The first serious boyfriend was a guy I met at church camp shortly after the move to the coastal state. We went steady for about a year before I felt the relationship was too serious for my age and broke it off. Shortly after that I started a steady relationship that grew even more serious and lasted three years. Eventually I felt God lead me to break off that relationship which I did but it nearly broke my heart to do it. The guy was in the Navy at the time of the break-up. I’m sure I will write much more about this relationship in time to come because it was a huge deal for me and impacted my life in very good and very bad ways.
As I said, I was heartsick after that break-up even though I initiated it; and the guy I mentioned first in this post came over to my house often as a friend of my brother. Even though he came to visit my brother, he often ended up taking me out just to cheer me up. After months of this he confessed that he had never stopped loving me even from that very young age. He didn’t ask me to love him in return, but only to let him spend time with me to take my mind off the loss of my dearly loved ex-boyfriend. Eventually I returned his love and we dated steady again most of our first two years of college. The relationship got pretty rocky when his social group at college and I were antagonistic to each other. I transferred colleges away from the small, private one that he and I attended together out-of-state to a public college close to home where I could commute.
The second college had a program that fit much better with my educational objectives than the first one did. I intensified my course work and completed 6 1/2 years of college in 4 years, and worked so that I could avoid taking on any loan debt. I dated a little bit during the last two years of college but not seriously with anyone. My heart remained true to the first guy.
However, my life changed dramatically during my junior and senior years of college. During my junior year my grandmother (my father’s mother) had some strokes which left her in need of constant care. She came to live with us, and my mother taught me how to care for her. The second semester of my junior year my mother was diagnosed with cancer. My grandmother went to live with my father’s brother’s family. It wasn’t too long before I became my mother’s primary care giver along with my father. My senior year in the fall I took 18 credits, did my student teaching, and helped my father care for my mother, who’s needs became increasingly intensive.
During this time I was in close communication with a friend who had been my boyfriend’s room mate and fraternity brother in the out-of-state college. My mother shocked me when she casually said she didn’t believe I loved that ex-boyfriend as much as I thought I did and she wouldn’t be surprised if this fraternity brother and I were married within a years time. This was almost alarming because he wasn’t even a member of our denomination and we were visiting each other strictly as friends with no thought of dating at all. Still, as Mother got progressively worse and this friend proved devotedly supportive, we did start to contemplate marriage. My mother died on Jan. 2, 1980; and this guy and I were married almost to the exact day one year after my mother had made that casual comment.
I can’t honestly say I was in love with him at the time of our wedding, though I had convinced myself that I did at the time. The fact was I was still in love with ex-boyfriend but saw that as an impossible situation; and besides, I did believe it was God’s will for me to marry the fraternity brother. The rest of this story needs to be told in a few more posts to come.
