Two Years and Counting

Today Traveling Man and I celebrate a blissful two years in marriage. It has been one of the toughest, most painful and yet beautiful journeys I have ever walked. I wanted to take a moment of time to share with you some of our testimony on how we got to where we are. Traveling Man and I are excited to eventually share it all one day!

Traveling Man and I met while I was working as a leasing consultant for an apartment community in Cornelius, NC. In fact, we met on May 31, 2010. I remember the date so well because it was Memorial Day. Him and his buddy were touring apartments and making small talk. He tells the story by saying, "I was immediately attracted to you and your personality."

They eventually moved in and the pursuit began. You see, that is one of the biggest differences between Traveling Man and any other guy I've ever been with. He pursued me relentlessly. He would put in dumb work orders (like a light bulb change just to chat), drop off his rent check personally (when we had a drop box on the outside), and would invite me out to dinner almost every time we saw each other.

But you see. I was a single mom to a beautiful two-year-old daughter. I didn't have time for dating. I didn't have time to entertain and I didn't really have time for dinner. 

Finally he walked into my office and said, "I know you get a lunch, you can't say you don't, lets go to lunch."

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Lunch was the start of something amazing. We were inseparable after that. Traveling man has this way of making me laugh regardless of what mood I am and has an amazing personality. He is also extremely good looking.

All of this was during my BC days (before Christ, or before I was truly dedicated to Him) and so we made some poor choices that would affect our future forever.

We kept our relationship quiet at first and also were very cautious around Kaidance. She would only be around him the first few months in social settings but honestly took instantly to him. Things seemed to be going so smooth and we were both so happy.

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To put a long story short, at the end of October 2010 we got some news that would rock our world.

We found out we were expecting a sweet little girl. It was a complete shock because when we found out I was already 12 weeks pregnant. (I was on birth control at the time). We had conceived Sophia the first time we were intimate.

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This was just one of many challenges the enemy would throw at us in our four years total we've been together. Traveling man and I will both admit though that our first year of official marriage (yes, we lived together before we were married, that's another story of God's grace!) was a complete disaster.

During our first year we grew a lot in the first five months. We joined our church officially, we both started serving in kids ministry and on the setup team and we began a life group. We were growing physically, spiritually, and emotionally and the enemy hated it. 

The enemy hates good marriages. He doesn't want marriages to succeed because it would mean that families succeeded, and kids would be healthy, and the church would grow. I understood though despite what was going on in the marriage that God had us together for a purpose. That He would bless our marriage and that I was in this for a lifetime.

Traveling man took our vows seriously. We opted for tattoo rings as a permanent sign of our commitment and love. We knew that regardless of what either of us did we would remain together.

That first year we experienced financial turmoil, serious broken trust, a custody fight for our eldest, court proceedings, pain, living separately for three and a half months, amongst other things. Truly according to the world's standards we should have separated. We should have divorced. We should have given up and walked away. We were even told by a few people, "You can get those tattoos covered."

But we believe in God's healing power. We believe in His restoration. We believe in His grace. Psalm 32:1 "Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered." We believed that through Christ's blood that our sins were covered. And that God would honor and bless our marriage if we pushed through.

The Lord HAS blessed us.

We have three beautiful children, our marriage improves every day. We love deeply, forgive often, and pray together daily. We serve one another and our children daily and we live our lives according to God's word.

I know this is a just snippet of our journey and that some of it may not make sense (we're working on a book!) but please hear this. God loves marriage and hates divorce. There is nothing that is too deep, too painful, or too "gone" that God cannot pull up, heal or restore. 

Be Blessed,