Chapter 2 of the Tim and Bethany love story.

I'd like to take a pause before I get into this and spell out why I'm doing this.
For starters, my parents' story of connection is very precious to me. It's my history and it informs my values. I love it. It tells me who I want to be. Ergo, I expect my love story to be important to my children, so I need to write it down. Secondly, I put my faith in a God who is mighty and loving and very, very detailed. I believe that He is on my side and He fights for me and my dreams. I believe that He orchestrated impossible circumstances to give me the wonderful husband that I'd been dreaming about since I was young and I think He can make your unlikely if not impossible dreams come true too.

Now, after that first initial email contact with Tim, I took a deep breath and gave myself a pep-talk. How many other people in this world look great by their web profiles? It's the easiest thing in the world to create: pick a flattering photo, write something witty, add some credentials, and that's it. I decided to not get my hopes up.
 However, the more we talked, the more we realized that we had everything in common. The similarities between our stories just kept piling up, right down to having horrible teachers in second grade who made us afraid of and hate school. We both had short furlough experiences in the USA that led us to believe living in America was a utopian experience. We were both middle children.

Emails begot g-chatting, which begot Facebook friendship, which begot Twitter following, which begot texting. I was studying him, and finding all good things. Specifically this video he created of his family at Christmastime
 
Behind my computer screen, I swooned. I would've married him just for his sweet family at that point.

These little bits and pieces of his life experience that I was able to catch through social media were integral in our early friendship. I knew all the words to the songs his family sang because I sang them when I was a kid. His mild yet spicy family dynamic, with swirls of French and American culture was not only incredibly attractive to me, it showed me that because of my own history, we could relate on a very basic familial level, and that was huge.

In one month we had covered all this ground, and on the Sunday that I returned home from celebrating Thanksgiving with family, Tim texted me this: "Are you busy next weekend?"

Since someone who is in Chicago should have no concern about my weekend plans in Kansas City, this was out of the ordinary. I remember being in my room, and staring at my phone wondering if I was ready to meet this guy and risk a potentially very awkward experience to move the friendship passed the 500 mile hiccup we had going on.

"I don't think so. What's up?" And I waited for his response. For forty-five minutes I waited. I checked that it sent, and it had. I waited longer. I agonized that he had changed his mind. I agonized that his phone wasn't working. Oh, those forty five minutes.

And then finally: "Sorry, I'm in the middle of a photo-shoot. I was thinking maybe I might come down to KC."
Gosh, that feeling was weird. He was so bold I wasn't sure what to do. Why would he travel all this way to meet me? He was probably one of those socially special types. Or was he perfect? I couldn't know yet, I'd never even talked to him on the phone. The possibility was exciting, but also frightening.

"That could be cool."
"How about I call you tonight and we talk it over?"
"Sounds good."

Then I walked into the hallway and told my roommate, and we screamed like little girls.