Enjoy the inspiring love stories of PRAISE listeners. Then have your say in who should win the grand prize romantic getaway to Alderbrook Resort by voting on your favorite story! Just by voting, you’ll be entered to win one of five Family 4 Packs of passes to Creation NW 2013, Aug. 7-10 in Enumclaw. Vote once a day, every day for your chance to win!
Alison of Surrey
Our love story began as so many others. Young people who met in church, I was 17, he was 21......we had stars in our eyes and dreams of a perfect life....We married in 1989 when I was 20 and he was just 24. The life we dreamed of was off to a good start and though many probably thought it would never last forever.....we never doubted it for a minute. The early years went by and suddenly the first hurdle we were going to face together was upon was....infertility. For 2 years we faced the ups and the downs that so many couples go through. We desired a family and yet it seemed like it may never come to be. We prayed and cried and trusted......3 years after our desire for a family began we held our son. We thought that God had taken us through one of the hardest things we would face as a couple.....had we only known...... Our daughter came 19 months later, and another son 2 years after that.....so much for infertility! The early years were full of diaper changes, not much money in the bank but lots of love in our home. In 1998 God blessed us with another son!! Only this time..things were different. It became apparent very quickly that this very special son was going to have a very difficult path. This son spent 3 of his first 5 years in a hospital, this son of ours survived against all odds many times. Those dark days of infertility seemed like a walk in the park compared to what we were facing as a couple now. Show/Hide Full Story This beautiful, special, amazing child of God is 14 now. He will be our forever 4 year old really. Today I watch the man I fell in love with, for very different reasons so many years ago, changing his precious teens diapers, fixing his feeding tubes and formulas, charging his power wheelchair, hooking up his IV lines and his breathing machine and loving this child with the type of love that only God can place in you. These years have been very challenging. Our lives have revolved around keeping our 3 healthy children’s lives normal in a very un-normal household. One of the things that has taken a back seat over the years is our time together but....we will celebrate 24 years of marriage this spring. I can say beyond a doubt that having a child with a life limiting illness has only drawn us closer together. It has made me see Jesus in my husband in ways I could never have imagined when our love story began. You see when you watch the person you love caring for that piece of your heart that breaths and talks-that is called your 'special' child-it is like watching the hands of Jesus at work. So, our love story began like any other, but will end in a very different way that we could have imagined. It will be a love story of endurance, pain and suffering, hardship and struggle....but it will be a story of a love that has risen above and survived and is stronger than we could have imagined. We are so blessed!
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Laura of Marysville
When I think of the world and how really big it is, it makes me think of one small grain of sand, upon a beach and how small we really are. I was working on at an Air Force base in California, been there for almost seven years at the time, I knew almost everyone there. Our squadron went to Korea for two weeks during the summer. My last night there in Korea, I had met up with some friends to celebrate our departure, when I looked over and saw the most amazing man I had ever set eyes on! I thought he was some contractor, that more than likely I would never see again, beings I was on the other side of the world and knowing long distant relationships rarely work out. We danced the night away and had a wonderful time, and as the evening ended said our goodbyes, I sadly and politely said it was nice to see him and maybe I would see him one day again, thinking I never would...then he said to me "well, you have too!, I am the flight engineer on the flight that is taking your squadron home!" I was shocked, and not only just that, he had told me that he had been working on the same base as me all those years! We never once crossed paths in our own hometown on our own Air Force Base, but of all things, clear across the world, in South Korea! We dated two years and married after that and we both love God and have been blessed with three beautiful children! I know God had something to do with that, because only the impossible is possible with God!
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Cynthia of Sumas
In 1979, I was a single mother of two. I had been for several years and I was lonely out of my mind. I used to wonder why a television show character that was on at that time, the Incredible Hulk, had someone to love and I didn't! At that time, that little yellow sale paper you find outside of restaurants and stores had a section called “Meet-a-Mate.” People sent in personal ads and readers responded – including me. I read them assiduously, but rarely found an ad that interested me. That is, until I read one from a man that said he was a Christian, loved children and owned four businesses. The newspaper named him “The Entrepreneur.” I answered the ad with a letter telling a little about me and a lot about my children. Then I forgot about it. One Saturday evening some time later, I was getting ready to leave the house with my children to go grocery shopping when the phone rang. I answered it and heard an unfamiliar voice. “This is 'the Entrepreneur,” the man said. His name was Bob and he'd received my letter from the paper. I told him I was just leaving and asked if he'd mind calling me back after 9 p.m. The kids would be in bed by then and we could talk uninterrupted. (He told me later that he couldn't believe what I was saying. It had taken him all day to work up the courage to call me and here I was asking him to call back later – so I could go grocery shopping!) Show/Hide Full Story He did call back and we talked for over an hour. I know we talked about all kinds of stuff, but the only thing I remember is him telling me that he was sitting on a huge stack of clean laundry; that he always bought at least three weeks worth of underwear so he didn't have to wash very often! He lived in Anacortes and I in Everson, so we made plans for him to drive up to meet us the next day after church. One of the things I used to do in my loneliness was plan little daydreams. My most common one was to dream of meeting a man, him “dating” me and my children for a month before we ever went out by ourselves. In my dreams, the man was about 6 feet tall, blonde and Irish. (I am blonde and Irish.) The next day after our phone conversation was Sunday and we were waiting anxiously for the Entrepreneur (Bob) to arrive. My son, age 9, was waiting at the window when he drove up. Bob said when he saw my son in the window he thought, Wow. If this is the son, what must the mother look like! He took us all to a movie that afternoon and then to dinner. We made no further plans. I liked him, but even as lonely as I was, I found I wasn't interested in all the uncertainty of a new relationship. That was February 11, 1979. The next week there was a big storm. Power was out all over the state. Our house was all electric and we had no heat, so we went in to Bellingham and spent the night with some friends. We stayed with them for two days until we finally got power back. On Tuesday, I got a call at my work – from Bob. Where have you been? I've been calling and calling. Are you okay? I explained our situation and he said that his power had also gone out. He'd had a freezer full of steaks and lobster and he wondered if he could bring them up and fix dinner for us, so they didn't go bad. I reluctantly said yes. He arrived that evening with not only steaks and lobster, but also with a big beautiful hanging plant for me and a big tin of Almond Roca for my children. It was Valentine's Day, and he brought us all Valentine gifts. We continued to date – Bob, me and my two children - for about three weeks. During that time, he changed the locks on my doors (we'd had a break in), and did various other repairs around my house. He cared for us. It was almost a month before he and I went out alone. We were married the following July 14, five months from that first Valentine's Day. We added three more children to our family. We've been through some really hard times, times I wasn't sure we were going to make it. But we had made a commitment and we chose to honor it. God blessed that decision and things got better over the years. At the beginning of 2011, I made a New Year's resolution. I don't usually make them because I rarely follow through, but this one was worth it. I resolved to love better those God sent me to love, beginning with my husband. I often found myself irritated at him over little things and rather than looking for the good stuff he did, I focused on the things that bugged me. So, I would love him better. I thought I was doing pretty good, too. In September, 2011, I contracted a serious infection in my leg that put me in the hospital for over a week. During that time, he stayed with me at the hospital every night. He just had them move a roll-away bed into my room and he slept beside me every night. I asked him one night if this was what he'd meant when he said “In sickness...” He simply replied that this was where the love comes in. After I came home from the hospital, I still could not stand and had to have a nurse for a couple of weeks. Bob took constant care of me and never, ever uttered a single word of complaint. I had resolved to love him better, but God used my Bob to show me how to really love. We've been married 33 years now. I tell him he's my dream come true, literally, because we'd dated for almost a month with ALL of us before he and I went out alone. Some of the details were off – he's not six feet tall, he's dark-haired instead of blonde and he's Polish, not Irish! He put an ad in the paper and I answered it. That's when our story began.
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Christina of Arlington
In the summer of 2004, when I was 16, my dad did a concrete job for this family. The dad and his oldest son lived in a trailer up there until their house was built. My dad would come home and tell me all about James ( the son ) and how he loved the Andy Griffith Show. ( It was a family joke that whoever us kids married, had to love that TV show ) My dad suggested I make them a homemade apple pie, since the mom and sisters were living in their old home until the house was built. I did make them an apple pie and my dad said they really enjoyed it. Fast forward to two years later.... My family ended up going to the same church where James attended. I got to observe James quite a bit and we still had yet to meet. I saw how attractive, how attentive he was to the pastors sermons and quiet he was. James has five sisters, so I got to know them very well and often had overnighters at their house. I began to pray about James and wondered if he was the one God had for me. When we left that church, I was pretty sure God had closed that door. I continued to go to his parents house and enjoyed the parents and sisters company. James had a job that took him out of state, so I hardly got to see him. He quit that job in October of 2008, and I got to see him more then : ) I was confused and wondered if I should start praying again. On December 4th, James got together with my dad and asked his permission to court with intention of marrying me. My dad said yes and the next evening, James came over and asked me to sit with him on the porch { And I thought " Oh, here comes the " We're just friends talk " } And he asked to court me!!! We courted for six months, were engaged for 2 months and got married in September of 2009. We now have 2 kids and soon to be 3 in April. I'm so thankful for James and that my apple pie left a good first impression!
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Susan of Bellingham
It was 1973, I was 12 and he was 15 when we met. I asked him a few years ago what his reaction was when he first saw me. He said, "we were at church, and you entered the church through the double glass doors and you were bathed in sunlight and were aglow in light, and thought wow, she has great looking legs." I told him, "Wow, God knows how to give you your future wife on a golden platter.' I joked and asked him if he heard music - he didn't remember. Whenever we were in our Youth Group or sitting in church together, or in a crowd, he would always take my hand in his and squeeze it 3 times, and it means "I love you". We still do it to this day, and our children and grandchildren do the 3 hand squeezes. We knew that our relationship was special. Lars asked me to marry him December 1977. We were officially engaged January 1978. We were married two weeks after I graduated from High School. Married to my best friend and the love of my life has been a wonderful journey. We have had our highs and lows. But our love has always seen us through the tough times. He supported me while I went to college and got my degree, and has always been the best husband and father. Our lives turned upside down August 2006. Or you can say right side up. I hadn't felt well for a few months. I started getting a headache in May that would not go away. Then my neck started hurting in mid July, and it would not go away. By the end of July I was running a temperature and vomiting spontaneously. I went to the doctors on August 9th, he took blood work and said that my white cell count was slightly elevated, but not to worry, I just had a virus. Show/Hide Full Story Go home, drink plenty of fluids, take Tylenol and keep a record of my temperatures. I should be fine in a few days. I looked at the doctors face and body language and knew that this was something serious. I came home and told Lars what the doctor said, and that I felt that from the look on his face and his body language that this was serious. On August 11th, when Lars woke up, he knew something was wrong with me, I was in a trance, and running a high temperature and not responding. He rushed me to the hospital, and at the hospital I proceeded to have 3 grand mal seizures, went into respiratory failure, fell into a coma, and was put on life support. If Lars had not been home on vacation, our children would have found me dead in bed. After much testing, the doctors found that I had Viral Encephalitis. I had a cold sore on my lip in April, and the Herpes Simplex Virus crossed the blood brain barrier and entered my brain. I was given a 7% of living. The doctors told my husband to go home and plan my funeral or start looking at different nursing homes to put me in "if" I woke up. Lars kept tell the doctors, 'No, she is going to be fine". The doctors told him, "you don't understand, Mr. Lignell, nobody lives through this, and if they do, they are severely disabled." Lars kept saying she is going to be fine. God had given Lars the peace that passeth all understanding, and a sign. What they did not know, was that Lars would take my hand in his, and squeeze it 3 times. AND I would squeeze it back 3 times. The love of my life, my best friend, father of my children was the only one who could reach me in the deepest darkest pit of my soul. It was his love that was able to break through the deepest darkest pit of my soul and find me. I was in a coma and on life support for a week, when our pastor came in, and laid hands on me, anointed me with oil and prayed for my healing. A half hour later I woke up. That was on Tuesday, and I went home on Thursday, to be with the love of my life who did not give up on me, but showed everyone that love can transcend even in the deepest darkest place in your life. We did not know that our love could go to a whole new level. To celebrate our 30th anniversary we renewed our vows with our children as our attendants. We wanted our children, family and friends to share in our new commitment to each other and our marriage. This is our love story.
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