And thus ends that particular aspect of our story. Before we were lovers, we were friends. Before we were friends, we were Christians. Our foundation was Jesus Christ and that allowed us to put everything that has come into our lives since this time into its proper perspective. No matter the pain, no matter the circumstances, whatever life throws at us, we both know that Jesus has saved us from our sins and that we will see Him after death. That is why we know we will have a truly Happily Ever After.
I don’t mean to preach here, but how can I not when the center of both of our lives is Jesus Christ? Mrs B and I are side by side, marching towards the same goal.
Wishing you all a blessed Sabbath day as I wrap up this particular series. It has been fun to share it with you all and I hope you enjoyed getting to know some of our past history.
For me, this was a very big issue. Moving from the West Coast to the Northern East Coast was about as much of a change as you could get and I was afraid it might be more than Mrs B could handle. One of my former Bibleschool classmates was from Georgia and she had married an alumnist and moved up north. And she was absolutely miserable, to the point of seriously wondering if she’d made the wrong choice in who she had married. I saw all of that and while it resolved just fine, the poor guy was made miserable for quite a time. I was concerned I would have something of the same experience.
Ha!
That first winter, we had a horrible icestorm, one of the worst since the 90’s. EVERYTHING was covered in ice and people lost power for weeks. And Mrs B loved every single second of it. She loved going outside and making a snowman (she still does this at least once a season even now). She loved driving to work while going half the speed limit. While she wasn’t a huge fan of the cold, she did like that she could cuddle up to me for warmth and I wouldn’t push her away. I tend to run a bit hot and in the summer, another body next to mine is just too much for me but during the winter when it’s cold, it is just fine. So she quickly learned to take advantage of the season while she could, hahahaa. We went snowshoeing, we went sledding. We never went ski’ing but that had more to do with both of us not being the athletic type or enjoying that kind of thing.
So, our first winter set the tone for the years to come. Mrs B was happy and I was happy that she was happy. It has worked out pretty well so far, so I’m not inclined to mess with the formula 😀
Next week will be the Happily Ever After ending, so please look forward to it.
The church I was attending at the time celebrated the 3 major feasts that are written about in the Old Testament in the Bible. It was a time to gather together, meet old friends, go to meetings (and boy howdy, there were a lot of meetings), and meet new friends. It was also one of the best times to introduce someone, as the grapevine was pretty alive. So everybody who knew me got to meet Miss Library. It really was obvious we were in love and that marriage was inevitable, but I was so introspective (too much so and still am) that I “wasn’t sure”. It really took me awhile to realize just how in love I was with her.
I was a library regular. Every weekend I’d go to the library and load up on books to read for the week. One of my big fears was running out of books to read during the week, so I always took a big stack. I became a familiar and knew the librarians and got to know the Head Librarian. So it wasn’t a big stretch to get them to open the Wadlicus up one Sunday afternoon so I could “show” Miss Library the library and spring the proposal. She tells me she had no idea. I believe her because she’s very similar to me in the subtlety regards, ie, we’re as subtle as hammers. But it was perfect. We both loved books and what could be more fitting than a proposal in a whole building dedicated to books?
Stay tuned for next week’s post-wedding adventure in… The Land of Snow and Ice!
After I had gotten permission to court Mrs B (Miss Librarian at the time), we decided it was time for her family to meet me. So we all (Mr and Mrs Parental Pod, Sir Grumpy, Miss Librarian and me) went to Hawaii for a week. The incident described above really happened. Mrs Parental Pod was driving us and I had nervous energy from being on the plane and me and my friends had always played the points game. Basically, you would describe how you would/could hit a pedestrian or bicyclist and we made up rules about how many points. Old ladies were worth the most but if you could convince everyone else in the car that you could make a bicyclist bounce or even double hit them (car doors were very popular in the game), you could get triple points, thus increasing your score very quickly. Unfortunately, if you don’t have a dark sense of humor, well, the game cross across as very macabre at best and downright psychopathic at worst. It was probably one of the worst blunders I made in our relationship and it had barely begun.
But it was Hawaii. So between the sunshine and everything, it was ok. We went traveling every day and packed in a lot of sight seeing. We visited the Polynesian Cultural Center one day and that is what the title is based on. They had these big man-made waterfalls with tiki torches all along them so you had fire and water all together and it was beautiful. I took a ukulele lesson and Miss Librarian sang “You are my Sunshine” while I bravely tried to accompany her on said ukulele. We visited Pearl Harbor, some beaches and the Dole Plantation. We also visited Admiral and Mrs Stamps, which was great. Admiral Stamps had been a freshman during my senior bibleschool year and we had a good bond. Throw in that Miss Librarian and I had met at their wedding and well, they had a lot of gratitude from us.
And that is our little adventure in the Land of Fire and Water. Stay tuned when we return next week with a life changing visit to The Libraricus!
There’s obviously waaaaaaaay more to our meeting than that, as we had met randomly on Xanga (a now defunct blogging platform) and our shared interest in a Saturday Sabbath led us to email and become friends. Still in the days of dial up so things went much slower. We never thought we’d have a chance to meet because of being on opposite sides of the US, but when the wedding of my friend “Stamps” occurred, we decided to meet in real life. I was with my group of Bibleschool Graduate friends and she was with her brother, so everyone was safe. It was almost literally love at first sight, but even that was tempered by the several years we had had of getting to know each other as friends. We had a rock solid foundation too, as we were both very dedicated Christians. So we began courting.
What came next? Well, I guess you’ll have to come back next Saturday for ….. * cue dramatic music *
So there’s the beginning of Project Christmas Present. Obviously, our names have been very cleverly redacted and with my grand computer graphics skills nobody will be able to tell what was even edited.
In my December R&R post, I made mention of a gift for Mrs B that took some time to create. It was small book, about 20 pages or less where I told a fable’ized version of our initial meeting and what came after. I commissioned some art work for it and with some help used Snapfish to put it all together.
With it being so many pages, I have decided to post a page or four each Saturday until I’ve put it all up. I won’t be able to use the gothic font or marble’ized background, and I’ll be changing the names, but other than that….. hahahaaa. I even tried to see if I could go back into Snapfish and download it as a series of images, but no cigar. Since I ordered it, they won’t let me edit it or work on it.
I thought about taking pictures of it all, but since it has our real names and real names of some of our friends, well, that’s just not an option either. Sometimes it is tough to be paranoid 😉 I am hoping to have this all posted by the end of February.
