Falling in Love for the Third Time

My husband and I met when we were little kids and I fell in love with him in the hallway of our Jr. High the first day he started school there. He caught my eye because he looked just like Donnie Wahlberg and then I fell in love with him. I don’t really remember much about those Jr. High days of being his girlfriend other than the feeling that I would get from my head to my toes anytime that I saw his face. I had buttons with his football picture made to wear on gameday,  would chase him down and write “Lethy luvs Stacey” all over the paper covers on his books and I would rush to get in line for lunch so that I could get to the jukebox first to load it up with dollar after dollar of love ballads. It was the 80’s so those were some serious love ballads.

In the 5th grade I watched Dirty Dancing and had made up my mind that I wanted a love like Baby and Johnny. What little I do remember about being with Stacey in the 7th grade lived up to that. We made out, fought and then made up and he made me feel like I was safe. For someone with my past, safety was more important than anything else a man could give me. He wasn’t a man though, he was a kid, so was I and we ended up breaking up.

Seventeen years later I fell in love with him all over again when he came down the escalator at the airport when he landed from Iraq. He was still just as cute and I had all those feelings hit me in the face all over again. I had tried to find love in the arms of so many other men looking for someone who could make me feel that way, but it was impossible and once I was back in Stacey’s arms I realized that. We had so much fun when he got home from Iraq. We were rich, both of us looked fantastic and we were in love. We got drunk until we fell in pools or forgot our keys and we laughed so hard all the time. It was great while it lasted, but like all relationships, it didn’t stay that way. We had many ups and downs, then we converted and became devout Catholics and then Warren died which sent our life into a chaos that was like a tornado ripping through our lives.

For two years we have struggled with one crisis after the other. We have fought, we have yelled, we have insulted each other and we have both said we didn’t want to be married anymore. We have hurt each other and we have both had moments where we wanted to just give up. But we didn’t. We stayed. We went to our priests and to Noe and we prayed and prayed. We both refused to give up on this love story.

Today as I sat in an Outpatient Surgery waiting room while my mom was getting tests done this same man who I have fallen in love with twice already brought me a Sonic Cheeseburger because I was hungover from having beers with him last night. I looked up at him and all those feelings of a 7th grade girl kissing a boy for the first time came back to me. I didn’t just see my husband, but I saw the person that I have loved so deeply for most of my life. The man who I have laughed with, cried with and have had the time of my life with. I fell in love with him for the third time. How lucky am I?

It is so easy to walk away when marriage gets hard, and sometimes that is the best option for countless reasons, but sometimes the best moments come when you have held on to the love you had on your wedding day during those hard times and you make it to the other side. I’m on the other side, by the Grace of God my marriage made it through this time.

Thank you for all your prayers, they have been answered and I’m so thankful for people who take the time to pray for a whiney blogger like me.