My own love story

To give a little more background on me, I have always wanted two things in life more than anything else, aside from wanting to follow the Lord forever.  The two big dreams that I had in life were to get married and to have children, and if I could, lots of children.  When I hit about 18, I thought I was ready to start making these dreams come true.  Little did I realize how little control I had over either of these two dreams.  My boyfriend at the time was understandably nowhere near ready to be part of any of the grand ideas that I had planned.  That relationship ended shortly after I turned 21 and that launched a part of my life that I generally refer to as the "dark ages".  I don't really prefer to talk about it, think about, or revisit it.  I did so many things that I am not proud of and the only good thing that came out of it was an even bigger realization of the things that the blood of Jesus is capable of saving me from.  It is by His grace, and His grace alone, that I am remotely worthy of the wonderful life I have been given and that I can stand pure in front of His throne.  But I digress.  Anyway, by the time I was 24, it appeared I was nowhere near finding someone who would want to marry me, let alone someone who would dare procreate with me.  Parts of me were still angry and bitter, and wanted nothing to do with men anyway since during my "dark ages" the only men I had met were ones not worth meeting.  Surprisingly, not wanting anything to do with men is something a woman has to get over if she ever has any hope of getting married.

It was December 2009 and I was sitting in the van that I use to pick up school age kids and take them back to Tabor, where I work.  I was always about 10-15 minutes early to this school and normally just sat there and waited.  On this particular day, a ruggedly handsome man, that I swore had to be like 35 at least, knocked on my window and asked if I would like to hand out candy canes to my kids, since he conveniently had some leftover after giving them to the kids in his van.  I agreed. I mean, why not, right?  Every kid likes a candy cane.  In true Hannah fashion, I missed his less than subtle attempt to hit on me.  Subtlety is lost on me 98% of the time, with regards to anything.  After he gave me the candy canes, he didn't say anything more and neither did I, so he walked back to his van.  It was a courteous, but unremarkable gesture and interaction.  Little did I know, I had just met the man that on February 21st, 2010, would ask me to be his girlfriend.  Little did I know that on December 13th, 2010 (which had to be the coldest night ever), that this man would take me on a horse drawn carriage ride through Shady Brook Farm's Christmas light show and blur my eyes with tears as he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him.  And little did I know, that a short 3 1/2 months later, this man would stand before me at an altar, in front of everyone that meant the most to us, and pledge to love me with all of his heart, forever and always. 

To me, my story is so much more than just a cute romance.  It's about a God, Master and Ruler of the entire universe, who cared enough to reach down and pull an angry, dirty, broken girl out of her sin and filth, and clean her, forgive her and ready her to not only be His bride, but the bride of her earthly Prince Charming as well.  It's about a man, gentle as a lamb, yet strong and steady as a rock, who met a strong-willed and high strung girl, with more faults than you could count, and fell in love with her and married her anyway.  And every day, another chapter is written.  Again, I intended to post about my actual wedding in this post and again, I used it for something else.  Oh well, I will get there eventually! :)

Till next time,
Hannah