Joanne’s Side
Well, like most people I’ve wanted to be married and start a family for as long as I could remember and I was convinced I would be the first one to get married, right after High School graduation…well that didn’t happen, in fact the opposite happened and I didn’t even end up going on a date until I was 19! 😄 Things did not go exactly as I planned in those young teenage days.
Skipping forward through one bad relationship and plenty of bad dates, I found myself halfway across the world: new country, new culture, new lease on life and still wondering if a family was in the Father’s plans for me. Joyce Meyer said once, “God is never late, but He never seems to be in a rush either.” Have you ever just been stuck on a loop in what feels like one season with no end? Not just in singleness but maybe trying to find answers, or find healing, or get a promotion, or break an addiction? That was me, singleness was my season. I know people that get married when they’re in their 50’s, so by no means am I saying I had it rough, but man it was a struggle.
I’d fasted, prayed, made declarations, built my self-esteem, traveled the world by myself, worked, made money, lost money, made money, invested, planted, dreamed, researched, studied, learned — all the things that people say you need to do before you’re blessed with a family, and I was worn out and tired of the doing. So finally, last summer, I quit trying and doing and decided to take a break from all of that and “focus on me.” I packed up and went on a 2 week retreat, just me and no phone, no internet, no nothing. All I had was my computer, a couple of books, and a hard drive full of worship music. I didn’t pray about anything or have any agenda, I just read books, took walks, and sang my heart out to the Lord.
By the end of that summer, I wasn’t in a relationship yet, but my perspective changed and I knew the Father’s voice better than I’ve ever known it in my life. So I lived with this assurance of His plan over my life and a vision of what I believed He wanted for my spouse and for my future, but by Thanksgiving 2015, I felt restless again, and a thought came to my head, “what are you doing to put yourself out there?” The truth is you can pray until you’re blue in the face but, you will not meet anyone watching Netflix under your blankets. I did my best to start going out to different events, and gatherings, but one day, I was browsing through Tumblr and an ad for a dating app popped up. I decided to sign up for just one week and see what would happen. So I signed up, answered about 200 questions and waited.
That same week, my car engine exploded, my family was going through a hard time back home, I was having a hard time with work and things just piled up to where I was ready to pack it all up and go home and go back to my mommy, lol. So I totally forgot about this site, until Wednesday – the day before my one week trial ended, when the Woodsman, messaged me. Like I said, I’d had a rough week and I didn’t reply right away because I was planning on quitting the next day. So the next day when I went online to delete my account, I took another look at this guy, and it turned out that we had a 99% compatibility – way more than any “matches” I’d seen on the app, and the key words on his profile were almost identical to mine. (The app described you depending on your answers to the questions, and we had: kind, conservative, old-fashioned)
So I wrote him back and it was magical lol. But really, from the first conversation, it was like we knew each other forever and his questions were super intentional and he opened up from the get go. His heart and the things he said, felt like liquid gold, and I was hooked. We traded contact information pretty much the next day, and got off the app – after he’d taken his time to take pictures of all our conversations so we could remember how we met – did I mention how sweet he is?? About a week later, we started talking on Skype, pretty much all day. We’d Skype until 4AM and he’d have to wake up 3 hours later to go to work, come back from work, and we’d be back on Skype. We lost a lot of sleep, but those were the BEST days! We fell in love and I remember freaking out because I couldn’t believe this was happening after praying about it for so long! I was in love!!
A few weeks after that, I flew across the country to go meet him and his family in Indiana, and we drove cross country to Idaho, then back down to California for a couple of days. We spent probably 60 hours in the car together. I was wrong, THOSE were the best days, lol.
That’s my version of our love story, and it leads to where we are now, about to start a whole other adventure, and to be honest, there’s no one else in this world I would want to adventure with!
Check out his side here 🙂
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