Photograph- Welcome Home

One of the most emotional, perfectly-captured photos I’ve ever seen.

Taken by David Delisio

How I Met My Wife

So, I’m married.

Everything really has changed in a unique and wonderfully-surprising way. I’m not quite sure where to begin, but I know that every great story must be told, so here is my attempt at ours.

I met Ashley Anne Cooney three summers ago. The whole thing was rather serendipitous and unexpected. We, who had attended the same college for years, were brought together weeks before both of us would graduate. She needed help planning an outdoor party, and evidently, I had achieved some kind of superstar barbecuer status. Or, she just picked the guy with the brightest-orange hair. Either way, I was honored.

That summer, we both stayed in town after graduation while all of our friends took off. A small college town is a pitiful sight when all the students have gone home. There were four or five of us who hung out on a regular basis, and Ashley was part of that group.

What’s particularly strange about that whole summer is that I had no intention of sticking around. I was young and adventurous, and young adventurers don’t stay put in one place too long. I wanted to go to Texas for my third summer at camp, but I heard the Lord tell me to stay. I can’t say that I didn’t fight it most of the summer, but even when I got an offer in July to come down and help (they were desperate), I had to turn it down. I knew God was up to something.

Ashley and I became friends pretty quickly and before long, we were each other’s main confidante. It was such a strange and beautiful summer, full of wonderful memories. One night, we stayed up all night on my front porch telling stories just because we could. Another night, I took her for a walk to go star-gazing in the football field, where I dropped the infamous “So, here’s the deal…” line, told her how I felt about her, and later held her hand. There were even times when we cried together. But the summer ended, and I left for another adventure, not promising anything, except that I would pray for her.

And I did–every day for a year. We wrote letters and talked on the phone occasionally. We went out of our way to see each other, even if it meant driving hours to share a few precious minutes together. The next summer, we confessed that we loved each other. We both moved to Nashville in the fall, got jobs and separate apartments, and tried to see if we could deal with seeing each other on a regular basis. We had some trials, but persevered and decided that we didn’t really want to do life without each other. That following spring, I proposed to her, and on January 12, 2008, I got to marry my best friend.

There are a hundred details I left out, but that’s the gist of how I met my wife. She is the most interesting, fun, and beautiful person I have ever known. She makes my life interesting and surprises me often. I have learned more about God, love, and commitment from her than I have from any other person. I am lucky to have ever met her and consider it an honor to be called her husband.

Jeff Goins is originally from Illinois, but he currently lives in Nashville, TN with his wife. He works for Adventures In Missions, a Christian nonprofit. He loves music, good books, and traveling. You can email him at jeff.goins@gmail.com and visit his blog http://jeffgoins.myadventures.org.

Life’s Many Twists

Your story could be in progress and you don’t even know it yet.

I’m one of those people who, while I’m not 100% sure exactly what I believe, I know that I believe in something. I believe that people enter our lives for a reason, though we don’t always get to know exactly what that reason is. I’ve had too many “coincidences” happen for me to believe otherwise. Sometimes things happen in life, wheels are often set in motion and we have no idea where we’re going to be taken…until we get some distance and perspective, and it all makes sense. Life is mysterious like that. A person that you meet in passing this week could end up having a huge impact on your life….or you on theirs.

You might even end up falling in love.

My story with CBG started about a year or so ago.

in November of 2006.

in 1992. I was 18 and off at University, full of enthusiasm for life and a go-get ‘em attitude.

My first year of University I lived in Rez. For the most part I kinda hated it. I made a few friends, and met a lot of “weird people”, too. One of these people was this one strange chick who I was never really friends with, but we knew a lot of the same people, and partied in the same vicinity. It was a small University, everybody knew everybody – especially in residence. The next year she was in my creative writing class, and gained a reputation for being a bit of a suck up and all around weird person.   I don’t really remember her after that. I lived off campus after first year and just went on with my life. She was just one of those semi-memorable characters whose name went down in my University history: “Hey, remember that weird chick who –?”

Life went on. I dated, broke up. Met my future husband, moved cities, married, had kids.

Fast forward to November, 2006.

I was married, my daughters were 3 1/2 and 1 1/2. One night while online, I stumbled across  this same strange chick on a local email discussion group (she lives in the same province as me). She’s got a name that isn’t easily forgotten. I found her blog link and started reading. She had a pretty inspirational story to tell about her life since leaving university, and I quickly saw that she and I shared some of the same philosophies about life and child rearing. For reasons I didn’t really understand or even stop to analyze, I fired her off an email.

Turns out, she remembered me too.

Inspired by her blog, I made the decision to start one of my own. We linked to each other, and began reading each other’s blogs daily. My first “blog buddy”! Sure, she was a little…ahem… ‘eccentric’, but we had a lot in common, including training for and running our first marathon at the same time.

(CBG’s gonna show up on the scene soon, I promise. heh.)

Fast forward again, to one year ago.

I was struggling with depression. I had just started taking meds for it the month before when I’d reached a pretty scary point. I’d shown some improvement, but was slowly coming to the conclusion that my deep unhappiness with my marriage was the cause of it.  I continued to blog – it was one of the things that kept me from completely drowning in grief and sorrow and all the other negativity that I was experiencing.

I happened to notice on my University friend’s blog a link to another blog, a “real life” friend of hers (turns out they went to high school together).  To further add to the irony, apparently it was this same chick who encouraged him to start blogging in the first place, too. I followed the link and started reading. He was a single dad, a nice guy, with great musical taste and a sense of humour that I could definitely relate to.  Oh – and cute, too.  Actually, exactly “my type”. You know, for a married chick and all.

I kept reading – daily.

No, no, it wasn’t like THAT. I was still with my husband. But y’all know what it’s like when you start reading someone’s blog. You get all caught up in the itty-bitty details of their lives. I liked reading about his daughter visiting and his weekends with his son. I liked reading his “stuck in an afternoon meeting” blog entries. I recoiled in disgust when he ate his first “alligator pizza”. I read with genuine concern when he wrote about the death of a family member. I felt a silent soar of excitement when he got to surprise his daughter for a one day visit. I was there, reading, when he was going through a particularly rough time emotionally, but not really writing much about it. I remember thinking that I wanted to reach out in some way when that happened, but had no clue as to how to do it. So I remained a silent, concerned stranger out there in the blogosphere. I was an anonymous stalker reader, only venturing out to comment once or twice in those initial 5 or 6 months or so.

As I read along, I often found myself wondering why such a great guy was still single. I would read about him feeling lonely, wondering when (if?) he was going to find someone. I distinctly remember wishing that he’d find a woman who deserved such a great man. I wanted this guy to find love…because clearly he deserved it. I knew that when he did, I would celebrate right along with him.

Of course, I was going through issues of my own. It was in August when I finally succumbed to my own personal issues and made the heartbreakingly painful decision to end my marriage. The depression was still looming, and I was sinking even deeper, despite the meds.

Still I kept on reading his blog, as I slogged through my own issues, succumbed to depression, reaching the point of near nervous breakdown. In many ways, my life was falling apart around me. Having the escape of reading about other people’s lives via their blogs, was a useful escape for me.

Then one night in November, completely out of the blue, I had a dream about him.

No……not like that, you filthy people. Eeeesh.

The only thing I remembered about this dream afterward was snuggling up close to him, and looking up into his face, smiling…and him smiling back at me. Afterward, I remembered feeling warm and loved and accepted. And most of all …. safe. That was something I hadn’t felt in a while at that point.

It was one of those dreams that when I woke up afterwards, I felt like I’d actually spent time with him. It was weird. I felt compelled to do what any stalker normal lonely person would do – I looked him up on Facebook. I fired off a friend request.  And whaddaya know? He accepted it.

After I saw that he had, I sent him this message:

“Glad to see that my friend request wasn’t *too* creepy……………………………………………………………..much.”

And, well… it all just snowballed from there. Who knew that this adorable, funny, 80s-tunes-loving geek would be such a fantastic flirt? That first night I believe we talked and flirted for about 7 hours straight. We experienced an instant click on a level that I have never experienced with another person before.

I found myself filled with that warm sense of safety that I’d been longing for. Talking to him thrilled and exhilarated and terrified me all at the same time.

Since that night last November it’s been a crazy ride for the two of us. Hell, I had NO IDEA, 4 months ago, when things ended between us that we would EVER end up back here again….more in love than ever. I had even LESS idea, a year ago, that this man whose blog I started reading would end up being someone who has, no matter what else, changed my life for the better. I certainly had no clue at all that the crazy chick from my rez all those years ago would end up being the connecting link to someone I now couldn’t imagine life without.

All I can do at this point is remain intensely grateful that life has taken me where it has.

I guess the moral of this sixteen-years-in-the-making story is to simply remain open to the people who enter your life, and to the experiences you have. You never know which direction life is going to take you. There are likely forces at work that you can’t even imagine.

Pretty exciting, isn’t it?

Momma Sunshine is a 30-something single mom of two beautiful little girls, on a journey of self-exploration, looking to find joy and truly live in the moment. You can follow her story at http://mommasunshine.wordpress.com .