My Story
Let me say first that romance is hard work. It takes vulnerability and openness on both sides. It takes a willingness to open oneself up to being hurt and the maturity to forgive the one that hurts them. The truth is that you can only be hurt by those you care about.
Now for my story........
My husband and I first met in high school. He was what is now called a player and I was a nerdy nobody that, according to him, hung out with the wrong crowd (Band and ROTC boys). We did not get along AT ALL. In fact, our one and only date in high school was in the form of an apology. You see, he had this "system" set up with a girl who worked in the attendance office. He hated homeroom so when I would mark him absent from homeroom (I was chosen to take attendance by the teacher) she would erase the mark, allowing him to skip homeroom every day. The system worked beautifully until he came up with a severe case of the flu and was so sick he forgot to call his little friend in the attendance office. The next thing he knew, he was being summoned by the principal because he had attended homeroom for two weeks but skipped all his classes! Of course, being a teenager, he said it was all my fault.
I was furious. So I spent the next month avoiding him like the plague. I would actually turn around in the hall and go to class a different way just to avoid all contact with him. My avoidance of him soon began to ruin his reputation as a lady's man. In order to save his rep he apologized and offered to take me out. In the interest of peace (after all it was the 70's) I agreed. We went out, had a good time, and that was that. He went his way and I went mine.
The summer of my freshman year in college, I was home and working part-time for some spending money. He was home on leave from the army and was looking at his high school annual and decided to call me up. I was dating inexclusively then and agreed to go out with him. It was a lot more fun this time than when we were in high school. We dated that summer and through the next school year. In November of my sophmore year, he asked me to marry him. I will never forget my response, "My daddy will kill me." I knew that Daddy wanted me to finish school but I wanted to marry him. So we headed home for Thanksgiving break and told Daddy that I wanted to marry him and reassured Daddy that I would graduate. The wedding was set for August of the next year.
It was a beautiful, romantic
wedding complete with heart-shaped candlabras and me in my mother's wedding dress. There before God and about 400 of my "closest" friends we promised to love, honor and cherish each other until death us do part.
We packed up our meager belongings and started our life together. It was not long before things started to go horribly wrong. First started the name calling and the incessant fighting. Before long it all escalated to pushing and shoving. Finally, only a year into our marriage, the hitting started.
For the first 13 years of our marriage we could have been the poster couple for domestic violence. It all started with name calling and yelling. Then it progressed to pushing and shoving. It finally culminated in hitting.
We even followed the cycle perfectly. Things would start to get tense with the tension building to a point where you could reach out and touch it and with us avoiding each other as much as possible. Then something would trigger the violence. Most of the time it was something small- an unsatifactory dinner, noisy children or a call from a creditor. After the violence was over, the "honeymoon" would start with the flowers, presents, and yet another resolution to never let it happen again.
In December of our 13th year of marriage, we separated. We knew that if we stayed together, someone was going to die and neither one of us wanted that because even in our warped way, we loved each other. However, God did not intend, apparently, for us to divorce. We entered a program for couples suffering from domestic violence and began what turned into a 2 year counseling cycle. We each got individual counseling and group counseling, our boys got counseling, we got marriage counseling and the whole family got family counseling. During nine months of this process, we remained separated. On our 14th anniversary, we reconciled with a renewing of our vows before our children determined to start anew.
As imperfect as we were as a couple (one counselor called our marriage a match made in hell), God chose to perform a miracle in our hearts. Of the hundreds of thousands of couples that passed through that program we are one of two couples that are still together. To do that God had to change our hearts and our "want to's". He taught us how to relate in love to one another and how to forgive one another without saying what we did to one another was okay.
It has not been easy. My husband was shipped to Desert Storm in December after we were reconciled in August. That was the longest seven months we have ever spent. Thanks to an overly ambitious commander, my husband had to do body duty following the bombing of a barracks and suffers to this day from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I have had two hip replacements and suffer from a chronic disease that effects my equilibrium as well as osteoarthritis in all of my joints and my spine. We have each had to learn to take care of the another and to love one another unconditionally.
As I sit here and reflect back, it all seems just a little bit unreal. There has been no violence in our marriage for 18 years and we have come to love and appreciate the other as God created them. We are not perfect in our love for one another but I can honestly say that because of God choosing to work a miracle in our lives, we would definitely be willing to die for each other and are striving to be all as a couple that God created us to be.
Are we the perfect couple? Not by a long shot. What we are is a forgiven pair of sinners who almost waited too long to find out that fighting and fussing between believers is not glorifying to God and that when we feel like we just can't love anymore, God will love the other person through us.
This is just a small part of our 31-year romance story to let you know that a romance does not have to be perfect to be romantic. My husband and I have shared many romantic moments. They have been as simple as an evening in front of the fire and as elaborate as a week in Gatlinburg. They are those moments that we hang on to when we are totally outdone with the other. It is the romance in our lives that has kept our relationship interesting and fulfilling for the past 31 years.
Every romance has a story. I would love to hear yours. Why not take a minute and stop by my forum and tell me about your most romantic moments. I will publish the best ones in the book I am working on. I look forward to hearing from you.
