The most significant blessing from 2020 was something I didn’t even go into the year planning (or even praying) for: a new relationship. Not only so, but an amazing one.
Shortly after the events in this post occurred, I received an unexpected Facebook message. At first glance, it looked like a reference for a potential piano student. Then the line caught my attention: “please be honest; if you’re not interested just let me know. I’m not sure if you’re in a relationship already, so let me know…. Please let me know if I should connect the two of you! No pressure at all. I offered to set this up.”
I immediately said yes. This led to a week of emailing, followed by a first date, first to her (now our) church, then to a Culver’s afterward. She gave me her phone number, unprompted, halfway through the meal. I gave her mine at the end. Date 2 was Valentine’s Day. Wanting to be a stand-up guy, I researched fine restaurants in her neck of the woods, presented them to her to ask which she preferred, and her answer was Panera (which wasn’t even one of the options I was thinking about). Given my financial struggles at the time, that was music to my ears. But it was also an insight to the kind of gal she is: down-to-earth, low-maintenance, practical… I loved it. (And I still do.)
Date 3 was set to be the following Monday. After some crises that came up over the weekend, I cancelled it, and said I needed to put a pause on dating. It was hard. Given the circumstances in my life at that point, all pinpointed around my finances, I couldn’t see how I would be able to continue dating when I struggled to simply manage my own life. That, and, thanks to therapy, I had learned and since developed high expectations for myself not only in terms of how I conduct myself around women (“be a man and not a boy”) but also being a man for a woman (“lead her, protect her, love her, cherish her”).
A week and a half later, we were back on. (And, happy to say, we’ve stayed back on!) My circumstances didn’t necessarily change from the day I told her I needed to put a pause on dating, to when I asked her out again, but I think my heart did. Certainly my focus. I knew I already liked her on our first date. But two moments stood out: the first was when I called her out of the blue late one evening after Hope for Artists at my former church, after I had dropped everyone else off, and she made time to talk with me. She was busy with work, and she had deadlines approaching. She was stressed. But she willingly made at least an hour, if not longer, just to talk to me. Until I recently reviewed a text history I had with a friend of mine who I happened to text on the same day as our first date, I had previously thought that this was the night I decided I really liked her. Even though I had already decided I liked her earlier, I saw another side to her, on a night when she wasn’t at her best, and was (and is) still sweet as can be.
Two nights later we talked on the phone again. I think I had invited her out — as a friend — to an upcoming event, even though I’d already invited her to a couple and she didn’t show. She expressed confusion over my inviting her like that. She told me it sounded like dating. I got scared. Was she mad at me? Here I was, only a week-and-a-half after I broke off our first foray into dating together, and it sounded like she was telling me “no” to hanging out, even while I was still trying to figure out the crises that were still before me.
I asked her out again. Truth is, I wanted to. I just didn’t know how I was going to be the kind of mature man I expect myself to be around a woman, especially one that I’m dating, when I still didn’t have these crises resolved. She said yes. (We’ve gone over this part of the storyline together numerous times, and from her side, it was: “of course I would say yes!”) Exhale. I felt happy and giddy inside. I still do.
Then she asked me a question: would I be willing to consider changing my career? Knowing some of the stories she shared about dates (I think all of them were single dates or even just messages with guys, before she and I got serious) where some of them really were not open to changing their mind regarding whatever it was she asked them to change their mind on. In short, it was an important question for her to ask me. Of course, there’s the practical aspect of it as well. For a marriage to work, we need money, and for us to have money, I would need to be willing to stop pursuing music full-time, like I had been for the previous 7 years.
Thing is, I was already there, even before she came into the picture. God had been preparing me. I told her, I had to change my career anyway, for the simple fact that I was perpetually a month away from living on the street, for many months now. She later told me that she breathed a huge sigh of relief. Looking back on these two nights, they were pivotal in terms of us really looking at each other as seriously as we have been since, regarding a future together.
A month later, we had probably the closest thing to an argument in our relationship. COVID hit the fan, and our governor had issued a shelter-in-place order. I still kept working at my old job because I just didn’t have a new one lined up yet, although I had had a couple different interviews by this point. She wasn’t pleased. We hashed it out over the course of the next couple days, and we each grew in understanding of each other.
The only other hitch that threatened to derail us early on was politics. (You can read more in Part 2 of this post series.) I’ll admit I was skeptical that it would ultimately work out on that front, not because of what I thought and felt about her views, but what I feared she might think about mine. That said, God showed up over the course of the next few months as He and I hashed it out. By August or September I was largely at peace with shifting my perspective, especially as I got to know my love and her family more on what they thought about things and why.
Now, we’re just waiting on God’s timing. I’m so excited I can’t wait. But I must, until the time is right. All the while, while I admit I still wrestle internally particularly with why the timing isn’t going any faster, I praise God. I praise God for my love, for her family, and how He’s used our relationship to accomplish other circumstantial shifts in my life that I have already blogged about, and what shifts that are still yet to come. Can’t wait.