Today is our 6th wedding anniversary. I honestly can’t believe how the time has flown! I feel like every year has been even more wonderful than the last, and I’ve loved every minute we’ve spent together.
Every year that I’ve posted about our anniversary people have asked about our story. I haven’t done a post about it in the past because I never know if anyone finds that kind of thing interesting, and this blog is after all about designing clothing not about our life… but since I’m feeling extra sappy today, i’ll share it, just this once :) So if you’re interested read on – and if not, no worries.
I think one of the reasons I don’t tell the story of Chris and I very often is that it is so perfectly intertwined with our faith that I’m always sure I will offend someone. People seem to get upset pretty much any time you start talking about God, and to be honest, for me it’s hard (if not impossible) to separate our story from how God has worked in our lives, and from my own very personal story, which I feel started a long long time before we even came close to meeting.
Anyone who knows me very well knows that I am a very passionate Christian. I have been for a long time, and was blessed to grow up with parents who were very strong in their faith, and taught me everything about life that was ever important. For me the story begins at age 12. I’m not one of those girls who spent my entire life dreaming of getting married, and planning out my perfect wedding day. I find that… a little odd (though I’m sure people find me odd too hehehe). But, I did notice around that age that my friends were beginning to date. They were also beginning to have their hearts broken – and to be honest, that’s something I really wanted no part of. I wanted something else. So I prayed that God would keep me until I met the man that I would marry. That he would be my first everything – and the very act of being asked out would be the sign he was the one. I told my parents, and they bought me a ring which I wore every day (until my wedding day) to remind me of the promise I’d made to God to wait. I’m sure if I’d told anyone other than my parents they would have thought I was nuts. But I believed 100% that God would do this. I had faith. Now I’m not saying I never in all my teenage years had a crush, because that would be silly. But I felt like my heart was protected, and spent those years walking in a definite confidence not worrying about whether I should date anyone, or what people thought of me – i knew it wasn’t my time yet – and i always look back on those years as such a beautiful, innocent, happy time.
Fast forward to college. And something interesting happened. My parents were good friends with a couple who one day very nervously told them at lunch that their son had given his life to God. He had changed very drastically, and they didn’t know what to do with him, since they themselves were not Christians. Knowing my family were Christian and not crazy, and that I went to the same college as their son, they asked if we could meet so that he could know some other young Christians. My mom mentioned this in passing to me, and as things often happen, we all forgot. Until almost a year later when I was picking up a Maths assignment in class, and saw Chris’ name on a paper. It made me laugh when I realised he was in my class – so I told my mom – who suddenly feeling very guilty about never organising for us to meet, called him and told him I was in his class.
The next day we met – and I immediately regretted not trying to meet him before. My heart stopped when he walked up to me. My parents still tease me about how much I gushed about him when I came home that day (something I had never done before) – and Chris tells me this was the day he fell in love with me. We didn’t see each other again until the final exam, a few days after my Grandmother had passed away, when he apparently tried to ask me out or something, and I didn’t notice? I suppose it’s fair to say I had a lot on my mind that day (but seriously, who asks people out at exams? hehee)
Third time is in fact the charm. We didn’t see each other again till the next semester… which was just enough time for us to both obsess about whether we’d ever meet again. We were in a Christian Union meeting (which sounds a little odd, but was actually just like a church service during the week… in a lecture theatre hehe). I was so excited to see him I called out to him (yes embarrassing… i know) … and he tried to play it cool (which he was rather bad at hehe)…he suggested we grab a coffee. I’ll never forget that day. We sat under a weeping willow on the edge of the cricket field thats in the middle of UWA, and talked for hours. He asked me out – and that’s it, that’s when I knew. I heard a voice in my head tell me he was the one – I would have married him right then I was so sure.
So there it is. The little story of how we met. Chris was my first and only boyfriend. My first love, my first kiss, my everything. Everything i never knew i wanted, but everything i needed. He asked me to marry him 9 months later in the middle of Kings Park, after possibly the most hilariously bad date of all time – and we were married 6 months later, the very second we could afford to support ourselves.
And that, after all, was not the end of the story. It was the end of my story. It was in fact, the very beginning of our story…
