The Story of My Life: The "Other" Mailbox

If you missed the last installment, here is the quick version. Josiah had gone to a friend's house for the afternoon. While he was gone,  I searched for Carol Close on the internet and my find led me to a website called 'Find My Family'.  There I found a post by Jessie Harvey who was looking for a birth sibling whose birth mom was Carol Close. If this Carol was my birth mom, then further search showed that I had four siblings, Brad, Brent, Jessie and Jenna.  If you want to read the whole post to catch up, you can find it here.

On the way to pick up Josiah from his playdate, I called Steve. He had received my text and was looking at Carol's profile. I filled him in quickly on what had happened as far as my searching had gone that afternoon.  He said he would continue working on it while I was getting Josiah.

I arrived at the house where Josiah was playing. I went in and ended up talking with his friend's mom for a while.  It was so hard to stay focused on the conversation with all of the other events of the day swirling around in my head.  I wanted so badly to spill everything that was going on, but somehow managed to keep it all in.  In the middle of our conversation, I got a text from Steve. The first chance I had, I glanced down at my phone.

It was only two words.  "Jenna died."

What??!?!?  How??!?!?

His response, "Suicide. In 2007."

My heart broke.  I had already lost one sibling to suicide and if these people truly were my blood family, now that number was two.  Only this time, it would be a sibling I would have never had the chance to meet.

The weight of what had happened to Jenna weighed me down while the excitement about what could possibly be with Carol and Jessie and the others left me overwhelmed.   I was emotional while at the same time feeling half numb. I kept trying to talk sense to myself to keep my heart from getting too overly involved. "Lorena, you still don't know for sure if this is them. You need to stay calm until you do."

I still came home and mourned as I read post after post from different people on her obituary, many from Carol, a mother broken by the loss of her daughter. So much so, that she was still posting in the memory book, the last entry just a couple of months before that day.  And I became even more certain that these people were my birth family as I saw so much of myself in the pictures of them, especially the ones of Jenna.  Looking at pictures of her in her childhood years was like looking at pictures of myself.

That evening when Steve got home from work, we talked about what I ought to do.  We decided that it would probably be best to try to contact Jessie as she was the one that had posted on the adoption registry that she was looking for me. I looked everywhere I could on the internet to find a way to get in contact Jessie.  There was no way to be found.  So after some more discussion, we decided that I should send a note to Alyssa, Brent's wife, and tell her that I was trying to get in touch with Jessie.  I had seen pictures of them together so I knew that they were friends as well as sisters-in-law.

So that is what I did. I sent her a quick note on Facebook. I asked her to pass my information along to Jessie and let her know I was trying to get in touch with her in regards to a post that she had put on the internet the previous October.  When I went to send the message, Facebook informed me that because she and I did not have any contacts in common, my message would not go directly to her inbox. It asked me if I would like to pay a dollar so that it would.  Otherwise, it said it would go to her "other" mailbox. I had never heard of this "other" mailbox and being unsure of exactly how it worked,  I decided to take my chances and see if she would get my message without paying the dollar.

Steve had a church softball game that evening.  I probably checked my phone hundreds of times during the couple of hours we were at the park.  I was so anxious.  When we got home, I saw that Alyssa had posted something on her wall on Facebook, so I knew she had been on and not seen my message.  I paid the dollar to send the message and within an hour, she had responded saying she would forward my message to Jessie.

As I sat on the bed with Steve processing the day,  Flora came home.  She is our niece that was living with us at the time.  She listened as I excitedly shared what had happened that day, in awe of all that had transpired.  I explained to her everything from the paper I received from my dad that morning, to finding Carol's picture, to having to pay the dollar to keep my message to Alyssa from going to the "other" mailbox on Facebook.  When I got to the part about the "other" mailbox, she asked what I was talking about.  And since I had not even known about the "other" mailbox myself until that day, I was happy to pull up my profile and show her how to find it.  When I clicked on the tab to take me to the other mailbox,  I saw it and then let out a scream.

There was a message in there.....from Jessie Harvey.

The Story of My Life: Finding Carol

If you have not read the previous blog, you can go here to catch up.  This one will make much more sense if you have read that one first.

The second hit was an adoption registry, so of course my curiosity was piqued.  I clicked on the link and it took me to Findmyfamily.org   At the top of the page there was a summary that said , "Registrant Jessie Harvey is a birth sibling looking for a birth sibling." The adoptee was born in Indiana.  That particular heading didn't necessarily mean anything to me at first, but after I read the rest of the contents on that page, it meant everything.


There was no information given for a name or date of birth under the adoptee's info. Only that the gender of the adoptee was female and born in an unknown city in Indiana. But under the birthmother's info it said her name was Carol Ann Harvey (Close) and her birthdate was September 7, 1953.   I was a female, born in Indiana, with a birthmother named Carol Close who my dad thought was around 20 or 21 when I was born. This birthdate of this person meant that she turned 20 just two weeks after I was born. This could be her!!!  And if it was, that meant that Jessie was my sibling and had been told about me, so I wouldn't be a secret. If you go back a couple of posts to where I listed the reasons why I didn't want to search, the second one was that I didn't want to just show up unannounced.  If this was really her, then that reason too was no longer valid.

Somewhere along the way, I took Josiah and dropped him off at his playdate. I ran a quick errand and hurried home to keep looking.  I googled as fast as I could and I was getting some results.

"Carol Harvey + Jessie Harvey" resulted in finding Jessie's birth record. Carol was listed as the mom and Ron Harvey as the dad.  It was at this time that I found out Jessie's middle name was Arlene and realized she was a girl. Up to that point I thought I had found a brother. (sorry Jessie!)

Now with three names, I easily found Carol listed in a family tree.  This told me that she had been married twice.  She not only married Ronald Harvey who was the father of Jessie and another girl, Jenna, but had first been married to a man named David Gee who was the father of two boys, Brad and Brent. I was overwhelmed.  If this was her, I had four siblings.  I was trying to not get too excited in case it ended in disappointment, but I couldn't help myself. My hands were shaking.

With a larger number of names to help me identify people, I turned to Facebook.  Looking for Carol produced no results.  I could not find Jessie or Jenna, but was able to find the boys and their wives.  Some of the pages were pretty private, but Alyssa, who is Brent's wife, had a page that was fairly open. On her page I was able to see her friends.  I started looking through the list of people and then I saw it. It was a profile picture of a dog and underneath it said, "Carol Harvey".  My heart stopped.  Then it began pounding so hard I thought it was going to fall out of my chest.

I clicked on the picture and it took me to her page.  Her timeline was private, so I moved to her photo section.  I clicked on the profile picture album. It was full of memes and pictures of dogs. Every now and then there was an old picture of one of her kids. But then I saw it.....it was a picture of her.  I opened it up and just sat there staring at her face.

It was her.  It had to be.

In her face, I saw my brown, squinty eyes. I saw hints of high cheekbones hidden under the roundness of her face. I saw the same high forehead I have always struggled to cover. And then right down the middle of her forehead was the very same wrinkle that I have on mine.

I couldn't believe it.  I texted the link to her Facebook profile to Steve and said, "I think I have found my birth mom."

And I had to leave to go pick up Josiah....

The Story of My Life: The Indian Princess (or not!)

Four years ago I went to the eye doctor for a check up.  What happened during that appointment gave me another glimpse into the unknown part of my life.  Check it out for yourself. Here is a screenshot of my status update that day:

I remember many times after that appointment looking in the mirror at myself and seeing things just a little bit differently. Hmmm....Native American, huh? Suddenly having dark eyes and high cheekbones began to mean something to me. Maybe I could have been an Indian princess. :)  You might be wondering what is such a big deal about this anyway.  Well, my whole life I had known nothing of my ethnicity at all.  When I would ask my parents, they would just tell me I was "just American".  I always thought that it was cool when someone could say they were German, Italian, etc. They had a piece of culture and history that they could embrace. When I lived in Romania, the people there often thought I looked Romanian so I had sometimes wondered if that could even be a possibility. For me to be able to say that I had some Native American in me was super cool because I finally felt like there was a piece of culture I could claim as my own.  Not long before this discovery, I had dyed my hair a darker brown and started wearing some jewelry that was made with rocks, so I began to say that those fashion decisions were obviously based on my heritage and the fact  that I was indeed an Indian princess. It was just "in me".

Now I could stop here because really this is where this particular part of the story ended.  Nothing  came out of this discovery as far as my search goes, at least not for a while. But to save myself from the hate emails and death threats of having such a short post, I will keep going. But in order to do so, you have to fast forward with me a year and a half to late Spring 2014.

I had taken Zoe to piano lessons. She takes from a sweet 80+ year old lady, Mrs. Martin,  who was my piano teacher when I was a little girl. That particular day when I arrived,  Mrs. Martin told me that her daughter, Kathy, was here visiting and I could come in and talk with her if I wanted to. I knew Kathy from when I was younger as we had gone to church together and our dad's both worked at Piedmont Bible College.  Kathy and her brother had also been adopted so we had that in common too. We started chatting and she began telling me about how she had done some DNA testing and even though she had not been able to locate any close relatives, she had been able to get some medical information from the testing. She had also been able to figure out her ethnicity and some other information from it too.

I came home and told Steve about it and after some thought and online investigation of my own, I ordered a DNA kit from ancestry.com.  It arrived just a few days later and after I spit into the little tube, I excitedly sent the packet back off in the mail again.  It seemed like forever before I heard anything.  Finally the email arrived that said they had received my DNA and were processing it and then not too long after the email came saying my results were finished.  In reality, the whole process took only about a months time but the wait felt much longer.

I logged into my account and began looking at the different charts and graphs that would give me information about myself. There was a list of DNA relatives, but none of the known relatives were particularly close in relation.  Then I got to the ancestry composition graph.  99.8% European,  0.2% of a mixture of other things so insignificant that I cannot remember at this point in time what they were, and 0% Native American.  Yep, that is right. No Native American in me whatsoever. I could not believe it. That isn't what the eye doctor had said!  I even called ancestryDNA to make sure that they hadn't mixed up my test with someone else's. They assured me they hadn't . When I told them that my eye doctor was sure I had Native American in me and that the test said I didn't, they told me that the ancestry percentage may change over time as their process continued to be refined.

I just couldn't believe it.  I was so disappointed.

The following day, Zoe was going to my parents for the day and Josiah was going to go to a playdate in the afternoon with a friend. I went over to their house in the morning to drop her off and when I got there, I began to tell my parents about the test results.  I don't remember exactly how the conversation went, but at the end of it, my dad said, "If you have a few minutes, we can find the information that the adoption agency gave us about your birth parents when you were adopted and you can have a copy of it."   I agree to help him look and TWO HOURS later, we found it in an old filing cabinet in the garage. He said they had always tried to keep our adoption files hidden so we wouldn't accidentally come across them if we were looking through their drawers. I guess they had done a good job of hiding it if at 40 years of age it took me so long to help him find it. :)

As you can see from the following picture, there really wasn't much information on the paper at all.    One half sheet of paper typed. That was it.  When my younger brother was adopted in 1982, my parents received a whole file folder full of stuff on him.  It didn't seem fair.  As I read through the paper, there really wasn't much on there that my parents hadn't already told me, except for maybe the part about my birth father having a growth removed from an arm pit.  That part made me chuckle then and still does today as that seems like such an odd detail to include.


I left with the paper in hand and went home.  There was a bit of time before I had to take Josiah to his playdate. I went in my bedroom with the paper and my computer and decided it was time to try to search again.  As I stared at the paper wondering if there was any bit of information that could help me with my search, one thing seemed to jump off the page at me. Of course, why I had I never thought about this before.

"Since she was adopted as an infant, we know nothing of her natural parents."

If I was adopted and searching for my birth mother, who is to say that my birth mother didn't do the same since she was adopted herself. Maybe, just maybe, I could find a family tree or something else that talked about HER being adopted.  So I googled once again.

Carol Close + Adopted.

The results came up and the second hit caught my attention. I clicked on the link and I could not believe what I was reading.....


And yes, I am sure by now you know what is coming....... more on this next time. ;)

The Story of My Life: The First Clue (Part Two)

So just to quickly recap what happened last time - I had been struggling physically and decided to see if the adoption agency could provide me with some medical info. Nothing.  I registered with the State of Indiana Vital Records to see if I could get some health information that way. Again nothing.  Then one night I am at my parent's house and my Dad tells me he knows my birth mother's name and he will tell me if I want to know.....

Now hold on here. I don't know if you remember or not, but a couple of blogs ago I listed a set of reasons why I was never really interested in searching for my birth mom.  One of them was because I never wanted to hurt my parents. I never wanted them to feel like they weren't good enough or that I wanted someone other than them in the role of parents in my life. The thought had never occurred to me that maybe my parents would want to know who my birth parents were, that they too would be interested in knowing the circumstances that surrounded how I came to be.  But that is exactly how it was. This one reason for not wanting to search was now null and void. Not only was my dad standing in front of me suggesting that I begin searching, he was reaching out his hand to give me the key that would open that very first door.

So I took it.

And he told me. Her name was Carol Close.  He said that even after all of these years he had never been able to forget.   He also told me that he thought he remembered her to be around 20 or 21 years old when I was born and that he was pretty sure she wasn't from the state of Indiana. He thought maybe Idaho.

I went home and I googled and I googled and I googled.  I found lots of people named Carol Close, but their age wouldn't be right or they lived in a different part of the country or Close was not their maiden name. Sometimes I would come across someone who would seem to fit the age range but then if I found their profile on Facebook they had the wrong color hair and eyes. The worst ones were when I was following someone's internet trail only to find out that they had died. I would find myself heartbroken at the thought.



My heart and emotions were up and down. I found myself feeling more deeply about the whole situation than I really was ready to admit.  I had never allowed myself to open wide the door to my inner feelings about being adopted and then once I did,  it was almost more than I could handle. So I just kept the door cracked instead, trying to hold some of the feeling inside.  I mean, what if I did finally decide to go looking for her to find out that she had really died. I wasn't sure I was going to be able to handle it.

I would search for several hours a few days in a row and then I would give up and not search again for a few weeks or months. This went on for more than a year or so. I don't remember the exact timeline.  I was almost at the point of giving up for good. Maybe the adoption agency was right that she had fallen off the face of the earth.  But then I found out some things that were very interesting and encouraging to me. It led me down a different path and on that path I discovered just a bit more about myself.....

More on that next time.

The Story of My Life: The First Clue (Part One)

As the children grew, it was so fun to watch their physical features and personalities develop and to see what all they had inherited from both Steve and me.  Josiah shared not just my brown eyes and facial features, but some of my personality traits as well. Zoe had her daddy's beautiful blue eyes and outgoing personality.  They both were quick learners and had a love for music.

The early days of life for little ones are filled with many doctors visits.  As we went for this or for that, for the first time in my life I began to think about how not cool it was that I didn't have to answer all of the questions on the sheet. You know, the ones about your family history and all the diseases and conditions you could possibly have inherited. I used to think it was great that I could just put "Don't know - adopted" and be done with it. But now with the best interest of my kids at heart, I began to wonder if there were conditions that I needed to be aware of,  things that I could have possibly passed on to them without knowing.

This concern grew as a couple of years after Zoe was born, I began experiencing digestive issues. As the doctors did multiple tests on me to try to figure out what was wrong (MRI, endoscopy, etc) and coming up with no answers, the thought that I may have some kind of inherited condition grew. Before you get overly concerned about what might possibly be wrong with me, the final conclusion after many months of tests was that I had a yeast overgrowth. I did a cleanse and took some anti-fungals and it pretty much went away.  But during the months that all of this uncertainty was going on, when Steve asked if we should contact the adoption agency to see if they had or could get any health information for me, I said yes.

He called and talked to them and they said they did not have any health information on file but would try to track down my birth mother to see if they could get any information from her.  I was at home the day they called back.  I answered the phone and when they told me it was the adoption agency, I was  hopeful that maybe they had some information for me. Instead, they informed me that they had searched for my birth mom but could not find any trace of her. It was almost as though she had fallen off the earth.  Their suggestion was that I register with the State of Indiana Vital Records in hopes that I might be able to obtain some health information that way. You see, up until January 1, 1986, the State of Indiana did not require that a comprehensive medical report be included in the file of an adoptee.  In an effort to try to help adoptees gather this information, they started a medical history registry.  But the registry is voluntary.  On top of that, I learned at this same time, that if you were adopted in the state of Indiana after January 1, 1994, when you turned 21 you were able to write in and request identifying information from the state unless your birth parent had written in and specifically requested that it not be released.  But for people adopted prior to that, which I was, the only way to get identifying information from my file was if both of my birth parent AND I sent in a release form to the state.  Frustrated and pretty certain that it wouldn't produce any results, I filled out the forms anyway and sent them in.  Sure enough - nothing.

It wasn't too long after that and Steve and I were over at my parent's house.  I don't remember what we had been doing over there, but what I do remember very distinctly is my dad asking me just before we left how I was feeling.  I told him about the same. At that point in time, he asks me if I had ever thought about looking for my birth mother to see if I could get medical information from her.   I told him then how we had already contacted the adoption agency to see if they could get information for me and how they were unable to find her.  It was at this point he said something that totally blew me away.....He told me that when I was adopted, that the courts accidentally sent them the wrong papers.  He had begun reading them all those years ago and once he got to my birth mother's name, he realized he wasn't supposed to be seeing that information, so he folded the letter up and mailed it back to them.  But even after all those years he couldn't forget and if I wanted to know what her name was, HE WOULD TELL ME........  (to be continued.)

The Story of My Life: In Everything There is a Purpose

Last night as the final hours of 2016 counted down, I ate pizza, played Settlers of Catan and watched a friend open oysters to find pearls on Facebook Live. As I lay in bed just before midnight scrolling through my Facebook feed, I saw lots of people posting what the year 2016 meant for them.  Some people had great years filled with lots of blessings. For others, it was a more difficult time and they are gladly looking forward to a fresh start in 2017.  For me, I can look back on it and say that 2016 is the first year in the 43 that have been my life where I knew exactly where I came from. It was the year that capped off all of my discoveries about myself with the hugest discovery of all --- what the circumstances were that led to my beginning. It will always be a big moment for me and I am excited to finally be at the point in the story where I can begin explaining how it all came to be.

Before I do, I want to say that I am sharing all of this from my point of view.  You will read in the blogs to come my thoughts and see my emotions through this part of the story. But mine are not the only ones you need to consider. There are thoughts and emotions and feelings and experiences that come from every other person involved. I do not know or pretend to know all that has taken place in their lives. All I can share is what I know from my own.  You might find yourself at times being overly excited or very angry.  All I ask is that if you choose to comment or post that you keep things positive.  I am not passing judgement onto anyone, and I am asking you to not to do so either.

My marriage to Steve was one of the key events that put this ball of searching into motion. He takes a firm stance on the pro-life position which is something that I truly admire about him.  How cool it was for me to find out while we were dating that he had even been a financial supporter of the very adoption agency that I was adopted out of - the Baptist Children's Home of Valparaiso, Indiana.  Seriously, what are the chances of that?? At that point in my life, he was more curious about where I had come from than I was.  He offered not long after we were married to help me find out whatever information I wanted to know about my birth parents. "We can hire a private detective," he would say.  As I have mentioned before, I was very content with being adopted, so when I would respond saying that I really wasn't interested in searching,  he wondered why.  I had some very specific reasons. I had definitely thought about it before. I am going to lay them out for you so you can see how I believe God was truly guiding me along this path as He put those reasons to rest one by one in a very clear way.

• I was adopted in a closed adoption. I did not believe there was any way that I could get information that would help me locate my birth parents.
• I did not want to hurt my adoptive parents in any way. They are my real parents and have been here for me since I was a baby. They have journeyed with me through the good and the bad. I believed at that point in time to begin a search for my birth parents would be a slap in the face to them and would somehow say that they were not adequate enough in their job as parents.
• I did not want to hurt my birth mother by showing up unannounced after all these years. In the time that I was adopted, many girls were sent away to have their babies and it was never spoken of after that point. I did not know if she had remarried, had a new family of her own and if I were to appear if that would somehow interrupt that or make things difficult.  I did not know if she had ever even spoken of me to anyone so I didn't want to somehow chance that I would ruin her life.

As you can see, my reasons were valid.  The only problem was that they were focused on protecting other people's feelings and didn't directly address my own. I think that looking inside to the deeper feelings and questions I had about my adoption was something that I had never been really good at facing. But that was about to change.....

Less than a year from the time that Steve and I were married, we found out we were pregnant. There was much excitement about the new addition that would be added to our family. Our hopes were crushed when at 11 weeks,  just a couple of weeks after our first anniversary, I lost the baby.  There were many tears and much heartache. There were questions that followed as to whether or not something was physically wrong as we tried but were not getting pregnant again after the miscarriage.  Looking back now, it really wasn't an incredible amount of time that we had been trying, but in the moment, it felt like forever.  One year after we found out we were expecting the first time, we found out we were expecting again and Josiah Bryan was born on July 11, 2006.  Oh the love that was felt for this sweet little baby with the big brown eyes.  This love would be carried on to his sweet blue-eyed sister that was born just 21 months later. Zoe Elizabeth arrived on April 26, 2008. With a name that means "life" in Greek, she has been exactly that.  Right after Zoe turned one, we found out we were expecting again for the fourth time.  This pregnancy too ended in heartache as I miscarried at 10 weeks.  The first time I miscarried it was a loss that came with questions as to whether I would ever be able to carry a child. This second time it was a loss that came with a heartache of knowing exactly what I would be missing out on since I had already carried two wonderful, beautiful children to full term.

I remember in the midst of that time, sitting my children down on the steps and taking this picture of them. Though my heart was broken, I knew how truly blessed we were to have these two rug rats.  Even though the days were ended of us growing our family in number, I knew there was a huge task in front of us in helping these two grow in wisdom and knowledge. 

When I look back to the heartache and loss of those two miscarriages, there are so many things that I don't understand.  I wish there was no hurt in this world and that this amount of pain and heartache would never have to come upon a person.  But it does.  I believe that nothing happens without a purpose and if you take the time to see what God might be trying to teach you in those moments, despite the sadness, there is a plan for something good.  God used those moments in my life to help me understand the feeling of loss.  This was something that I would need in the future as I would try to put myself in the shoes of my birth mother who had given me away.  

More on that coming up soon......

The Story of My Life: Finding Love

You might have noticed that I haven't really talked in any of my posts about boys and relationships.  I didn't date anyone in high school and in college, even though I went on a few dates with a few different guys, there was really only one serious relationship out of all of them.  I started dating him my senior year.  He himself was only a sophomore.  We dated for a couple of years and then got engaged.  Right after we were engaged, I went on the summer missions trip to Romania.  When I came home after that month, I felt God was calling me to return to Romania for a year on another short term trip.   When I initially shared this with him, he was okay with the idea of me going overseas for a year before we were to be married. After all, at this point in time he was just beginning his senior year in college.  A couple of months later, he called and said he wanted to move forward with our relationship and he didn't want me to go overseas. He told me that I could marry him or I could go to Romania, but I couldn't do both.   It was at this point I had to make a really hard decision. At 24 years of age, I felt like I was Abraham being asked to offer Isaac on the altar.  I had to tell him that if he was asking me to choose between what he wanted me to do and what God wanted me to do, that we couldn't get married.

Less than a year later, I found myself in Romania teaching at the kindergarten. I had such peace about being there that I knew that I had made the right decision. After coming home from that year overseas though, I did begin to struggle a bit.  A lot of my friends were getting married and I just found myself alone and wondering if I would ever be married. I went out with a couple of guys, but only for a brief amount of time. I wasn't about to waste my time dating someone that I knew wasn't a good fit for me.

In the summer of 2003, I was with my friend Michelle at her parent's lake house. We went for a ride on the jet ski and after a while, we turned it off and just had a good heart to heart talk out in the middle of the lake. I shared with her my discouragement about being single and she encouraged me to give it to God.  Out in the middle of the lake, we prayed and I went away that day determined to be content with where God had me in life and if I was going to be single, I was going to make the most of it. Little did I know that He had a big plan for me that was about to unfold.

About a month or so later, I was invited to a birthday party for a kid named Kyle who was in the youth group that I was helping with at church. He was turning 14 and was having the party on a Friday night at his "Uncle Steve's" house.  His Uncle Steve wasn't really an uncle, but a close family friend.  I had heard about this "Uncle Steve" from Kyle and his friend, Ben (who really was Steve's nephew) before.  They had tried to convince me when we were on our missions trip in July that I should go out with him.  I asked them to tell me about him. They started off with,  "Well, he is about 40......"  Uh, no. That did not at all sound very interesting to me. After all, I was only 29 and 40 seemed so very old.  "He is rich," they would say.  I asked them why they thought that. Their response was that he drove a BMW convertible so he had to be. I assured them that lots of 40 year old single men would be able to afford a BMW convertible since they didn't have a wife or kids taking all of their money.

 So anyway, when I was invited to the party, I agreed to go.  I figured it would give me a chance to meet this "Uncle Steve" and then they would leave me alone about him.

Friday afternoon came and when I got home from work, there was a message on the answering machine from Kyle's mom saying that the party was changed from that evening to the next day.  I had already made plans with my friend Michelle to go to her parent's lake house, like we had done many times in the past, for our birthdays on Saturday. So since the party was off, I packed up my stuff and headed to the lake house a day early and just skipped Kyle's party.

The following Monday was Labor Day.  There was no school and I had gone to teach piano to a couple of sisters who were also in the youth group.  While I was there, the older of the two girls was telling me all about Kyle's party. She really enjoyed telling me how Uncle Steve complained the whole night that I wasn't there. He whined that the kids had all promised I would show up, but I hadn't.  I rolled my eyes and said, "Oh brother! I am an adult and he is an adult. If he wants to meet me that badly, just give him my number."  At that, she jumped up instantly from the piano bench, ran over to the computer and instant messaged my number to Ben.

On Saturday, September 6th, just a few days later, I came home from working at Dress Barn. My roommate immediately let me know that I needed to listen to the answering machine because I had a message from "Uncle Steve".  I listened to the message.  He was unsure if he was really supposed to have my number since it was given to him through his nephew Ben.  If I was, he asked me to call him back and left his number which he slowly repeated for the second time in the most hilarious voice.  After laughing at the message with my roommate a few times, I called him back.

He answered the phone and we had a delightful conversation.  Before ending the conversation an hour later, he asked me on a date for the following Saturday.  I have to admit. I was pretty impressed. I had been talking with another guy on the phone that someone was trying to set me up with for over a month. He had yet to ask me out.

The following Saturday came, September 13th.  Steve picked me up around noon.  I remember opening the door and noticing his beautiful blue eyes right away.  I also felt in my heart that this was the guy I was going to marry. Don't ask me how I knew. I just did.  I decided that I was not going to do anything to force it to happen, but rather just sit back and enjoy the moment.

He took me to the Wake Forest/ Purdue football game. I love the atmosphere of any type of sporting event, so this was a perfect first date for me.  To make it even more perfect, he bought me a hot dog at the game for lunch.  I went with the regular hot dog so I wouldn't look like a glutton, even though I would have rather had the big supersized dog.   Steve was hoping to have pizza, but they were out, so he settled for the supersized dog.  I didn't know this at the time, but he doesn't really like hot dogs. So when he only ate half of his hot dog and then crumpled it up in the wrapper and threw it away, I was appalled. Hot dogs are one of my favorites and should never be wasted. lol!

Overall, we had a really good time. Lots of good conversations and laughs. He took me home and then stood at the stop of the stairs right outside of my apartment and continued to talk with me.  It was a warm day, so I invited him in to the air conditioning to meet my roommate and hang out for a while.  We all sat around and talked and then after a bit, he invited both of us to go out to dinner with him. I found out later that while I was in another room, he had convinced my roommate to say yes to his dinner request because he didn't think I would go without her.  His pleas worked and we went.

When I went to bed that night I was excited and hopeful.  I think Steve must have felt the same way.  The next evening as I was sitting in the pew at church waiting for the service to start, I felt a tap on the shoulder. I looked up to see Steve standing there and he asked if he could sit with me.  I said he could and inside the butterflies were having a hay day.

We spent lots of time in the next few weeks hanging out, going to dinner, and just talking to each other for hours on end. When my schedule was busy with activities at school, he would come sit with me while I was keeping the volleyball books or come along with me to the cross country meets. I loved this. I didn't feel like I was having to do anything to make this relationship work. Steve was showing me that he wanted to be with me and was willing to do whatever he had to in order to make that happen. It was something that I have never really experienced before and I liked it.

Two weeks into the relationship, we were at my parent's house for Sunday lunch. We had been there the week before because my parents decided they didn't want to waste any time getting to know this guy that was showing interest in me.  They must have been pretty impressed by him since my dad inquired of Steve at this second meeting when he was going to marry me.  I about died of embarrassment at that moment, but inside it just seemed to be confirmation that this was the guy.  I had always prayed that my parents would whole heartedly approve of whoever I was to marry.  This was just an answer to that prayer.

On October 18th, five weeks after our first date, Steve had planned to take me to dinner. His mom and  stepdad were in town from Indiana and he invited my parents to come along as well.  He called me a couple of hours before the time we were going to meet to see if I was interested in going along with him to run some errands before dinner.  I said sure. We drove around for a bit and then all of a sudden, we were turning into the football stadium where we had gone on our first date.  There was no game that day. He mumbled something about having to meet someone inside.  The gate was unlocked and he led me inside.  The next thing I know, we are in the place where we sat on our first date.  Steve looked at me and asked me if he could ask me three things.  First, would I make him the happiest man in the world? Second, would I do the honor of being his wife? And lastly as he got on his knee,  he asked if I would marry him and opened the ring box.  He says I hesitated.  I say I was in shock.  After a couple of moments, I excitedly said yes.  As we stood there embracing, he signaled to his friend in the sound booth and the stadium was filled with the sounds of Mercy Me's song "Spoken For".  He finished off this beautiful time by giving me a Bible and saying that he always wanted to keep God first in our relationship.  I still couldn't believe it was all happening.  It was so very perfect!

We met our parents at the restaurant. I kept pointing out things to my mom on the menu with my left hand and once she realized there was a ring on it, there were shouts of joy and many tears.  After dinner, we spent the rest of the evening talking excitedly of the future and sharing the good news with our family and close friends.

We chose a December date only 8 weeks out.  There wasn't a lot of time to do a lot of complicated planning. It was almost as though God confirmed that we were supposed to to be together as detail after detail just fell into place with almost no work. We received 6 weeks of marriage counseling from my pastor before our big day. Something we will always be thankful for as it has been a tremendous help to us through our entire married life.


The wedding day arrived. It was cold, but sunny.  I got ready at the church with a few of my closest friends by my side. I remember watching the guests arrive out of the upstairs fellowship hall window and thinking, "This is it!" There were lots of tears as my dad began crying before he walked me in, then I began crying, then Steve began crying when he saw me. Then my mom and his mom started and lots of other people joined in.  It was a sweet ceremony and afterwards, we celebrated with food and friends in the gym of the school where I taught.  With an entry lined with Christmas trees, a handbell choir playing in the background and a heart full of love,  it was a perfect end to a perfect day.

And when I look back on that day, thirteen years
exactly today, I am so very thankful.  God blessed me with a truly wonderful man, who has stood by my side and loved me unconditionally, even when I was unlovable.  He has been the biggest encourager and supporter of me through some very difficult times.  He prays for me and patiently leads me to be a more godly person and a better wife.  He is my best friend, my companion for life, and the everlasting love of my heart.

"Uncle Steve", I am so glad that I can call you mine.  <3