Week 1: Completing Him Challenge – Dating – Updated!

It’s Week 1 of the Completing Him Challenge via Women Living Well.  Writing about our “dating” experience could seriously take 3 days.

Roy & I met in 1991 at Bible college in Missouri. We were good friends, and then best friends, while we attended college, and even afterward.  When he graduated and moved back to Ohio, we lost touch for awhile – but for years (and I mean for like 12 years), he and I sorta played tag in the “Are we Friends? Are We More than Friends?” game.  Sometimes we got pretty close – even long distance – and started making plans for something serious – but the timing wasn’t right, and despite broken hearts and dreams sometimes – God had something different in mind.

I lived in Springfield, Missouri for over 10 years.  It’s the longest I’ve ever lived anywhere in my life.  And it was my first place – as a grown-up adult.  I loved it there.  But my dad’s health issues, combined with new nieces and nephews – were all brought into sharp focus on 9/11.

I was 12 hours away from my family when I saw the 2nd plane crash into the WTC building and when the news reports came in of a plane hitting the Pentagon.  12 hours didn’t seem like far enough some days – but on 9/11, it felt like a world away.

Roy was one of the first people in Ohio that I had a chance to visit with.  My parents’ lines were tied up – my uncle worked at the Pentagon and I had NO CLUE what was going on with him.  My brother, scheduled for a 6 month cruise in the Mediterranean, was certainly going to be shipped to a new destination – only nobody could get ahold of anybody else.  It was AWFUL!

Roy was sorta my lifeline that day.  I was the first to tell him about it via email – and eventually we talked by phone – but it was that day that I knew I had to start making some choices and move closer to my family. Although I always hoped (and felt in my heart) that something would develop with Roy that would become more serious, I really wasn’t sure if it would ever happen.

And then – one day during a conversation – I got incredibly angry about something he said.  We shot back very heated emails and I decided that I was done waiting around for him to make up his mind and said “Phooey!”  He tried to call but I wouldn’t answer the phone and wouldn’t reply to his emails.  He got the hint quickly enough, and even though I chatted with him for a couple of minutes around Christmas, I was done nursing whatever shred of hope I had left waiting for him to be ready to be more serious.

Several months later, it was June, and I found myself working through Stormie Omartian’s book, Power of a Praying Woman.  I’d just gotten to the chapter about Dreams.  I knew God was asking me to give up my dreams for marriage and family – and that included to some degree, Roy.  Although I was still furious with him, he was still THE ONE, and I knew God was asking me to surrender.  I can remember actually arguing it out with God.  There were no other prospects on the horizon, and God was asking me to give him the ONLY fishing pole I had left in the Sea of Love…

But, I did.  I surrendered.  It broke me and I bawled for a long time.  I journaled about it – and then felt a HUGE release as God lifted the heavy burden from me.  I’d been carrying around this NEED to get married that wasn’t healthy or right – and God knew it.

So who called me out of the blue THE VERY NEXT DAY?

No, seriously!

And guess what Mr. Roy had to say?

Um, yeah – “I’m calling you because I want you to know that YOU ARE THE ONE FOR ME.  I’ve always known it,” he says, but he needed some time to work things out and give over to God in his life.  And he was calling to tell me that He loved me and he wanted to marry me and he was gonna do whatever it took to win me.

speechless.

Now, if you know me at all, you know I am RARELY at a loss for words.

My jaw was ON. THE. FLOOR people – and I could barely answer him.  I hung up in a daze.  He called the next day and we talked almost every day since…

He came to visit in October, and we started planning our wedding…  We married December 7 that same year.

We only have a few digital versions of dating pictures, and I posted one last week, but I’m going to post it again – because it’s a picture from the very first official DATE we ever went on.

P.S. – I almost forgot this part!

Part of the challenge is addressing some questions posed by Courtney:

Think about one thing you used to do or have as a couple that you have lost in the shuffle of life. How can you regain it?

Truthfully, we used to spend a LOT of time TALKING – via email, phone, letters, and notes.  We can barely finish sentences these days with our two very adorable princesses who want our attention.  In the process of teaching them to learn to wait and respect mommy & daddy’s time together, I’m also making a schedule (a real one) that “schedules” time for Roy & I just to be ROY & ME again.  So we can talk or laugh, watch the news or look at funny Facebook pictures.  I try to text him more these days – and actually talk about more than the girls’ latest antics or the bills in the mail.   I get very caught up in the “stuff” of mommy & home, and forget about the stuff of WIFE because he’s not very demanding…  But I miss him when he’s at work, so I’m trying to touch base with him in different ways.  But I can’t share EVERYTHING cuz he reads my blog and then it won’t be a surprise… LOL

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About Debbie T

Welcome to my blog. Grab a latte and settle in for a good read! I'm Debbie - aka The Queen Mommy. I'm really just a Right-Brained woman who loves God, her husband, and her three children. I This means I'd rather write than clean... I enjoy writing about family & home, faith & life, marriage & parenting, food & addiction. I do participate in affiliate programs and use affiliate links and graphics throughout my blog. If you follow a link and make a purchase, I may make a small commission to help support my family at home. Click here for my Disclosure Policy.

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