Wedded Wednesday is a collaboration
of married bloggers sharing their inspirations,
anecdotes, struggles and thoughts regarding
the amazing union of two separate people, as one.
Persistence is key.I'm not sure who all knows the story of how Tony and I met. At one point I had an "About Me" section, but then decided it was a bit too personal.
The short edition is that we met online, the long edition involves Tony's determination and God's orchestration.
In college, at the end of my freshman year, I joined a quiz website called emode.com. My boyfriend at the time had taken their IQ test and I wanted to shutter his bragging up by scoring higher. {And that right there could encapsulate my competitive nature} Sadly, I was just a few points lower and my goal was not realized, but I did create an account so that any future quiz scores could be saved. The quizzes varied from IQ tests to "Who's your inner rock star?," the type of junk that easily filled a day that should have included homework.
Over the course of two years the site morphed into a dating website as they prodded all account holders to complete a profile and finally submit a photo. Personalized space online was exploding at this time, and as I didn't have a myspace, I created a nifty profile on a dating site I had no intention of ever utilizing. Guys would send me winks or the like and if they were cute it was a confidence booster, but no more. Periodically I would get emails, but they were deleted without my even reading them.
As you may recall, MSN messenger was huge and it wasn't unusual to have that annoying add from the person you just weren't sure if you knew or not. There were only so many time that you could hit ignore before either choosing to accept or deny. To this day I don't recall adding "Gopher Hockey," but I did. It would be about 6 months after his initial email that was deleted, but as I was driving home from school for Christmas break of my junior year, logged into messenger on my phone to see who of my hometown friends were home, I was contacted by Tony.
I didn't know if I knew "Gopher Hockey," as that was the limitation of information on my phone, so we small talked as I waited for him to give some identifying information, not wanting to insult a friend by failing to recognize who they were. It wasn't until the question, "Are you really a Christian," that I
knew I had no clue who I was conversing with, as anyone who actually knows me would not question this. So out came the details that he'd been emailing me for a couple of months, without response and that one day he had added me on messenger. He politely asked if I would read his email, if he did email again and I was intrigued.
Let's just say that I bought him off of his first email. Hook, line and sinker, I was captivated by this person who was perfect on paper. I even told my friends that I had found "fictional perfection," already too jaded to think that he was who he presented himself to be. Over the course of my Christmas break we traded small novels via email, both of us baring our souls in the cloak of pseudo anonymity. Without speaking on the phone, we finally reached the point where it was apparent we either had to meet or we'd forever be penpals. Tony asked to meet after the first week though and I declined, still a bit creeped out. But as he had already proven himself to be, he remained steadfast, swallowing his pride to ask me to meet again, before I returned to school.
I arranged for a friend, Nadia to be my spy, as Tony and I set up our meeting smack dab in the center of a large mall. My Mom of course freaked out, all of this building without her knowledge, until I finally sprang on her what my plans were. I finally got to her by reading Tony's emails outloud and telling her that I only told her so that I would have her prayer support.
The night before we were to meet we finally spoke on the phone. I was slightly disappointed by his voice, he well, he sounded dorky. Little did I know that I needed a dork in my life. :) In that conversation we discovered that the friend who I had just visited that night, for the first time in months, was his cousin's roommate. I will forever be grateful that her parents named her uniquely and that I chose to use her name. We quickly closed our conversation for me to get a reference from Gracia regarding Tony and for Tony to get the details on me from his cousin.
The next day when we finally met face to face, it was basically to establish if there was a physical attraction as we were already won over by the person via email. While we did allow some time to verify, through our budding relationship, that the person presented in email was truthfully the way life was lived, we were speaking of marriage at six weeks.
I can truly attribute this to Tony's perseverance. And I know that he continuously chooses to love me with this same attitude daily.
