew that something weird was going on with me and my Mom and Dad were upset with me because they really liked the boyfriend. But, I tried to push all of that away and enjoy my last day of high school.


To be continued...

The Real Life Romance series is being linked up at MM&Ms at Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife

Real Life Romance: Part Two

If you are new to the Real Life Romance series, click here to read Part One.

We Meet Again

Over the next couple years, we saw each other a few times at camps, youth rallies and other church related events. When it was time to begin high school, my parents agreed to let me go to "GL" in grade 9 (remember, GL is the church run residential school that I mentioned in Part One?). My other siblings had not been allowed to go until grade 10 but I was dying to get out of my town, away from my grade school friends and be surrounded by my Christian friends (ahem, particularly "one" friend of the male variety) who I knew from camp.

I knew the Fabulous Dude wouldn't be enrolling until grade 10 but we were still friends throughout grade 9 when we saw each other at events or when I visited his hometown with his cousin (who was one of my closest friends) on the weekends.

In grade 10, he came to GL and started dating one of my best friends almost immediately. That was okay, I was in a too-serious relationship already and the instant love I had felt for him when I was 8 years old was at bay. Over the next three years, we were the best of friends and the worst of enemies.

We would be best friends one day and then go weeks without speaking to each other until one of us needed the other, we'd cave in and have a huge heart to heart and then we'd start the cycle again. I did a lot of his homework for him, he encouraged me to get out of a not so healthy relationship, I made pies for him, he drove me to McDonald's, we had mutual friends, we had a vast array of inside jokes, we both dated other people and life went on.

Here are a few pictures of us from high school...

It was not until the summer between grade 11 and 12 that anything truly monumental happened. At this point, the fabulous dude was now spending his entire summers at the camp we met at, working as a counselor and lifeguard and I was living at home during the summers working various part time jobs. In the middle of my grade 11 year my mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Over the course of that summer, she was in the midst of chemotherapy and radiation. In late August, after not speaking to the fabulous dude since school finished in June, I got a call from him. I cried with him on the phone as he told me that his mother, too, had been diagnosed with breast cancer.

So we started that school year (our final year) as good friends. We had this common experience to share that none of our other friends could really relate to. We both knew what it felt like to watch your mom go through something so horrible. We were there for each other through that. Praise the Lord, we were also able to celebrate as both of our mother's finished their treatment cancer free. Close to the beginning of the year, I had a weekend long birthday party at my house (remember, we're at boarding school). A bunch of my friends came home with me but he couldn't come because it was the weekend of his mom's surgery. We decided he would come to my place for a visit the next weekend. Over the course of the weekend, I thought there were some sparks. He did a ballet dance to "Beauty and the Beast" wearing my Mom's slippers. I thought surely that was a sign.

However, when we got back to school it seemed as though nothing had happened. Just like in the other years of high school, we went through cycles of being best friends and worst enemies. He was struggling with some other personal issues and was very moody at times. He was in a slump. That year, I lived with my two best friends at one of their houses rather than in the dorm. I remember spending hours at home in the evenings with them talking, crying and praying for him because the FD we were seeing was not the FD that we knew.

As the year progressed, I continued to hurt for him and miss my friend. Eventually, he seemed to get out of his slump. He was back to his normal, funny, annoying self as the end of our high school days drew closer.

To be continued...

The Real Life Romance series is being linked up at MM&Ms at Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife

Real Life Romance: Part One

A few months ago, Emily from Emily Had A Little Lamb posted a mini-series about how she and her husband came to be. I decided in honour of our swiftly approaching anniversary, I would do the same. I love telling people the whole story of how the fabulous dude and I met, fell in love and came to be Mr. and Mrs. Fabulous Dude. I think our story is actually quite cool and I can't wait to be able to tell it to our future children someday. Some may call it coincidence, some may call it fate. I call it God's plan. The story is quite lengthy and as such, is broken into 7 parts. Coincidentally (or not so much), our anniversary is in 7 weeks from today and so I will share a piece of puzzle each week until then.

So, grab yourself a glass of sweet tea, a Pepsi, a margarita, or something else cool and delicious, sit back and enjoy...

When We Were Young

Our story begins somewhere around 1993-1995, between the 7th and 9th year of my life. I am not exactly sure what age I was when my Uncle Dave starting telling me that he knew the boy that God wanted me to marry but it was somewhere during middle childhood. Uncle Dave and Auntie K were good friend's with the fabulous dude's parents. (This all sounds much more complicated than it really is...).

PAUSE: For the sake of clarity... My fabulous dude and I both come from family's who are part of the same church fellowship. Therefore, although we lived in different towns, we had many connections through church related events, camps, youth rallies and a particular Christian residential high school school, "GL", which will become very important later in the story.

Back to the story. My Uncle Dave and Auntie K were visiting us once and I clearly remember him telling me that he would soon introduce me to this boy...my future husband. I, being the saucy, smart-alecky child that I was, stuck my tongue out at him and said, "There's no point. I already know who I'm going to marry. I love R". R is a childhood friend, the son of my parent's best friend's, who later become one of the FD's best friends and was actually a groomsman at our wedding. See, I told you this all seems so complicated.

Over the next little while, my Uncle Dave made little comments and jokes about this elusive boy everytime I saw him. In Februrary of some year, I was traveling with my mom to FD's hometown to drop my sister and her friend's off at a youth rally that was being hosted by the FD's church. My Uncle Dave was there, also dropping off teenagers, and said to me, "I have someone I want you to meet. [Lucy], this is [fabulous dude]. [Fabulous dude] this is [Lucy]." My face turned beat red and the fabulous dude just kept bouncing his basketball, said "Hi" and then turned around and continued his game.

I know this seems so silly and inconsequential, but I can still remember the hat and necklace that he was wearing and exactly what he looked like as he stood there playing basketball with the big boys. This was about 15 years ago.

I am sure my Uncle teased me a little bit more about this boy over the next few months but when the summer came, that's when it got really bad. It was time for me to go to summer camp for the first time. When I arrived, I found I had been mysteriously placed on the same team as this boy for camp activities (did I mention my Uncle and cousins helped run this camp?). This mysterious placement continued to happen every single year when we returned to camp for another summer.

We were young. He was cute. He, along with one other boy, were the heartthrobs of summer camp. All the girls were ga ga over them. Except me, of course. I kept myself cool and composed, obviously. Looking back on my old photos from camp, I find many photos of me and my friends with the fabulous dude and/or the other boy "coincidentally" posed in the background. That's right, we would set up our photos to make sure that they were in the background because we were too shy to ask them to take a picture with us. The following photos will demonstrate my point very clearly. They were not all taken the first year I met him, but demonstrate my crazy obsession over the following years.

The photo looks as though it was taken of this girl. The legs hanging from the ceiling belong to the FD and the boy in the striped shirt is the other heartthrob I mentioned.

The photo is being taken of my friend wearing the beige hat in the right hand side of the photo. I'll give you one guess as to who the boy wearing the white hat in the left hand side of the photo is.Again, here is a picture of my two friends, Jen and Lindsay and surprise surprise, the FD is sitting beside them.

The yellow hat? Yup, you got it. That's him.And finally, I was brave enough to take his picture. Although probably one of my friend's did the deed.

I am sure I hardly spoke to him while we were at camp that first year. We were at an age where girls liked boys but boys still thought girls were gross. So, aside from the fact that we were on the same team and he was lucky enough to see my athletic prowess from a very young age, I wouldn't say we actually became friends until a few years later. Below are the only photos I can find from camp that have both of us in them. Some are from when we were young but some are from much later.

This is us with our camp friends when I was 11 and he was 12. Can you find him??

Here I am second from the left, wearing the blue Campus Crew shirt, displaying a really strange look on my face. The FD is at the far right with a flower tucked into his hat.

By the time this photo was taken, we were teenagers and I was no longer afraid to talk to him or to take his picture. This is one of my very favourite photos of us.

The next part of the story is one that I don't personally recall but I have been told and retold enough times that I am sure it must be true. My mom tells me that when I returned from camp that first year, she casually asked me if [fabulous dude] had been there. I looked up at her, turned bright red and said, "Mommy, I love him".

To be continued...

This post is being linked up at MM&Ms at Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife