We're Getting Married

Rom. 6:14-15  “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.”

We’re Getting Married

After thirteen years together we’re finally getting married on Wednesday, May 13th. Many will ask, “A Wednesday?”

Yes, a Wednesday at the Historic Courthouse of Minden, Nebraska. (see pic above taken from google pics)

Why a courthouse? Well let me tell you.

When Steven realized I didn’t want all the glitz and glamor of a wedding (been there done that) I think we both realized it might be time to get married. We’ve had a tough road laid out for us in the beginning, what with meeting online, both committing sin neither of us were too happy about committing. (He being divorced, me being married but separated kept us from nuptials.)

We both talked about marriage, we both wanted it but with obstacles in our way and climbing hurdles the task became too much. I won’t say money hindered us because any time we needed ANYTHING the good Lord provided for us, so it wasn’t necessarily money keeping us from marriage.

Many of my friends and readers know about Steven going blind a few years ago, so there was that. Then we had doctor appointments upon doctor appointments, in Omaha no less and yes funds came out of the woodwork to get us from point A to point B.

Our church made it quite clear a few times (not just once) that they could not marry us as long as we were living in sin! They told us point blank that we needed to separate for a few months, date other people and if we found our way back to one another than this is what God has brought together.

Umm…wait, God didn’t bring us together thirteen years ago? For crying out loud we met through a screen! God had no hand in that? We chatted online for ten months before my husband threw his son and me out of the house and told us he never wanted to see us again. (Trust me on this one, it had more to do with his mental instability than any friend I had online.)

My ex had been struggling for YEARS (I stayed 20 of them) and there was no help or aid on this earth that could see this man through (and to this day still hasn’t). He wanted nothing to do with his son, he only wanted to control and obsess over me and a friend on the net came and saved my life! THAT is how *I* see it.

To this day I still say that it was God who brought Steven to my front door. While on the net, there were many girls and guys who knew my predicament and wanted to help but Steven is the only one who loaded up his truck and made his way from Texas to Baltimore to save me, a damsel in distress.

Where was my family? They knew my ex was obsessed with me and a control freak and my brother-in-law even tried to get his minister to help. It didn’t help, my ex just tried to control and manipulate that situation too. My family was giving up on him and saw no way to help my son and ME so I left and have NEVER looked backed!

I chose the road less traveled! Now to be told by the church and the very people I was trusting with my life that Steven and I had to separate, put me in a whirlwind of confusion. Where would I go? I can’t go back home. I don’t want to SEE other men. I don’t want to separate. Those were the rules. Rules we never agreed to so we settled on a courthouse wedding where the LAW wouldn’t deny us.

Thirty-seven years of always being controlled and owned I was thrown into a new state, Texas, miles and miles away from home for the first time in my life. The first weeks maybe months I was scared, so much so anxiety attacks took over and many nights of tears were being shed for my loneliness and my son who was seven, who didn’t understand one thing going on around him.

Steven and I grew. We fell in love. I was urged to divorce my (ex) husband after all of his false promises to do so fell apart. To this day I don’t even know if he knows we’re divorced. I do know he is living in Florida somewhere with his brother, but he still has no contact with the son he left behind.

The light at the end of the tunnel, Nebraska, became our saving grace. In Texas, Steven was going blind and he wanted to be near his family. His family and the good Lord saw to it that our journey was well blessed. A home, food and a good family surrounding us, we were well on our way. ONLY with God’s blessing did we get this far; and now we’re asked to separate by our Church, whom we’ve grown to love and trust?

I asked God what He wanted and well, marriage was the answer to our dilemma and again HE said He’d bless our journey. I’m not going to get into what God said to me, I DO have some things I keep private. I’m glad Steven and I took the time to get to know each other and grow in love together before we jumped into marriage. Nowadays marriage is not a sacred ceremony, people do it to just get it done and over with but we waited for God and HIS blessing on this union and so here we are.

We could have searched and found a church in Nebraska to marry us but we kind of feel let down by the entire institution. Don’t get me wrong; I understand completely that it is OUR sin that was not accepted and I’m okay with that, but you know what? Jesus died for OUR sin and HE accepts us.

Rom. 8:2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

Instead of a rinky-dink newly built courthouse, I chose the Historic courthouse of Minden Nebraska, built by the some of the very first settlers in the state of Nebraska.

God has blessed our journey and has brought us to this path in life. May He continue to watch over and fruitfully bless our journey.

Love Online Gone Right

Matt. 22:30 For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.

Love Online Gone Right

The year was 2002. I had just discovered the internet via a free computer my bro-in-law had given me. I’ve told this story many times over the years but it is worth repeating because some things have changed and the backstory always gives you the broader picture.

My niece introduced me to a chatroom and the rest is history so to speak. I found it interesting that you could be this anonymous person and no one ever had to know the real you. Little did I know I was some sort of wave of electrical magnetism and could feel these people coming through my screen who were also anonymous.

I met Steven as an anonymous user and we became fast friends. I was married, he was married and we came together as friends who just needed someone to talk to. Little did I know we’d complete one another. He’d finish my sentences, I’d finish his; we found common interests that I had never shared with my husband of nineteen years.

It wasn’t a friendship based on comparison of our partners; it was a relationship being formed by the universe in some way. We knew it, our partners knew it and we all knew that there was something here that we couldn’t just walk away from, even though both spouses tried to pull us apart. This kind of soul meeting happens very few times in a lifetime and if you’ve ever been a part of a true soul-find, you know what I’m talking about.

Ten months later we took the plunge into the unknown and we met in person. Steven just coming off of a divorce and me with a marriage in shambles, and a child who needed more in life and more than my ex could ever give him.

The first couple of years were our feeling-each-other-out years. The discovery years I should say. This is where we would get to know each other in a physical sense instead of the months of a spiritual journey that we rode on. All new learning experiences for me since he was only the second man in my entire life that I ALLOWED to get into my mind; mentally, spiritually, and physically.

It wasn’t all rainbows and unicorns. At times I thought this was the biggest mistake in my life but then the thought of going back home scared me more than persevering and seeing what this future held for me. There were times I hated this man so much but the love for him was deeply embedded inside of me and the thought of a life without him was scarier than a life WITH him.

We found a church about the second year we were together. I was very committed to Christ while he had strayed from Christ over the years and wanted to return to Him. This made me very happy since my ex wouldn’t even think of church. Funny, how could I be so embroiled in Christ while neither man had even known the POWER of Him?

Then Steven went blind and my love for him turned into compassion. I was seeing him in a new light while he was relinquished to not seeing at all. I began wondering if this was the reason God brought us together so I could take care of him and show him the way into the Light of the Lord, hmm. Being blind showed Steven things he could have never experienced had he had his sight and I could feel our love deepening through this trial. After two years of being blind, the miracle of his sight was restored.

We had not really talked about marriage. We had both been there, done that sort of thing. I only just recently got a divorce and marriage just was not an option. Even though our church frowned on us living in sin, they did not understand the complexities of our relationship. We’re not bound together because of physical attraction or what we can give each other physically, our spirits binds us together.

Think of it like this:

We have this cute little electric heater sitting to my right. It’s black with a windowed front and the lattice-look that allows a fake fire to be seen behind; it is very attractive to the eye. We turn it off at night which means no electrical current is running through it. I unplug it sometimes and leave the cord just lying on the floor.

To me, this is what people come up against when they meet someone in the physical sense. They find themselves attracted to the physical person, but they haven’t plugged in the mechanism to see if it works. When they do plug in the relationship, it needs to work so like the heater, it is then turned on.

When you meet someone online, your spirits are plugged in and turned on right from the get go. It seems a little confusing and trying at times to understand what the connection is and where it came from, but if you don’t unplug it, it works. You feel the electrical current running through your system and it makes sense to keep that connection through the electrical vent of the cosmos.

Our church wanted us to turn-off our relationship for a while and see if we found our way back to one another. Sorry people, we’ve been plugged in for thirteen years now. We don’t have a relationship that turns on and off, we have a cosmic connection that can’t be unplugged from the universe.

Let me just say this, God is the current running through our veins so when we unplug from one another, we would be unplugging from Him and His connection and I’m not willing to do that.

Just last week Steven asked me to look at something…wedding bands. I’m not a fancy-scmancy kinda gal and he knows me so well I loved what he was looking at. Wait! Wedding bands? Is this a proposal? He said no in his rye only-I-can-understand sense of humor. I told him that it’s not the ring that matters; it’s what it symbolizes that does.

We’ve been through love, hate, trust, mistrust, doubts, fears, joy and sorrow and now after thirteen years together, an online connection gone right, we are now discussing a marriage that will bind us together for eternity. Let’s hope the ‘talk’ of marriage leads to one.