Unlikely: An Early Valentine

I was already considered an old maid by some by the time I turned 25. And although I was beginning a new chapter of my life, I was scared.  This new chapter involved relocating 350 miles from my home.  It involved moving to a state where I knew absolutely no one.  And at that time, the only thing of which I was certain was the seemingly foolish fact that I was supposed to make that move.

So I arrived in town without a place to live, without a job to pay for a place of my own, and about to enter a doctoral program I had found as the result of a wrong number.

I am still amazed at the goodness of some people.  I spent the next two months living with acquaintances of my father.  They had never met me; all they knew was that I needed a place to stay.  After those two gracious months, a pastor of a church I really wasn't even attending yet introduced me to two other woman who agreed to let me become their third roommate.  It had been an exhausting experience.

A few months later, I attended a retreat with other people from church.  It was there, in a "resort" area that included tents and port-a-pots, that I met a loud guy who insisted on calling me Hillbilly Girl.  His name was Checkered and the  nickname he gave me only added to the misery of the week-end.

Inexplicably, a date soon followed.  A date of food which made me run the nearest bathroom for the next two hours.  A date where the nearest bathroom was down an impossibly long, steep series of stairs at a hockey game.  In between bathroom trips, I tried to show a modicum of interest in what I thought was an incomprehensible sport. By the time the date was over, we were both a little relieved.

During the next year or two, we remained part of the same social circle.  We dated everyone but each other.  He remained a loud extrovert; I remained a quieter  introvert.  He made money and spent it.  I made much less money and saved it.  He had no college degree; I was working on my fourth.  He cleaned his apartment every week and made his bed every morning.  I never cleaned or made my bed.  And all the while I asked the Lord to bless the man who would be my husband someday - assuming it would never be Checkered. 

But as our parallel lives continued, I found that Checkered was a man of honor and kindness.  And in time, while he was in Africa building a school, I realized that my life seemed empty without him.  I will never know how I was brave enough to share that with his sister - and to be trite:  the rest is history.

After 14 years of marriage and four kids, I can still attest to the fact that he is louder than I am.  He is more extroverted than I am.  And he is still a kind and honorable man who doesn't mind cleaning the house for his messy wife.

And truthfully, I absolutely love it when he says, "Hillbilly Girl."