The five years following my trip to Orlando hold so many wonderful memories for me. I settled down in a beautiful city at the foot of the mountains and immediately got involved in a phenomenal interdenominational Bible study for singles led by a dynamic Bible scholar. The friendships I found at this Bible study are priceless, and several of those precious friends even ended up standing with me at my wedding as bridesmaids.
It took me a long time to find a new church, and I eventually ended up helping plant a church with about two dozen other young singles. I met so many fascinating people through that experience. The church grew like wildfire with a large majority of its first new members coming from the local Harley Davidson club. That's when I got to ride a Harley for the first time. (Shh...Don't tell Mom!) Since we could not initially afford janitorial service, I volunteered to help clean the church facility (an old warehouse) on Saturdays. The other lady who signed up to help me was a recovering drug addict with overwhelming needs. I can't even begin to describe all I learned about God's love for humanity through my relationships in this diverse church body.
In college, I had assumed that I would need to learn to play golf for future business interactions. While I was one of the few students at my school who took PE100 (aka Run 100) for a grade instead of the pass/fail option, golf was the one and only college course that I ended up dropping entirely, and I'm sure the grounds keepers were relieved when I quit the class. Thankfully, running ended up being significantly more important at my company than golf. In fact, our company had its own running team, and we competed regularly against other large corporations in the state. Our team ran together almost every Wednesday and Saturday. This team really encouraged me in my running and helped me reach speeds and distances I never thought possible. They inspired me to run a full marathon. I had recently heard that a friend from high school had died of leukemia, so I ran the Disney Marathon in January 2000 with Team-in-Training in his memory to raise money for leukemia research.
I also found another ministry passion during that time in the area of crisis pregnancy counseling. My adoption story seemed to encourage young mothers in crisis pregnancy situations. This volunteer opportunity inspired even more diverse and rewarding relationships.
My career was quite enjoyable, especially after I got promoted to the logistics engineering group at our North American headquarters building. That job required a great deal of travel which helped satisfy my hunger for travel. After a nightmare experience trying to build a home as a young single woman, I finally settled down in my new home. I was very content with my great job, fabulous church, wonderful Bible study friends, running team, and a new home of my own.
Meanwhile, DC had settled in wintry Connecticut as his base for a number of lengthy deployments with the navy. According to DC (and verified by his mother), he dated other girls while in port, but when his mother would call him and ask about those girls, he would always tell her something like, "She's alright, but she isn't like Sherri." While I continued to pray for him, think of him often, and keep his photo at my desk, he continued to think about me and set me as the "benchmark" for his other relationships.
During December of 1998, DC came across my parents' address while addressing Christmas cards. He sent them a Christmas card and included his email address should anyone in the family possibly want to contact him. Ahem...
Within seconds of opening the Christmas card from DC, Mom was on the phone calling me to give me DC's new contact information. So, off to the computer I went to send an email. When he noticed that my last name had not changed, he assumed I had not gotten married to the man I had thought I would, so he began emailing me regularly. We were both dating other people at the time, so our conversations were mostly just informative in nature.
That March, he was scheduled for another long deployment on a submarine, and he asked me to send him emails during his time at sea. He could receive email when the submarine came up close to the surface, but for security reasons, he could not send any emails. I do not enjoy one-sided conversations, yet, I felt it was my patriotic duty to send a word of encouragement on occasion during his deployment. Usually, my emails were simple stories of how I had royally embarrassed myself that week. I was willing to lay my pride on the line to evoke a dimpled grin from a naval officer trapped in a miserably small space with all those lonely men at the bottom of the sea.
After this deployment, he wrote a letter requesting resignation from his commission with the navy once he had completed his obligation in May of the following year. By this time, we had both broken off previous dating relationships so we could talk more freely. He began calling me every Sunday evening.
Soon, he was meeting with headhunters who specialize in placing military officers in civilian jobs. The job placement agency set up interviews for him in April 2000 with a large number of companies from across the nation during their huge job fair in my home state. One of my additional responsibilities at my workplace was "head recruiter" for my university campus. This position required me to undergo a week of intense training on professional interview techniques followed by numerous meetings, multiple trips to my college campus for job fairs, extremely long days interviewing candidates for professional jobs at my company, filtering through resumes, and selecting a few candidates for on-site interviews. I knew what to look for on a resume and what questions the larger firms would likely be asking. So, I offered, following some hinting on DC's part, to drive up to meet him at the job fair site and help him prepare before the interviews.
I had butterflies in my stomach all week prior to his interviews just from thinking about seeing DC again. I felt a strange sense of deja' vu when I entered the hotel elevator at the job fair location where I was surrounded by military officers in uniform. When I knocked on DC's door, I wondered which knocks were louder, my knuckles on the door or my knees against one another.
When he opened the door, I barely recognized him. He skin was much paler (due to spending consecutive summers underwater on a submarine) than I remembered. His hair was shorter, and his face was fuller and rounder. He looked older, more mature, and more knowledgeable. Those years in the navy had changed him.
Despite the intensity of what he must have experienced while in the navy, his smile was soft, and his nature was still very easy going. He was in street clothes, and I could tell he still preferred the preppy look. We spent the day walking around the grounds of the resort, eating at one of his favorite restaurants, and catching up on the past five years. I kept reminding him that we were supposed to be preparing for his interviews. I repeatedly pulled out my notes and tried to role play with him, but he didn't seem all that interested in my "professional assistance".
I was attracted to him, but it wasn't physical attraction that drew me to him this time. I was much more interested in who he had become inside. I did not see the "red lights" I had seen before but sensed an inner encouragement to proceed with great caution. I had spent the past eight years on God's pottery wheel where He had been shaping and molding me. During this encounter with DC, however, I felt like he was on the Potter's wheel this time and in the process of intense spiritual transformation.
As we innocently parted late that evening, DC promised to keep me updated on the outcome of the interviews. I called my mother on my cell phone as soon as I got to my car. She talked me down from my cloud before I began the long drive back to my house.
As promised, DC later told me that the interviews had gone well, and he eventually narrowed down his job choices to three different companies in three different states. These locations included the following:
1) His home state over 1000 miles away
2) Austin, TX - computer capital of the US and ideal for DC
3) A suburb of my home state's capital
To be continued....
Click here to continue to part 6.
To go back to the beginning of this love story, click here.
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