Commitment

It seems that we find exactly what we didn't know we were looking for in the most unusual places and in the most unusual people. I didn't expect to have a standing relationship with Nate when I met him. I just thought we were meeting for coffee and a little chat. I was sure I'd be home in an hour or two and I would go on with my life. I was sure that I was going to have an insignifigant coffee date with a guy who wouldn't matter for longer than the hour it would take to finish the date. I knew that getting involved with a soldier was recipie for disaster and that I wasn't up for putting myself in that place again. I had already been married to a soldier and it did not go well. War, deployment, infidelity (mine), indifference (his), lonliness, and fear were not things I wanted to be a part of again. All of these things were things that I associated with being committed to a soldier. I was just going to have coffee with this soldier and that would be the end of it.
We met at 4:30 in the afternoon on a beautiful summer day. We went to my favorite local coffee shop and got Chai to go. We walked down to the waterfront and sat on a bench and talked. We laughed at the "love chase" of a couple of pigeons and we shared our very different lives with one another.
He was a midwestern farm boy with a brother and two parents who still love one another and have maintained 31 years of marriage. He knew about things like guns and tactical warfare and about fields full of sunflowers and soybeans at his family's farm in Kansas. He knew the ins and outs of his job like no one else I'd ever met before. He had grown up with God as his foundation but in recent years had strayed from the path. He was mellow and calm but had a humble confidence about him.
I was from Vermont and had a life of conflict. God had been nonexistant in my life until just months before our meeting. I knew about things like tattoos, dogs, work with a police agency, and messed up family dynamics. We seemed so different, yet we had so very much in common. We shared the Army experience, I a former soldier, he a current one. I liked to listen to his stories about home and he listened to my stories about life with God and about learning to be a part of a family after so many years without one. What was supposed to be a short coffee date progressed into dinner when both of our prior plans fell through. We sat outside and had pub food while watching the summer crowds in the local marketplace. We talked and talked and talked until a one hour date turned into a six hour date. This evening began our story, our history.

Now, three months later, I look at where we've come and what we've faced together. It has been such a short time yet we have grown so very much. I am beginning to see how genuine and considerate Nate really is. I'm beginning to understand that the kindness and paitence he has are not things for show but are qualities that are deeply ingrained in who he is. I'm learning that he is the first man in my life, aside from my grandfather, whom I can truly trust. The Lord is doing amazing works in my heart and is slowly replacing my brokenness with an understanding of forgiveness and trust. Nate is calm and comforting through this incredibly difficult process of restoration. He is teaching me daily to trust in the Lord and to believe that both he and God care for me and will not desert me. I can feel God's hand in our time together and I know that the strength that God gives us will sustain us in the journey ahead.

Thanks be to God for this journey called Waiting on Nate.