The first time he asked me to be his girl, I threw up a hand in disgust and said “As if?!” That was 20+ years ago…

Clint and I didn’t quite grow up together, but we went to the same church as teenagers. I remember wanting a boyfriend but feeling largely unseen by all the boys I was interested in. My best friend and I would bemoan this issue screaming out in the safety and privacy of my car on youth nights.

On one of those nights, Clint approached me in the parking lot and asked me to date him. It went a little something like this:

Clint: I’m sure you know I’m interested in you. I just haven’t made my mind up yet if I want to ask you…or your sister.

Me: Whatever?! Good luck with that! (walks away laughing in disgust)

Because of that one bad approach and my response to it, Clint never tried again. I lumped him in with all the other things wrong with narrow-minded teen boys and never saw the courage it took for him to try in the first place. In reality, Clint was always seeing more quality in me than I saw in him.

Fast forward 10+ years and I had moved away, but he stayed right in Goldsboro and in the same church. Sometimes he thought about me and wondered where I was. Sometimes I thought of him and wondered the same. To him, I was the girl that got away. To me, he was the boy that never changed.

But life did change him. It changed us both.  He got married and had kids. I had multiple failed relationships. He stayed faithful to his church and his family. I traveled the world trying to find my own happy ending.

Marriage and becoming a father mellowed Clint out. He couldn’t be focused on himself or all his solo interests. When his marriage ended, he was heartbroken. He never wanted to be alone and never planned for his relationship to fail; he was all in. She wasn’t. It was a dark time in his life, and it took a long time for him to believe in love again.

Though I was never married, I came close a couple of times. Something was always missing. I knew I had to agree with my future husband on the important foundational issues like faith and finances, but I wasn’t. So I remained frustrated in all my relationships and frustrated single when I was out of them.

In all of this, I cried out to God for my person. “Where is he, God? I can’t do this (life) without him much longer!” Throughout my life, as I thought of the unknown man I would marry, I prayed for God’s protection over him and that God would guard his heart and body and keep it for me. I wrote about him too in poems that are just coming true now. Though I shook my fist at God for His timing, I ultimately trusted Him to take care of my man and be able to speak to him on my behalf.

2023 came and I was crying myself to work every day just so filled with loneliness. I was happy in my own skin but unhappy in relationships. I had tried everything and failed; I didn’t know how to move forward. My constant prayer during that season was “how much longer? How much longer, Lord?!”

On April Fool’s Day, I got a message on Facebook. It was from Clint. He said he wanted to reach out and reconnect as friends. Burned by men and trusting nothing online anymore, I said yes. At least this was a real person I knew, I thought, not all the fake catfishers I’d been recently burned by. “A friendship is harmless,” I told myself.

We talked non-stop for the next several days. I felt my heart thaw and begin to hope again. Maybe…maybe this could be love? Clint felt it too. Although he asked for friendship, he felt God urging him to ask for more. So he pursued me, asked me to be his girlfriend, and on April 5th, we started a relationship.

Right from the start, things were different. Clint treated me like an equal partner in everything. I felt peace just being with him. He felt peace in my presence too. We were attracted to each other and patient with our passion. We respected each other and truly wanted to make each other happy. While we were two very different people, we found a safety and partnership in each other that made our individual lives better. I found comfort in his 30+ year commitment to our childhood church. I found a safe place to share my full Pentecostal faith; a man who not only understood but shared my beliefs. It was the missing piece I had longed for in all my past relationships. My heart finally found its home–in the man I had written off in my childhood.

December 10th, a darkness happened. We lost my father. I mourned all that dad wouldn’t be able to see in my life. On Christmas, Clint and his daughter, Anna, came. Anna decorated the tree with our family’s sentimental ornaments and ribbons from dad’s memorial flowers. Christmas Day, we opened presents and Anna painted my nails. She made me look good for a picture of Clint and I by the tree, but it was all a set up. Instead of a picture, she was filming. Clint knelt to one knee in front of the tree and in front of my mom and Anna, and he asked me to marry him. I was in shock but didn’t have to think about it. I knew my answer was yes.

Later, I found out that Clint had asked my dad’s permission to marry me in July. Dad talked to him and told him “welcome to the family”. Anna and my bestie, Andrea, had helped him pick out the ring. Suddenly my sadness over dad’s passing was overcome by joy. God found a way to include my father in our marriage by guiding Clint to talk to him earlier about it.

Looking back on all this now after a year of dating and engagement, I think God’s timing was perfect. He could have put us together when we were younger when our differences would have driven us apart. He could have put us together partway down the road when our brokenness needed each other but our hearts weren’t open. Instead, God brought us together after failed relationships taught us to be flexible and open to love.

If God had done it any earlier, a lot would be different. As it is, we get to start off life as a family, and I get a daughter who loves to read as much as I do.

Neither Clint nor I are perfect people. We view our relationship as a lifetime commitment, and we stay committed to working through our difficult times as partners. That is what marriage is: it is a living reminder of the partnership God offers us through His Son, Jesus Christ. It’s a continual lifestyle of compromise, integrity, and trust.

I will share more about our journey and the wedding that has been years in the making here on this blog. Subscribe to catch all the news as it comes out!