5 Years & Counting

I have a confession to make. For the last two years I have been heartlessly roasting my Mom for her overnight obsession with K-Dramas. I have watched her laugh, cry and swoon for hours on end reading the television while simultaneously trying to watch people act it out. Every now and then, she would hold me down so I could watch/read a little here and there, but I could never get into it. 

Well, a few weeks ago, after telling my Mom no for so long, I finally agreed to watch a K-Drama series from beginning to end. I left the choice up to her and promised we would watch one episode per day over the course of sixteen days. I barely got through the first episode and kicked and screamed when we had to watch the second, but by the time we got to the third, I think I was hooked. 

I can say that because our sixteen day venture quickly became a mere five days. Initially, like Hallmark movies the acting was subpar, the budget was at most $5,000 and the storyline was near unbelievable. Yet, as the series progressed, there was something that got me hook, line and sinker and that is the amount of time the production team puts into the connection between the main characters. In a 45 minute episode you have at least 15 minutes of long stares coupled with sweet background music giving you the opportunity to feel the love at every moment throughout the episode. 

Being the lover of sweet romanticism that I am, I was so excited that I had found a new niche. As a matter a fact, I even ordered a mini pocket speaker so my husband could randomly walk through a door or stop in his tracks while playing some 90’s R&B and stare deep into my eyes so I can remake the heartfelt moments in these episodes. I mean, who wouldn’t want to live out their own romance novella in real life? 

Love stories are my favorite, even in the Bible. One of my favorites being Ruth and Boaz. As I read through Ruth, God gives us the foundation of the story, but if you take a step back and let your imagination fly as you read through it, you can imagine what each moment was like and allow your heart to flair. 

The story of Ruth and Boaz is so similar to the way they lead characters in K-Dramas are presented. Boaz fell in love with Ruth’s loyalty and to show his attraction to the person she was inside he would leave tokens of extra food for her to make her life easier. In K-Dramas the beauty isn’t the foundation of attraction but rather the heart and spirit inside the woman that brings out the glow of beauty on the outside. 

I hold these story lines near and dear to my heart because I know I am not the most attractive person. Even with a ton of effort I’m not exactly turning heads as I walk by. With that said I never allowed my lack of outward beauty squash how I felt about myself overall. Beauty really does start in the inside and radiates out. I truly believe God always intended it to be that way. I’m not saying I haven’t struggled from time to time, but I knew in my heart that God had someone planned for me from the beginning of time and as a young woman I decided to wait for God to bring him to me.

In my mind I envisioned I would meet him in my teens, it didn’t really matter where. He’d have a heart for the Lord, a love for family, a big endearing smile, a mind filled with dreams and maybe, just maybe he’d wear a baseball cap. Sometimes when I wasn’t keeping my eyes focused that baseball cap would try to fight with the heart for the Lord, but God always found ways to keep me in check.

I can’t help but giggle as I share this with you because there were times I thought I knew what God had planned for me. When “THE ONE” walked through the doors of the church and threw his hands up in the air to praise God, Tevin Campbell started singing in the background “I’m Ready” while the Babyface in me was closing her eyes and thanking God that she found the one. But, time after time it was never what it seemed to be and was always just a thought in my mind and a subtle but quickly passing beat to my heart. 

So many times the enemy would scheme his way into my mind and make me believe I wasn’t enough to be loved by a boy. He would always distract me so I would look and compare myself to others always making me feel less than. He attacked my face, my weight, my rambunctious personality, my intelligence and as a result it sunk my heart and made me think I would one day have to settle for someone who was willing to say “I do”. 

The insane thing behind it all is that I always knew the truth, all I needed to do was believe and trust God. See, God is not a God of the ordinary. He is the God of the extraordinary. He is the God that created the moon and the stars. He’s the God who is himself the definition of love. He is the God who turned water into wine, created strawberries and chocolate, saxophones and even made sure that each member of Dru Hill would cross paths so that we can get weak in the knees while they sing about the times we’ve all wished for. So why wouldn’t my love story be anything less than extraordinary if it was created at the hand of my Father in Heaven? 

I don’t have all the time in the world to go through each and every step, but I am lead to share with you how. Hindsight being 20/20, God really is something else. I’ve been spending the last few days writing through this and I have found myself running up to Robert and giving him more unexpected kisses and reminding him how much I love him. Not saying we’ve never had times where I didn’t want to strangle him, just saying there is so much good I could write a book. I do, though, promise to keep it on point.

And so it began October 11th, 2009. Why do I remember this date so well? I remember it, because it was the day God would use the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs and MySpace to change my life forever. In the moment I never knew making fun of the Cowboys would bring together a subtle man from Texas and a feisty girl from New Jersey. 

I wasn’t looking for him nor was he looking for me. But before the beginning of time, God had a plan, he had a purpose and how he chose to set the path could never be remade on the Hallmark Channel or K-Drama even though the last month of binge watching has deemed itself pretty close. I say that because he took a near unbelievable story line and made it mine, for better or for worse. 

Roughly 1,513 miles and a simple 22 Hours and 35 minutes away, if you don’t stop to use the bathroom or get gas, two people happened to be at the same place at the same time. I have all too often loved to complain about how social media has been the bane of our existence, but the truth is without it I would have never been able to meet the man I would promise my life to. He made a snarky remark standing on his soap box regarding one of the most overrated football teams of all time in a lousy sports forum that I accidentally found myself in. It took three words and his desire for speaking out on things he’s passionate about. For most people the most life changing thing you can tell someone in three words are “I love you”. For me, it was “The Cowboys suck.” 

We must have went back and forth for a good 20-30 minutes before I decided to add him on MySpace. I mostly wanted to see how dumb he looked, but was at a loss when my request came with a private message that indicated he didn’t add strangers. I decided to leave it at that. Fortunately though, my vast knowledge of sports intrigued him and the following morning I had a new friend. Little did he know at the time that 2 minutes into our forum battle he lost me and I had to call my brother to help me keep it going so I could hold my pride. If you ever read this Kyle, thank you. 

I would have never guessed that just a few messages would evolve into over 5 years of late night phone calls, countless text messages and til you drop video chats. Would you believe me if I told you that I fell in love with Robert before I ever had the chance to look into his eyes, hold his hand or kiss his cheek? Well, it’s true. I can’t pinpoint the day or the time, but somewhere early on he stole my heart and I knew I would love him for the rest of my life. 

I often wonder if it was his enthusiasm when we spoke about Jesus, his integrity, patience, thoughtfulness, the way he prayed over me, his peculiar nerdy demeanor, the way he spoke about his parents or the fact that we desired so many of the same things in life. What I do know, is he sincerely pursued me each day for 5 years, most of which I was kept a secret. We didn’t mean for it to be quiet for so long, but I never thought we would have spent 5 years overcoming hills and valleys waiting on God to make a way. As the time continued to pass it just became harder to explain so we just let it be. In the meantime he made me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry, he encouraged me when I wanted to give up, he prayed for me when dark clouds would roll through my life and not once did he ever ask for anything in return.  

At this point, I do indeed have tears rolling down my eyes as I write this. Over the last 11+ years I want to share with you that God has written the sweetest love story that continues to give me butterflies. My love story doesn’t entail a thoughtful introduction or date nights, but it does involve a lot of prayer and belief that God will work all things together for good to those who love Him, even when everything seems to be falling a part. I am guilty of forgetting that when I gave my life to Christ, I was given the opportunity to forget about death and live. I believe my love story and most of my life is God reinforcing eternity into my mind/spirit. I have always placed timelines and expectations on so many things when all God wanted was for me to live for him and allow him the opportunity to do his thing.

Not once has our story made sense, but if you want to see God’s work in faithfulness here it is. I can watch and dream out romantic love stories, but what God has taught me over all this time is it was never me. I wasn’t the hopeless romantic I always thought I was, I have been spending the last 11 years falling more in love with the hopeless romantic. Never my will, but God’s will be done and it was worth every moment we stood in waiting. 

I remember him telling me on our wedding day in the mere 15 minutes we had alone after we said I do, that he knew he loved me since the 12th phone call. He could even recall ending our phone call and in his head whispering, “I love you” and praying for God to make a way. In the moment he never anticipated God’s way would be far from our way and with every odd stacked against us. I have to admit it was not mine, but Robert’s faithful and patient spirit that carried us through. Even today when I tell him to fly his airplane hug to another landing strip, smack his hot sweaty hand away from mine, put a pillow in-between us and tell him to cuddle with that and tell him to go kiss the dogs he never loses hope and he never stops.

I close my eyes and I can still hear his tone weaken as he said goodnight in the early hours of the morning over the 5 endless years. I can still feel the excitement every time I received a hand written card or a gift. I can still sense the joy over the presence of the Holy Spirit every time we prayed together. I can still see his big smile and sealed eyes as I ran across an empty hospital parking lot as we shared our first kiss. I can still sense the anxiety as his hands rumbled while restarting the song he spent months recording with my Dad because he happened to lose my engagement ring in the process of trying to propose. I still feel my fearful heart warm as our eyes locked when I began to walk down the aisle. I can still see the dark circles around his eyes from the ongoing sleepless nights as we dealt with an unexpected illness early on in our marriage. I can still sense the grip of his hand increase as the tears rolled down our eyes when the doctor told us we will more than likely never have children of our own. I can even reminisce on his gaze of my hopeless and sulking head as he reassured me that even if he could do it all over again, it would have been me. I can see the fear in his eyes as our hands came apart as they wheeled me abruptly as my blood oxygen levels continued to plummet without an opportunity to say goodbye. I could continue, paragraph after paragraph, but I will end with the pain I could feel as he shared with us that the hospital couldn’t save my Fathers life.

He’s my biggest fan and truly believes that I can accomplish anything. Knowing my desire to write with a soft heart for sharing the blessings of Christ Jesus, he’s the one behind me starting this blog. He is actually the one who normally edits my blog posts, but in this case, I couldn’t let him this time around. With that said, please forgive all the errors as he is the smarter one out of the pair. 

I hope you understand why I wanted to share. A large part of my heart was to let this silly man know how much I love him and how much that love has grown throughout the years. Another part was to share how God took something that on paper and in the “real world” was impossible and turned it into something inevitable. For 5 years I shared every step of my life with a young man that lived over 1,500 miles away from me. He took his first breath on this earth 5 years before I would ever take mine. He also promised to love me forever 5 years ago today and he has yet to ever let me down. There is something sweet about that number 5 and I hope that if I ever feel doubt I can read through this and remember why. 

Happy Anniversary Robert Charles. I couldn’t share this one with you before I posted it, but I hope you know how much my heart loves you. I don’t have the sweet romantic spirit that you have, but I promise to keep trying by seeking God and asking him to help me love you the way you need to be loved. Thank you for waiting, for understanding and for holding onto your faith in Christ to show your walk of integrity and sincerity. 

Even when you’re having a breakdown for the silliest things, your patience in all the things that require a head held high has never disappointed. We’ve never been able to live out our lives like expected, but that look in your eyes and the fire in your heart makes me stop in my tracks quite often with that ear to ear smile. I guess you can keep the pocket speaker for other things as the radiance from your heart is enough for me. 

I’m so thankful to our Father in Heaven that he had us cross paths over that split second. I know it wasn’t by chance. He had a plan and I’m so happy we followed God. I’m so thankful that you dive into His word and His promises He laid out before the birth of our Savior. As we pray daily for miracles to have a family, you administer the infertility treatments and while we balance every other thing wrong with me, Thank you. 

I don’t know why you’re as sweet to me as you are. I guess I can truly see the reflection of God’s love through the way you love me each day. I’m so grateful for the last 5 years as your wife. You make me so proud day in and day out. I’m overwhelmed as our love story continues to be filmed as one of my favorite romanic novellas of all time. I hope that this brief reflection of our story encourages everyone waiting for God to open their door into a forever love would be patient and trust him. I also hope that anyone else who found their forever would reflect on their own romantic novella so they could be reminded to never let the fire burn out. 

Robert, I pray for you every morning when I wake up and every night before you go to bed. I promise to do this daily until God is done with my time here on earth. Aside from the day God took the whips and nails on behalf of my sin, you’re my greatest blessing. 

I love you. Forever and a Day… 

Kimberly 

P.S. No matter what age you pair us up at… I would have had a crush on you.