Last October started off on a very sad note. As a result, I took a bit of a reprieve from social media, emailing, and use of Internet outside schoolwork. By the time mid October rolled around, I was desperately ready for an escape from reality. In the wee hours of Tuesday, October 15, 2013, I boarded a plane and flew to Nashville for the first time. After a couple hours of waiting in the terminal, my little brother walked off another plane and joined me in time for lunch. Off we went to explore our new favorite city and to check into a hostel for the first time! I think of that special trip often but have been reveling in memories from that excursion a lot lately....I guess since it's almost one year since Patrick and I met up in Tennessee! You can read more about the music we heard, the fun people we met, and the cool places we explored here.
It was also during this same traveling week that my packet was mailed (by my sister-in-law) to Ohio to apply for the job I currently hold!! God is so so so good! I suppose you could say that last October was the month of many beginnings in spite of the endings/changes that also occurred during that timeframe.
When Saturday came, marking the end of our glorious time in Nashville, we flew to Baltimore together that morning. As we departed from our plane, Patrick hugged me goodbye and I said, "See you at Thanksgiving!" before catching the plane that would take me south back to Raleigh, NC. I remember planning out my 3MT (three minute speech) as I drove the 90 minutes back to High Point to try to stay awake during the drive. I returned to an empty house since my parents (who were in town from PA for the weekend) were in Charlotte with my NC family watching my brother compete in one of his races. I took advantage of the quiet and went to sleep early since all the late nights of music listening and days of walking endlessly in TN had caught up to me.
Sunday was spent playing catch up with schoolwork and planning for the week ahead while I wished I was still in Tennessee having fun with my little brother. The next day was a difficult one with readjusting and getting back into the swing of things at work. Little did I know that come lunch time when I took a break from work to check my email, and to log into Catholic Match for the first time in three weeks, I would stumble across a certain profile. Yes, Monday, 10/21/13, last year was a special day indeed for it brought me to meeting Adam! I can so clearly remember how I felt that morning...I was not looking forward to the mountain of schoolwork/dissertation/planning that awaited me from my extended fall break but I do remember smiling and being thankful for the fun trip I had just returned from and was well rested due to having slept a lot on Saturday night into Sunday. I often wonder if I had known the day was going to end the way it did in talking with a pretty cool guy out in California, would I have done anything differently? Probably not. I am glad things unfolded the way they did...in all aspects of life. This is proving true today as I received some disappointing news last night but then received incredible and astounding news today....only God could write a story this good! Going back to the beginning with Adam, a large part of our conversation in the earlier messages/days were about the 3MT and it was because I needed to practice giving the speech aloud to someone not familiar with my work/research that I was able to skype with Adam for the first time...and why the pressure to meet him was off I think. I went into this new friendship thinking he would be a fun person to talk to and that he was genuinely interested in helping me with my task at hand rather than viewing him as a prospective spouse let alone anyone I would meet offline. Little did I know that he would wound up being a helpmate for life. Again, only God could orchestrate something so clever in His timing.
So, here we are just under a year from that fateful Monday afternoon. When October 15th rolls around again, you'll find me in an airport. This time, instead of being in Nashville, I will be at the airport in Harrisburg, PA to greet Adam as he steps on Pennsylvania soil for the first time. What an exciting trip we have planned....we'll cover LOTS of ground from Harrisburg to Lancaster to Schuylkill County to York to Gettysburg to Carlisle then Mechanicsburg and everywhere else in between....this will also be our shortest trip yet but we are grateful for the time we will have and are looking forward to it! I can't wait to introduce him to PA friends, show him where I grew up and where I used to live (several places), as well as take him to the church and reception venue where the wedding will take place and probably most importantly, to complete our Engaged Encounter weekend for the Harrisburg Diocese next weekend.
Yeah, had you told me last fall when I returned from an exciting Nashville trip that one year later I would be on a different trip preparing for marriage in my former diocese in PA, I would have laughed and laughed. I'm SO glad God is writing this story rather than I...it is turning out so much better than I could even fathom or create in my own mind. Hmm, I wonder where we will be or what we will be doing on October 15, 2015!?
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