Boy meets Girl

I've been meaning to write a few back story posts for this blog - i.e. how my husband and I met, how I became Catholic, what my childhood was like, etc.  While I know how all these things shaped the person I am today, it's difficult for anyone else to really know who I am without knowing those details!

Unfortunately, I never seem to really have the time to sit down and write about such things.  Frankly, it's all I can do to sit down and write "wow, it's warm here today" without LW waking up, and my attention naturally going to more motherly or wifely tasks.  But she's napping right now, so I thought I'd make a go of it.  Be forewarned that I may have to write the words "to be continued" at some point!

Where to start...

Jim and I met five years ago, right at the end of the first semester of my senior year of college.

To be continued! (Actually, I'm joking, but LW really did just wake up.  See what I mean about her timing?  Since my husband is home, I've passed her off to him so that I can make it at least beyond the first line of the story).

Interestingly, I actually met Jim's identical twin brother a few months before I met Jim; he was attending the same school and started visiting our campus Catholic Center.  At the time, Jim was serving in the Army in Iraq, then went back to Germany before coming home.  I became friends with his brother quickly, and when Jim showed up, I thought he was nice, but it wasn't love at first sight.  I was not impressed by the gaggle of girls who swooped around him (did I mention he was fresh out of the Army?), and while I hadn't dated much, I'd had enough failed relationship woes to know better than to be interested in anyone who had that many girls flocking around.  He, on the other hand, thought I was a snob, because I spent all my time with my head in my books (I was taking 4 English classes at the time, and had a horse at our campus horse barn; I quite legitimately did homework on Friday nights because I had to, which baffled him).  So we became casual friends (I spent a lot more time with his brother than him), and that was it.  A friend of mine and he briefly dated; we spent time together in large groups, but really never particularly connected.

The following fall, I had moved an hour or so away, but still occasionally visited his brother, and we began to see more of each other, but he was dating another friend.  Time passed.

Then in the spring, for one reason or another we really started talking, and he asked me to go to a play with him (knowing I was a Shakespeare buff).  I went, had a great time, but assumed he was still dating our mutual friend (they had amicably broken up months earlier as it turned out), and so never called him afterwards to say I'd had a good time.  This was a mistake that, I still hear about years later, and which apparently could have derailed the whole direction of our lives.  Fortunately, I ran into him a month or so later, he chose to overlook the confusion, and we hit it off again.  I had done some sleuthing in the interim to realize that a) he was single, and b) he was most definitely pursuing me.  A few weeks and a lot of emailing later, he sent flowers as a surprise to my workplace, and that, as they say, was that :)

Of course, as they also say, the course of true love ne'er runs smooth (ironically, I think it was Shakespeare that said so?)  We dated for the next two years, across long, short, and intermediate distances (three years in which I lived 600 miles, 60 miles, and 6 miles away, at varying times).  And as time wore on, the question began to became more and more pressing, "where was this going?"  It pressed on me, and I in turn pressed on him, and we actually broke up after two and a half years.  That could have been the end of it, and certainly I thought it was.  I was completely crushed, and thus was not in the mood to answer his phone call three days later.

Three days... Now I look at it and realize that on the third day came the Resurrection, but I didn't know that then.  I did answer the phone (after he tried about six times), and did agree to meet with him.  On the way there, I kept praying over and over again that the Lord's will would be done - I didn't want to get back together only to be crushed again, but felt peace about seeing what was in store for us.  We met, and he poured his heart out, told me about discernment and confusion and making decisions that affect the whole rest of one's life.  Then he told me that he knew he'd thrown away something great, and had planned to propose on the spot, but had been talked out of it by our parish priest (who later married us, and baptized our daughter).  So instead, we got back together, with the concrete knowledge that we really were heading toward marriage.  Three months later, on a cold winter evening, we stopped to pray at a beautiful little adoration chapel at Jim's old parish.  As we pulled up to the building, he casually mentioned that he'd arranged for the parish priest, a good friend of his, to set out the Eucharist for adoration for us, and my heart started to pound.  I had an inkling that something important was about to happen, and to be honest, it was probably the most distracted adoration of my entire life; my mind was racing through the "Is he?  Probably not.  Don't get your hopes up.  But what if he IS?" litany rather than the Rosary or anything more fitting.  Then he got down on one knee, and that really was that :)

We were married in August of 2008; two months later, we found out we were pregnant with our Little Wum, who was born in June of 2009, and now here we are!  Incidentally, his brother, the one who in many ways brought us together, is getting married himself in just a few weeks to a really lovely woman (so pray for their upcoming marriage!).

Anyway, that's our little back story.  Of course there are many twists and turns to life that aren't really recordable; the emotions involved don't easily translate from heart to paper.  But he is my best friend, the love of my life, my home, my husband... as to the rest of our lives, well, "If it's half as good as the half we've known, here's Hail! to the rest of the road." - Sheldon Vanauken