Our story

Now that the audition is over, I thought about neglecting to answer these questions, but I promised I would.  So I will.  In honor of my dear husband, whom I love very much, I thought I'd do Renee's question first.

Renee, who blogs at Rainforest Crunch, and I met BA (Before Army), when Daniel and I were living and teaching in North Carolina.  Renee started coming to our church at the same time we did.  We were in the Newcomers Class together there.  While we were there, she met (and soon after we left, married) her husband.  It's been fun to keep up with her blog and watch as her family has grown and as her life has changed.  She's a sweet friend, who has two precious (adorable!) sons, and also always has something good to say.

Renee asked, "1.How did you meet your husband? 2.What have been the hardest parts of marriage? 3.What advice would you give to newlyweds?"

Those are good questions, but I thought I'd write my response in a more narrative way.  I thought I'd share Our Story.  I hope you enjoy it, as much as I've enjoyed traveling back down our path thus far.

Have I ever mentioned that I'm a PK (Pastor's Kid)?  Well, I am and my dad took a job at a church in Connecticut when I was in 8th grade.  We'd been in New England for a couple years and I was a sophomore in high school when, in November, a few of my friends starting telling me about this new guy and girl in their band class.  This brother and sister had moved with their family from Texas, and the guy had agreed to come to our church with my friends on Sunday evening. (They had invited him to church with them because he'd been wearing a cross and it wasn't quite a common sight to see that around our school.)  I met Daniel that Sunday evening at our church.  He kept coming to our church, but didn't really pay much attention to me specifically (much to my disappointment).  I didn't know it at the time, but he'd left a girlfriend in Texas, and after he'd been in Connecticut for just a short time, she broke up with him, and he was pretty upset about it all.  Either way, in April Daniel had gone on a trip with the Jazz Band for a competition or something and ended up getting really sick on the bus.  I heard about it from other friends in the band (high school guys love talking about when someone else throws up...ew), so when I saw Daniel in the hall a few days later, I asked him how he was feeling.  He later told me that was the first time I attracted his attention in a significant way.  Soon after that our youth group had a Lock In (now, as a youth leader, I cringe at the thought of our youth group wanting to do a Lock In because I couldn't handle not sleeping at this point in my life, but I digress...) and Daniel and I spent the whole night together.  He made me stay up the whole time with him (even then, I wasn't such a huge fan of the idea, but I had to impress him, of course!), we played games, watched Mr. Holland's Opus , and talked and talked and talked.

I would love to say that was the beginning of a fun dating relationship that went on to a blissful engagement without incident. But...that's not our story.  My Daniel has always been a pretty intense person and he's often known what he wants quite clearly.  Before I turned 16, he knew he wanted to marry me.  Yep.  Before I was 16.  What can I say?  He freaked me out a little bit.  I was, after all, a 15 year old girl who did not know what she wanted.  So, we dated on and off while we were still in high school, though neither of us ever dated anyone else at that point.  During the first year of college for me, we did the same thing.  There wasn't ever anyone else for him, and, though I had a few friendships with a few other guys, I never seriously dated anyone else.

The first semester of my sophomore year of college things were not going well at home.  My dad was going through a very messy situation at our church (which led to his resignation eventually) and our family was struggling to deal with it all.  It's hard to watch people pick on someone you love for no good reason.  Anyway, I was reading the Psalms  - one every night - for my devotions.  On the 33rd night of this, I was reading and just felt God speaking to me, particularly through the end of the Psalm:

²⁰ We wait in hope for the LORD;
   he is our help and our shield.
²¹ In him our hearts rejoice,
   for we trust in his holy name.
²² May your unfailing love rest upon us, O LORD,
   even as we put our hope in you.

And, suddenly, things were clear for me.  I was waiting and waiting and waiting to really commit to Daniel because I wasn't sure that he'd be able to make me happy forever.  I wasn't sure that he would really be able to take care of me forever.  I wasn't sure that he was perfect for me.  But that wasn't the point.  We hope and trust in God to take care of us and provide for us and protect us.  No man ever would be able to do all of that for me, so when I realized that, it freed me to just love Daniel for who he was and to love walking through life with him.  Those verses from Psalms were preached at our wedding a year and a half after I read them that night.

The thing that's been hardest about our marriage has been really figuring out how to love each other as we live together.  He's a very intelligent person and he knows a lot.  He knows the right answers to everything.  So do I.  And sometimes, somehow, we both know the right answers...and we somehow know different things to be the right answer.  *grin*  (I'm sure nobody else ever has that problem...)  That, obviously, was the hardest to work through early on.  Now that we've gotten through much of the initial stages of that and have settled in to our own routine and family life, that part of life is much smoother.

The advice I'd give to newlyweds/engaged couples is to figure out your financial world together.  There is nothing that has been more unifying for our marriage, I don't think, than to truly be on the same page financially.  About three or four years into our marriage we read Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover (aloud to each other) and it really, really, really helped us figure out where we were, where we wanted to go, and how to get on the same page.  Finances play such a huge part in our lives, whether we wish they did or not.  Emotions, dreams, goals, day to day life...it's all affected by that one thing.  If you're not together there, you'll have a hard time in my opinion. 

To Daniel:  Sweetheart, I love you so much.  I'm so proud of you.  I'm so proud to stand next to you. You're my favorite.