My Mom the wonderful lady that she is had found Mister Right for me four years before. I had told her many times that I was not interested in meeting this so called Strong man.
He wasn't for me:
A youth leader in Podunk Maine? I lived in Hungary.
Youth leader in the church he had grown up in? Gag me, I thought outside the box.
"Long haired burly man"? Ah no thanks.
So after being up almost all night leaving things in good order for my intern to take care of while I was away for the busiest season of the year. Only to then travel over 24 hours to arrive home with my parents waiting. I was wiped! Had my Dad not called and given me the heads up that Mom, the match maker, had signed me up to be an adult at some four day camp the afternoon I entered the US of A, grumpy would have been an understatement. But there wasn't much I could do about it at one in the morning, so I just rolled with the punches and knew the girls in my cabin would be the first to sleep each night.
Have I mentioned that I wasn't even allowed to drive to this camp where I would be responsible for teenage lives? Away I went doing me best to avoid Strong man with no avail as my sister was in on this whole scheme. As I'm telling on people here by the end of the weekend he had definitely caught my attention. He was for real and no longer had the long hair.
And that is how our relationship started; completely out of my control. This fact would become a reassurance later on. You see I had been in three relationships before. They all lacked one major thing; God's blessing.
We started off our courtship through emails. At first once a day and then quickly we were writing books to each other. That is when I realized that things could quickly get out of hand so I did all that knew how to do. I went to God and told him I wanted Him to guide me through this. I did not want to repeat the pain of the past. In fact when Strong man would first asked me AND MY FAMILY to go on a day hike with him I spent the entire day after talking with God about how this friendship was bound to fail. So it went each time we saw each other he would hear nothing from me as I searched God for His will. After 11 times of this and three months in I realized that God was in fact blessing our friendship or better defined as *courtship.
I say courtship because I didn't want to put myself in bad positions. As courting is more of a family event I had actually at 22 years old turned Strong man's invitation to be his girlfriend down. And later told him I did not want to hold his hand. I was scared that if our status changed and we began holding hands I wouldn't be able to say no or I would tire of it giving in as I had done in past relationships. I knew if it came to that then I would lose sight of my God.
After a summer full of emails and some face to face visits while camping or hiking with each others families the day finally came where Strong man told me he loved me. My response wasn't exactly what he had expected, "God and I were just talking about this, and I love you too."
Okay wait a minute we need a "Back up the truck" moment here. Let me share with you the Grace shown to me by this man...
*Court as a transitive verb: to seek an alliance with. As an intransitive verb to engage in SOCIAL ACTIVITIES leading to engagement and marriage.
1567. Emails.
1568. Blue frosting, putting the younger sibling in his place.
1569. courtship.
1570. Our families supporting us.
1571. Lots of prayer.
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