Once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl who were not
even aware of each other’s existence.
The boy was living his own life, wondering if he would ever find someone
who he felt was 100% who he wanted to be with for the rest of his life. The girl was living life on her own, not sure
she ever wanted to remarry again, not sure there was such a thing as the person
who would make her truly happy in every way.
Until they met each other…Sounds like the recipe for a fairy tale,
right? Well…in some way, yes, it was,
and in other ways, we had our struggles at the beginning. Considering our one-year DATING anniversary is
in less than one week (October 16!), I thought it would be fun to write our
story.
You see, when Pat and I first met, both of us were in
relationships. He had been dating the
same girl for a year and a half, and had come to the point where he realized
that she wasn’t who he wanted to be with for the rest of his life. In fact, he wondered if he would ever find
someone he actually wanted to marry. Meanwhile,
I was in what I guess you could call a relationship. The guy turned out to be a
not-so-prince-charming type of guy who lied and mislead more than
anything. But, neither of us was in a
hurry to move on into another relationship.
But there was one person who called “bull” on that and was determined to
open our eyes to the possibility of each other.
See, I worked out with this girl, Elise, who also happened
to be one of my dearest friends. She
also happened to work for the same company as Pat. One day back in June of 2015, she and I were
working out and suddenly she started waving.
She turned to me and said, “Oh, there’s Patrick. He works for Davita too!” He walked up, they exchanged words, we
briefly introduced ourselves, and that was it.
End of meeting. A few weeks
later, Elise decided we should invite him to join our workout group. So, we did and he started working out with
us. Given that we both were in
relationships, we didn’t exchange many words outside of the topics of gym and
Davita, which was fine with me, because 1) I have social anxiety and new people
sometimes make me awkward, and 2) neither of us were available.
Then, one day, something changed. Patrick was single—he had broken up with his
girlfriend…and I had already come to the realization I was unhappy in my own
relationship. I began to see him in a
new light…a more romantic one I guess you could say. We were
able to talk, carry on a conversation, and joke around. Elise and her husband
invited me over for dinner, and I encouraged her to invite him over (but told
her not to tell him I told her to invite him—so childish, I know). I found myself wanting to spend more and more
time with him. After a couple more
weeks, Patrick began pursuing me…hard.
He was very, very persistent. He
was convinced we needed to give dating a try.
In my head, I agreed; but I am horrible at hurting people’s feelings and
found it hard to end it with the other guy.
Pat knew I was unhappy, and he knew I wanted to end it but hadn’t found
a way to just yet.
In his pursuit of me, Pat wasn’t pushy, he wasn’t disrespectful,
and he didn’t put any pressure on me.
Each day he just engaged me in conversation, asked me about my life,
took a real interest in me as a person.
He offered me advice on my family, he helped me come up with ideas for
ways I could incorporate fun into my teaching, he gave me advice on how to
potty train my dog. He waited. For nearly two months, he waited. He tried dating other people, but in the back
of his mind, he said he always knew they weren’t right and he needed to keep
waiting for me.
I remember one night, I was lying in bed, about to read my
Bible and pray over my feelings. The other
guy was texting me, demanding I ignore my quiet time and talk to him about what
was going on between us. Patrick,
however, told me to turn off my phone the moment he found out what I was
doing. He encouraged me to seek after
God and His will. He valued my
relationship with God, which I had never experienced before with a guy. In that moment, it was like a weight was
lifted and I finally had the courage to end things with the other guy. The next day, Patrick and I met up to discuss
where things stood and what we wanted out of all of this. I told him my reservations, and he told me
his. But, we ultimately decided to give
it a go.
Needless to say, things worked out--even though that night,
my dog had a #2 accident in his apartment, I panicked, threw it away in his
trash, and didn’t tell him…which stunk up his apartment for the next two days
until he found out what happened…oops. Ha. Silliness aside, with Pat it was easy. I could talk to him about anything. I could share the deepest, darkest parts of
me that not even my family knew about. I
could have intellectual, adult conversations about things that mattered to
me. I could also act a complete fool around
him. (Thank God there are no hidden
cameras in our home, because we have been known to run around, making strange
sound effects, playing hide-and-seek.
And there may have been a time I hid in the dog’s kennel to scare
him. Just saying.) Most important of all, though…he loves Jesus
and he encourages me to grow in my walk.
He desires to grow in his. There
are so many other little things in our story leading up until the day we got
married…one and a half months after we started dating. But that is definitely another blog post to
come. The point is, we met, he waited,
he prayed over us, he waited some more, and God finally brought us together.
And they lived happily ever after.
