Guest Post: Soul Mates

First of all, I want to thank Melissa for allowing me the chance to guest blog for her. She is a great blogger, and it is truly an honor that I get to be one of her “guesties.” I haven’t done this too many times, so I appreciate her confidence in me. Thanks, Melissa!

Well, as a first time guest blogger, I had to rack my brain for what to write about. Back in May of 2010, I said “I do” to the wonderful “J” of the J loves K of my blog! We decided to take a delayed honeymoon somewhere warm when winter came in order to escape the winter blues. We just got back, and yes, it was amazing! But, it got me thinking of how crazy it was that Joel and I actually met.
I never believed in soul mates growing up. That was just in the movies and things like that don’t really happen in real life. But, meeting Joel made me change my view on that. I know, it does sound cheesy, but stay with me here.

I am a Midwesterner from Indiana whose entire life consisted of staying in the Midwest. Big family vacations included Nashville, Cincinnati, Louisville, and the fancy city of Chicago! No one in my family ever left the state for good. My mother fully intended that I will always live within a 10 minute drive from her, as our house growing up was only two blocks down from her mother’s house. That is just how her side of the family was. But, I had different plans. When I was 20 and still in college, I got a rare opportunity to move and live abroad. So, with two suitcases and my dog in hand, we flew (by ourselves) all the way to Germany. I have been here for six years now and I love it!

Joel, who is four years older than me, grew up in Oregon. His dad was retired Air Force, and after he graduated for college, decided during his job hunt that he would follow in those some footsteps and commissioned the same year that I moved to Germany. In the amount of time I have been here, he has been stationed all over, from Japan to Turkey. In 2009, he received orders for Spangdahlem Air Base, about an hour from me, and a place I have only been to a handful of times. At the last minute, his orders switched him to Ramstein, the base next door to where I work.

It just so happened that when he moved to Germany in June 2009, we had a mutual friend. The very first week he was here, she invited him to a movie night that I was putting together. I happened to be on a kind of date that night. But, he was very nice and a friend of a friend, so he tagged along. While it took me a little while to notice him in “that way,” Joel tells me that that night, he just knew that he had to get to know me more. There was something about me that spoke to him, and he wiggled his way in my circle of friends. After a little while of flirting, he finally admitted his crush and I knew, then, that I was crushing back pretty hard, too. The first date was it for us. I knew I wanted to get to know him more, and he said that he fell in love with me that night. (Of course he didn’t tell me that night. Then this story may not have happened!)

Of course, our circumstances make it totally possible that we never should have met and our paths never should have crossed. But they did. And we fell in love hard and fast. When people say someone completes them, I get that with Joel. He really does. And so is the story of how this Hoosier met her Beaver. Thanks for letting me share.