Seventeen years ago this month I saw my husband for the first time. He sat across the room from me in our 9:00AM class. He had my attention from the first day. He was nothing like anyone I had ever dated. Totally opposite actually, but something about him caught my attention.
He would tell me later it was God nudging me toward him.
I didn’t even believe in God at the time, but I have come to realize you don’t have to believe in God for God to guide your path.
We only went on one actual date that I can remember, Mexican food and a horrible movie that I can’t even remember, just that it was terrible.The rest of our dating happened in take-out or home cooked dinners in my kitchen followed by hours sitting on a porch swing learning about each other.
I fell in love with my husband sitting on that porch swing.
We sat for hours talking and swinging, it was on that porch we got to know one another. Gliding gently back and forth on that swing I got to know his heart, I learned his past, and found out what he wanted for his future. Every night as our feet pushed against the concrete porch, gliding us back and forth, little pieces of my heart were given to him.
On that same porch swing many years later I held our baby. We spent afternoons on our swing, while my husband worked long hard hours to make sure we had everything we needed.
We’d swing and I would whisper to her a love story about spending long summer nights on the very same porch swing side by side with her daddy. I’d whisper our love story and gently swing until she drifted to sleep. The baby I held as we glided back and forth on that porch swing is now too big for my lap, now a new baby is cradled in my arms on a new swing. She drifts to sleep as we swing back and forth.
I whisper to her how I fell in love with her daddy and that’s how our life came to be. That old tattered swing was replaced with a new fancier version with comfy cushions and a back that reclines, but the stories are the same.
The love is the same.
The memories we are making fill my heart just the same.
It’s been 17 years since we first sat on an old porch swing together, I blinked and time jumped ahead. One day—far too soon—it will be just us two sitting on a porch swing, as we glide back and forth I’ll whisper to him, “Do you remember, this was how we fell in love?”
Original version published October 7, 2019. Photo courtesy of Lynfield Gardens.
