My sister and I didn’t date in high school. It was a combination of two things. One, we have an overprotective dad who we love. And two, we were both interested in spiritual things and didn't know any boys who felt the same. I grew up in Wisconsin and decided to go to college in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I was quiet, focused on my studies, and interested in making friends and overcoming my shyness. I lived down the hall from three girls who had all gone to high school together, and I started going to Campus Crusade for Christ (now called Cru) meetings with them. At one of the meetings they introduced me to someone they went to high school with, and I ended up sitting next to him during the meeting. We quickly became friends and spent a lot of time together, mostly going for walks and talking. I resisted calling what we were doing dating for a while because I had a picture in my head of what God had planned for me and my college career. Meeting someone my freshman year and dating right away wasn’t it. Thankfully I eventually accepted that God had a better plan for me than I did! We were college sweethearts and neither one of us has ever dated anyone else.
One of the challenges we faced as our relationship grew more serious was that my future husband was raised Lutheran and I was raised Catholic. It was hard when we decided to find a place to go to church together where we both felt comfortable. We eventually settled on attending a baptist church together because of the emphasis on the Scriptures that we both believed and had always been a common ground in our relationship.
The other challenge was that my future husband was on an ROTC scholarship for college and was going to have a serve in the military for 4-8 years after graduation. I loved that my future husband was adventurous, dedicated, loyal, and hardworking, yet I couldn't imagine living far away from home. But I was in love, and we both felt God had brought us together. We decided to get married between our junior and senior years of college so that we were already married when he entered active duty.
We lived in married student housing for a year. We were watching an HGTV show with my daughter the other day that featured a couple just out of college who wanted to do a major renovation to their newly purchased house so they could have the color cabinets they wanted in the kitchen, a large shower in the master bathroom, etc. My husband and I both laughed so hard remembering our first apartment. Our married student housing was about 500 square feet. To get to the only tiny bathroom, you walked through the living room, through the galley kitchen, and through the bedroom. We had to leave our kitchen vent on anytime we left the apartment because when our downstairs neighbors started cooking, all the smells from their exotic spices ended up in our apartment. We were so thankful just to be together and couldn't wait to jump into whatever God had planned for us.
After some training in Missouri we headed to our first official duty station in Alaska. Looking back now it is so funny how God works. Many of my friends in high school and college had much more adventurous spirits than me, and they have ended up settling down in hometowns to raise families, while quiet me has been moving around the country for the past 18 years! But I wouldn't trade anything for what God has taught me through our military marriage.
Our love story is full of the typical up and downs of life: two babies, pets, home purchases, exciting duty stations, boring duty stations, deployments, postpartum anxiety and depression, homeschooling, epic vacations, chronic illness, so many miles driven etc. We have tried to always be for the other person, remembering that we are on the same team.
Four and a half years ago, our lives took a sudden and unexpected turn when our son passed away. In some ways our shared suffering has led to greater intimacy and confidence in our marriage. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock (Matthew 7:25). In other ways grief is an individual journey, and we are both different people than before our son passed away. While we long to share comfort and hope with one another, what comforts one of us often brings pain to the other.
These days, our love story looks like pressing on, being thankful for what was and for what is, raising our daughter, spoiling our dog, preparing for our next move, dreaming about what life might look like after the military, taking time to heal our hearts, serving others, and longing for heaven.
Love this. Thanks for sharing this portion of the story.
ReplyDeleteThanks! ❤️
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