Month: November 2012

Part 2- The Middle Ground

 

I never knew God would meet my challenge. Guess some things you learn the hard way. Let me rewind and explain. I was 16 years old when I was challenged to make a list of the kind of man we wanted. I had two list actually. I had the ‘Essentials’ and the ‘Wants’. My favorite Disney movie growing up was Aladdin. Princess Jasmine, a head strong girl, who knows what she wants, ends up with a street smart, cool guy, from the wrong end of town, with a heart of gold. (Oh an a Genie and magic flying carpet! Hehe!) My favorite teen movie was “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” from the 80’s. The good girl, military daughter, ends up being dance partners with a cool guy, from the other side of town with a motorcycle. (I’ve only been on a motorcycle once, and loved it!) My favorite Christian-romance novel is called Heart and Soul. Sweet, good girl Michelle, falls in love with the mysterious guy on a bike, who works for her family’s farm. He turns out to be an undercover FBI agent, investigating the fake money being printed by her uncle. He was someone who could be her best friend. That’s what I wanted. The cool guy on the bike, with a heart of gold, who was my best friend. I wasn’t holding out for a guy on a bike, so I wrote down the next best thing. A big truck… My list looking something like this. I wrote it out as things popped into my head…

 

MUST:

Christian

A gentleman

sweet

Fun

A sense of humor

my best friend

kind

considerate

treats me with respect

smart

 

What I Want:

Blond hair

blue eyes

taller than me

truck (red, I had to pick a color)

handsome

 

I never really thought I’d get what I wanted. I told God, “Find me this man.” I had various crushes along the way, but none of them worked out. When praying for the one meant for me, I told God if someone wasn’t meant to be, to not even let them in my life. I wanted to feel disappointed of a guy I liked going no where, then the heart ache of a failed relationship. I can honestly say, I never dated any one but David Alexander. I went to formal events with different guy friends, but I never dated them.

I read a book suggested by my sunday school teacher called, “When God Writes Your Love Story.” It was a beautiful story of how God directed two people together. I wanted that kind of story. Everyone does.

I was reading a Christian-teen girl magazine around the same time and one of the stories of the magazine stuck with me a long time. It’s a story of a girl who walks into a room, with an older man sitting at a desk writing a story. He had clean, crisp white paper, and wrote the story in the most beautiful handwriting the girl ever saw. She stood next to him reading the story as it was being written. It was a love story, but the princess and the prince were taking too long to meet and be together for the girl’s taste. She grew impatient. She took the pen from the old man and started writing the story herself. She wrote in guy after guy and none turned out the way she wanted, so she would scratch them out best she could. She wrote so frantically, she spilled ink all over the beautiful paper making a horrid mess of the masterpiece. She started to cry in frustration, and finally looked back at the old man, who had been standing there quietly the whole time. She handed him the pen and the paper. She asked him if he could fix it, and he said he could, but the paper would still have faint traces of the stains. The paper would never be white and pure again. He cried over what had happened and his tears cleaned the paper. However, if the girl looked hard she could see where the old stains were. The old man finished the story with a happy ending. The devotion to the story was, God can forgive us and makes anew, but we can never fully forget our past. The girl had to live with what she did. The paper was wiped clean, but there was always the reminder of what she had done. It encouraged the reader to remember that and be patient, and not rush God’s timing. I’m glad I never dated any one but David, cause there is no memories of exes and so on. I wish everyone could say that of their relationship lives, but I know that’s not the way it is. I know some people believe you gotta be out and experience new things before settling down, that’s not me. I never wanted dozens of guys.

When David and I started dating, we always had so much fun together. (Still do.) It was just an extension of our friendship. We found walking trails around Springfield. Every weekend was pretty similar. David would get in Friday night and we would hang out at one of the coffee shops till I had to head back to the dorms. Saturday morning David picked me up first thing in the morning around 7/8am before most of my friends were up for the day. We went to this one walking trail and walk 2-3 miles, before heading downtown to get coffee. (Usually from the Mudhouse.) We would sit and chill in there talking, would walk around down town, and spend the rest of the day running around town. Sometimes we went to Branson to visit his grandparents or my friends who lived there. Sunday was church, lunch and then he would leave. Some weeks he was able to stay till after evening church, but not always. A lot of the times we got take-out from somewhere and parked at a park and sat in the truck and talked, or watched movies on his laptop. We would go to Wal-mart get a rotisserie chicken, a loaf of french bread, couple bottles of pop, and a pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. We made chicken sandwiches, and shared desert. Some nights we still do that. 🙂 Our favorite flavors are Karmel-Sutra, Cookie Dough, Late Night Snack, and Heath. Every once in awhile we grab a random flavor to try.

My friends at BBC knew when David was in town, I disappeared. We tried to include them and would take them with us whenever we could. David made chocolate chip cookies for my friends as a bribe to them for stealing me away. They became pretty well known around the dorm. I would walk through with a plastic tub of cookies, and people would look at me, “Are those your boyfriend’s cookies?” “Yes.” “Can I have one!?” “Yup!” haha. Boyfriend’s of the girls on my floor tended to be given a hard time, but somehow David never got that. Partly cause they didn’t know him as well, partly because he baked cookies for them.

One thing that sticks in my head was after we got engaged people asked if we had kissed yet. I told them yes, and they were asked me, “When?” I had to laugh, “Awhile ago.” They told me, “Way to kiss and tell, Megan!” haha. I honestly didn’t think I would be as ready to give him a kiss as I was. I really think it was because we were so comfortable with each other. Now I’ve gone there, I need to tell the story of our first kiss. It was actually shortly after we started dating. Not many people know this story. We were walking along our normal trail, and we stopped to catch our breath. It was cold, and wind was blowing pretty hard. David put his arm around me trying to keep me warm, and I looked up at him, and had this thought. “Wonder what it would be like to kiss him?” Next thing I know I was kissing him. As soon as I pulled back the first thing out of my mouth… “Dang it.” David looked at me very confused. I told him how I didn’t think I would kiss him so soon and had told myself I wasn’t going to kiss him until a certain point of our relationship. I honestly didn’t scold myself too hard for breaking that. I just knew we were going to last. Some times we rough and we had our moments when I did start to question, but deep down inside I just knew. It was meant to be and I couldn’t dispute that. I have more to write about our 2 years of dating before getting married, but I think this post is long enough. Thanks for reading! God Bless!

 

I wanted to write about our story. How it all came about and everything we went through. Lets begin.

The Reasons Why I Love David Robert Alexander… By Megan Renee Higginbotham-Alexander

 

Part I: The Beginning

 

It’s been 3 years since I first started dating David, and 7 years since I first met him. It was August 2005. I’ll never forget that day or the first time I met him. It was the day the New Generation Singers came back from their 2 week trip through the states singing at churches. This summer they had gone out west to California and the surrounding area. My sister really enjoyed herself, and I was glad for that. She needed something to get her out of her shell and out and on her own. I was always the outgoing sister and I knew she needed to find her own. I had just started to get into photography through doing 4-H. I had a manual Cannon SLR. It had a Mickey Mouse strap that was black and white, but I colored it with sharpie markers to make it more fun and stand out. I loved that camera. It went everywhere with me, so naturally it was with me the day of the New G Homecoming concert.

I was 15 years old and about 5’6/7. (Now I am about 5’9-10.) I was chomping at the bite to get my license and be a ‘free spirit’. I remember what I was wearing that day oddly enough. Most days I can’t, but something about that day always stuck in m head. A red t-shirt with sparkly red, white, and blue flowers across the front that said “USA!”, dark denim jeans with a blue sash belt. I was out in the lobby of the Missouri Theatre talking to my sister before the concert started. I was standing there waiting to talk to Rachel when a guy came up to me and grabbed ahold of my camera, which was hanging around my neck. He looked at both sides of it, said, “Nice camera!” and gently placed it back where it was resting in front and walked away. My brain did a quick, “Huh.. What just happened?…” I then thought, “Hmmm… Oh well. He was cute.” Shortly after that I joined my parents at our our seats and the concert started. The concert was good, and we joined the choir at Ground Round restaurant after wards for dinner. By this time Rachel had introduced us and explained the two of them hung out during the tour. We sat in a booth in the corner, and towards the end of the evening David came over to talk to us. I still remember sitting on the end and David leaning against our booth looking down at me talking about me joining the choir the next year. At the time I was thinking a lot about dating and boys and so on. I had my youth pastors wife telling us to pray for our husbands, and think about our futures now, because one day it was going to the present and we were going to have to live our past decisions. That stuck. (Apparently, I still remember it.) I had this thought looking up at David, thinking how cute he was. “Wouldn’t it be cool if I met my husband today?” Little did I know at the time,…

Shortly after that night David became a regular at our house. We soon discovered he lived only a few streets from us, and he started walking over to house to hang out. Him and my dad developed a friendship over this time as well. My dad had an old Astroids game cabinet he couldn’t get to work, as well as a Coca-Cola Machine. Two thinks David likes. Coca-cola and video games. (We currently have 2 rooms of the house dedicated to these things. The kitchen is Coke themed and his office is video game themed.) Every time was fairly similar. David came over played video games, watched movies/comedian videos and talked about geeky stuff. My parents soon got to the point of, “It’s just David.” He helped teach my sister to drive, helped me with my photography, worked on my parents computer, and was generally over all part of the family.

When Rachel left for Pennsylvania, in fall 2007 and was gone for 9 months, David made extra efforts to stop by and see me. Kept an eye on me, and kept me from being too lonely. The only CYT play he got to see, was the one most important to me, Snow White. I was sad not to have my sister there, but it meant a lot to me how many people showed up to support me, and that David was one of them. He was always there for me when I needed him. During that fall David decided to take me out with his friends Andy, and Michelle to do some computer shopping. Andy and David were having fun drooling over the computer stuff, and Michelle and I wandered the shop talking. She was getting ready to graduate college and was beginning her career as a science teacher. We had fun spending the time together. It would be several years before I saw her again. Little known to me, but shortly after Andy and Michelle were telling David, they liked me and thought he should date me. (When David finally told them we were going to date, I am told they were over joyed.)

One day in spring 2008 he decided to take me out to Squaw Creek for some photos, and he had just got his truck, so wanted to take it out for a drive. He had his arm resting on the center console/middle seat that folds down. His hand was resting with his palm facing slightly up. I had a thought, thinking, “I have this feeling like I should be holding his hand. It just feels like this should be something more but it’s not.” I thought on that for a few seconds, but quickly brushed it away not wanting to dwell on it. I don’t remember much else about that day, but that stuck… Things in my life with David always seemed to stick in my memory and I never knew why. Now I’m thankful. During that same time period a friend of mine called me up telling me she was upset with her parents, she had no vehicle access, so she was walking to my house cause she needed out of the house. David was already over hanging out with me. I didn’t know this at the time, but while she was sitting there thinking to herself how it seemed as if there was something between us. Some sort of chemistry that went beyond friendship. She didn’t reveal this to me for another year.

Fast forward to one year later. Summer 2009. We’ll start with May, it was my sister’s 21^st birthday and she wanted to go out to eat on the plaza for the occasion. She invited a handful of people but only 2 came. Her boyfriend Chuck, and her friend David. I have photos of that night on facebook, underneath the name “CYT Robin hood, Alumni Follies, and Rachel’s 21^st birthday.” My sister and I are in the middle with our future husbands on either side.

One month later I was hanging out with David, and our other friends Sara, and Sydney. (Sara is the one who previously suspected things.) While watching movies, I was sitting next to David on the couch, Sara sat on the other side of me and Sydney was sitting in a chair. Sara was looking from me, to David, to Sydney, back to me, and so on for several minutes. I couldn’t figure out what was going on in her head. Later that night when it was just us, and we were no longer with David, I asked her what was up with the looks. She told me her thoughts from over a year ago, an how to the day she still saw it. She couldn’t ignore the way we acted around each other. We weren’t necessarily flirting with each other, but there was something there. We just fit. I was sitting next to him, and started to fall asleep so I leaned over and put my head on his shoulder. I didn’t think much about it. When Rachel sat next to him on tour she used his shoulder for a head rest. Sara insisted there was more and she could see us ending up together. I told her she had been upset, she was delusional, she was seeing things, etc. I told her, “This is David we are talking about! I think you’re off your rocker.” She finally agreed she was tired and had a rough day so I might be right.

August 2009, I moved to Springfield, and occasionally I got calls from David, checking in on me. Labor day weekend I went home to get more things, and to see my family. ( I was feeling a little homesick.) David was waiting for me to get home. He spent the whole evening with my family. It got to be around 11pm, maybe even a little later, my parents had finally called it a night and my sister was getting tired as well. My sister, David and I stood in the entry way talking for about 30 minutes. While standing there, David, who was standing next to me, leaned over and grabbed my hand. At first I didn’t know what to do. Everything that had happened, especially what Sara had said was running through my brain. I pulled my hand away just to see what he would do. He grabbed my hand again. I stood there processing what was happening. When Rachel was finally ready to call it a night I told her I was going to walk David out to his truck. I wandered if David would say anything about his behavior that night. At first we just talked about school, and everything going on. He put his arms around me, hugging me and didn’t let go. He told me about the crazy things of life he had going on. How he got offered a job in Colorado and was prepared to drive out for the interview, but his friend Raymond, (who was a groomsman in our wedding), got him a job at Cerner, when he didn’t think he was going to get it. He looked at me and told me, “Maybe some crazy day you and I could be together.” Saturday and Sunday I saw him before I left back to school on Monday. My parents liked David, but the sudden interest in me kind of threw them for a loop, and they weren’t terribly crazy about the idea of me and him dating, just as I started school in Springfield. They knew him well enough, but the fact was they weren’t sure where he stood in his beliefs, and just generally wanted to get to know him a little bit better. With in a few weeks my parents were more at ease and didn’t object to us dating as long as we took it slow. So the dating begun…