Christian Testimony - December 2011

I don't know if it was the glare of the ring I gave her (leading to a momentarily mental paralysis as she looked at it), or if I just caught her at a good/weak moment, but she said 'Of course I will.'

I did this at a spot that is very special to me on Lake Aquitaine in Mississauga, Ontario, a place that I dedicated to the Lord as my special place of prayer when I was a little boy.

It was also a strategic move on my part since I was going to return to Alberta that afternoon; and I couldn't stand to see her upset, as she was at our last parting about a month before.

At least this way, I thought/hoped she would have the ring to remember me by and also have something to look forward to. I also wanted her to know that I truly, deeply, and will forever love her, far beyond all others I can imagine.

Mary and I had been vaguely talking 'about the future' for months, as so many new couples do. After a while, I realized how 'empty' those words were becoming to me.

I wanted something real, to make a genuine claim to that future, a future that would seem empty and hollow without her at my side. Between all that, and the fact that I knew in my heart that this could only lead me in one direction, the Godly direction of marriage, I made up my mind to propose to her.

More than that, I knew, as I knew few other things, that I could never love another woman as I did and do her. I am so blessed and so fortunate, especially when you consider that just over a year ago I was essentially jobless, hopeless, and in total despair of my life, before she arrived.

My dad had (and has) been ill with Alzheimer's Disease, and just recently had a very bad 'episode' where he took off, my brother had barely survived a serious bout with pneumonia, the bills were piling up, and I had all but given up on finding anyone to love, especially after a recent visit by a lady I'd been corresponding with for over a year that didn't go anywhere, and a few dates with a local girl, both of whom I met on ChristianCafe.com.

It was at this low point that I sent a prayer on the prayer site for my dad. Many kind people responded, one of whom was Mary, using the 'I prayed for you' function. I responded, likewise, with the generic 'thank you for your prayers' and left it at that.

Mary, who I had never met before, responded with a follow up letter and I sent a polite response. That was followed by another letter from her and another response. Then I stopped writing and got on with my life, completely forgetting about her, as my life started to get busy again. My dad, by then, had mentally settled down and I was starting a new job.

After about 10 or 12 days, however, I felt I should review and respond to the people who responded to my prayer. By now I felt that I had 'mourned' sufficiently over my summer disappointments with the ladies I met and decided that, if nothing else, I could make a friend, and have someone with whom I can have a few laughs with.

I was NOT looking for romance, having decided that marriage was really not part of God's plan for my life at this point. After reviewing many of the profiles of those who responded, many of whom had often prayed for me, I saw Mary's and thought 'well she looks kinda cute' and thought her profile was kind of funny and sweet.

So I followed the advice on the last line of her profile, 'pushed wink and saw what happens.' Immediately after that, I followed it up with a brief letter of introduction; completely forgetting, by now, that she and I had already traded letters a couple of weeks before. Mary responded almost immediately and I thought 'oh, wow, she does have a sense of humour' and thought that I was on the verge of a genuine friendship. I certainly didn't think that, with the distance separating us, along with the fact that none of my previous 'long distance' relationships worked out, that this would go no further than a good online friendship.

God, though, had other plans.

After trading letters for a few months, during which time I was briefly hospitalized with a large kidney stone (alarming Marion enough to phone around to locate me in the hospital I was admitted in) I decided that things could not continue this way indefinitely.

When I broached the subject to her, she agreed that a meeting, even a brief one, was necessary since we were both starting to develop genuine feelings for each other and that it was better determine sooner, rather than later, where they were going to take us.

Normally I'd be the one to fly out to Ontario but having only recently started working I did not have the resources to do it. Instead Mary agreed to fly out to Alberta for a long weekend in February. She was much more nervous than I was, both never having done something quite like this before and knowing that I had basically broken the heart of the last woman that flew out to meet me.

For my part, I was still rather ambivalent, and skeptical that the person arriving would match the person I'd been conversing with. I'd been disappointed in long distance romances many times, so my thought was to just have a good time, be charming, respectful, and, above all, behave like a Christian gentleman, whether I felt there was a spark or not.

The day of Mary's arrival was comedy silliness. Aside from the chaos at work, I ended up having to circle the airport half a dozen times, since I was not allowed to park anywhere for free. I also didn't quite know which gate she was going to come in and I didn't want to wait for her somewhere inside the building, hoping to meet her. Eventually I got a phone text from her telling me where she was. I responded, and after a few more circles around the airport (during which time I got a real appreciation of the term 'standard Orbit, Mr. Sulu') I finally located her.

Shockingly, Mary turned out to be exactly who she said she was. After a bit of awkwardness, as I loaded her luggage into my car, followed by a brief hug, we got into the car and started talking..and talking...and talking. It was no different than having a conversation with her on the phone, or on the computer.

As we drove to her hotel, our conversation became quite humorous, and then even more so when we got to her hotel to check in. The clerk looked at us both and thought we were a married couple seeking to escape from their kids for a weekend alone. We both smiled at that comment, as Mary and I were quite at ease with each other by now, and we were both looking forward to our visit.

What I didn't expect was that Mary was so highly nervous about our first meeting that she was actually quite sick. The next day, Saturday, our first full day, Mary spent in hospital, vomiting for 10 hours straight, as doctors tried to determine what was the cause. I joked with her that that made it my most unusual first date ever, but I remained there until she recovered.

The cause was not determined; however, to this day, my bride believes it was because she had been so wound up that she had not eaten properly for days. Her nerves finally got the better of her and whatever she tried to eat the first night of her arrival, she was unable to keep down the next day. On Sunday, with Mary recovered, we were finally able spend a day together that did not involve a hospital, a team of doctors, medication or a computer screen between us. After ensuring she was all right, we went to church and then headed to Lake Louise and Banff, Alberta.

The day was a whirlwind of travel, and activities, including a relaxing dip in the famous Banff Hot Springs, and pizza at Aardvark, my favourite pizza place in Alberta. On Monday, her last day, we headed off to Vulcan, Alberta, the 'Star Trek' Capital of Canada. Mary and I are both fans of the original series and I thought the drive on the flat prairie would provide a great contrast from the mountains the day before.

Mary, by now, had recovered from her hospital stay but a new thought kept crawling into our heads; the fact that she was leaving later this afternoon. That helped us focus on having enjoying every moment we had together. For my part, the emotional struggle, the realization that she was not going to be with me the next day, had already started.

For Mary, the struggle began long before she arrived. To fight the growing sadness in me, I resorted to silly jokes and wisecracks while holding Mary's hand as we headed to the airport and her departure. This was very difficult for us both, much more than I ever anticipated it would be. To avoid any emotional outburst, I quickly let her off at the departure level and, after promising her this would not be the last time she'd see me, quickly took off, doing my best to keep my emotions in check.

I got home and sat stunned in front of the TV for hours, trying to make sense of the last three days, trying to focus on what God was telling me and, above all, trying to make sense of what I was feeling.

Not long after I arrived back at my house, and before Mary's fight took off, she texted me, saying she was glad I rode off as quickly as I could as she broke down not long after I was gone. That got me to thinking about the future in a way I dared not think of it for many years.

After a few more weeks of talking, in which Mary and I expressed our feelings for each other, I knew that I had but one course left. So, prior to my visit over Easter in April (two months after her visit), I made the decision to buy her a ring and ask her to marry me.

Some might think it is all rather sudden and impractical. Indeed, I was certainly not expecting an engagement to arise out of some innocent if flirty emails barely 8 months before. Yet between all the phone calls, emails, web chats, and visits, something happened to us that I'm still coming to terms with; we fell in love, unexpectedly, inadvertently, but certainly. It was not a 'heat of passion' kind of thing either, the sort that burns itself out and disappears. Rather it was an evolution of feelings that began with friendship and faith, and kept growing and building through all the phone calls, letters and web chats that we'd had over those many months.

Mary and I both know that there will still be struggles as we set plans into motion to arrive at that glorious moment when we are pronounced Husband and Wife.

That said, we are determined to face them, together, with God's help, as the days and weeks and months unfold before us. Yet 'my wife' seems such a shallow title for such a precious woman. Indeed, I would, if I could, rewrite the English language in such a way that another and better word could be used to describe what she means to me, what she has done for me, and what I can only hope I can be to her.

To wit, Mary is my lady, my friend, my hope, my joy, my spirit and my strength. When I look into her eyes, when I kiss her face and hold her in my arms, I know I am grasping on to some one and some thing far more than many men deserve, and did so from the first moment we met on that very cold February day. It is rather, therefore, overwhelming when I think of the depth of meaning and the reality of what those simple words 'will you marry me' truly mean.

Next to 'I love you' there are fewer more powerful words in English that so thoroughly convey the totality of one person's desire or hopes for the future. To be united, therefore, with Marion (who will always be Mary to me), after many years of vainly hoping and praying to meet such a woman, brings me a greater joy and a greater peace than I can fathom even now.

But the really funny thing about all this is that I'm not what you'd call your a typical 'romantic loon'. Though I'm a trained writer, I have trouble expressing or even understanding the feelings Mary engenders in me on the best of occasions. And though I am not the first erstwhile groom to have proposed and been accepted, I feel somehow uniquely blessed among them all. This is doubly certain because of the fact that, as I said before, when I first encountered my future bride on this site in August 2010, I was not ready to believe in love anymore. After many failed encounters or dates, I was simply looking for a friend, an email partner, or just someone I can share a few laughs with until events unfolded in my life. I never expected that a few months later I'd be proposing to her; proving, once again, the maxim that U.S. General and President Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his autobiography, 'man proposes and God disposes.'

Please, then, pray that I can demonstrate to Mary, both now and for the rest of our lives, that God does not work by chance but by His divine providence, at both the time and the place of His choosing, and not ours.

Please also pray that God will bless Mary and I as we struggle to overcome and, indeed, conquer the many hurdles that lie before us as the days go by towards our wedding day; which we will be on September 29th, 2012 at a historic chapel in Queenston, Ontario, site of the famous battle in the War of 1812. As that battle proved a turning point for the history of our nation, so, likewise, will this wedding mark a turning point in our lives as well.

Without adding even more verbiage to this already long letter, I want to say, explicitly, that it is not a small thing for her, or any woman, to become a bride and a wife. It is courageous, and the ultimate demonstration of faith in God and the future. For that, for her faith and confidence, I can only say that I love her all the more and feel blessed beyond my station and my worth to know she has willingly decided to become mine. My fiancee IS the world to me, and a far more precious one than I ever hoped to discover. She is the sun, the stars, and the moon, and were we to live in a mansion or a cardboard box, as long as she is at my side, I need nothing else (well, except hot pizza, a man's gotta eat you know hehehe!), nor want anyone else.

I cannot even look at or think of another woman without seeing only a pale shadow of the love she gives me. God made her for me and brought her to me. He sanctified her and purified her, and made her mine. I, therefore, give praise to our God and Father, and confess how unworthy I am to receive this wonderful person into my life. In return I ask, once again, that He continues to work in my life so that I truly become the man He wants me to be, and that my future bride believes in her heart that I am.

Thank you again, ChristianCafe.com, and God above all, for this wonderful gift. It took me many, many years to meet Mary, and then many months of communicating and sharing before I realized that what had started from an innocent a prayer request for my father, could turn into friendship and then to love.

Mary, though, was on only two weeks when she responded to my prayer request, and began what started as an innocent exchange between supportive strangers and Christians, to the love neither of us expected to find, nor dared to believe in. Again, man proposes and God disposes. It was true in the beginning, it is true now, and it will remain true for all time as well.

Steven-ulysses885 {Alberta} & Mary-cleo463 {Ontario} December 2011

She was from MI and I lived in PA. We met through a instant message on your website and talked for hours on Cafe really getting to know each other.

It started off once every couple days and led to hours of talking each night. Eventually through our dating and many long road trips Beth moved to PA after 3 years of dating and we got married in Venice, FL on 06/12/2010.

We just had our first child Dexter on 12/12/2011.

We owe everything to your website that brought us together. God is so great in everything He does. It is incredible how He can bring two people from different states together both willing to serve Him and each other.

All you have to do is Pray and ask and He will answer. Your website was the vessel He was able to use to bring us together!

We both thank you so much for providing this service that Christians can use to find their other half that is all part of God's design.

Christopher-christopher355 {Pennsylvania} & Beth-bjeryc346 {Michigan} December 2011