*The Story of the Princess and the Fudge*
I had tried other Internet dating sites with no luck. It seems I was always matched with men who only wanted a young beautiful woman. I myself have high standards because I’m a born-again Christian. I live in a very small town in northern Arizona and because of my age (54 at the time), I honestly didn’t think there would be a man my age who was also a born again Christian, who was single and who would be my soul mate.
I had a dream not long after being laid off from my job in April 2011. In this dream a dog spoke to me and said “if you give up the fudge, you will get the fudge.” In my dream I hadn’t a clue what he meant. So I asked him and he said “if you give up the crush on the one who’s bad for you, I will give you the one who’s good for you.” I woke up and, believing that God was telling me his plan for me, decided to give ChristianMingle.com a chance. In the past I had a tendency to be aggressive in my relationships. This time I made a commitment that I would follow God’s leading and wait for the right man to contact me.
Jim saw a commercial for ChristianMingle.com while watching a sports show. He decided to sign up, even though he had never tried an Internet dating service before. He had no idea how a dating site worked and he even used his real name as his user name. He said he was just curious and didn’t really expect any results. Several women winked at him but none of them piqued his curiosity until I came along. Jim contacted me not long after I joined the site. He let me know that he had once attended the church I was attending. That was a good sign because it appeared that we had the same beliefs. We emailed through ChristianMingle several times. I didn’t really think there was too much to this. I just thought he wasn’t interested because he didn’t contact me very often. I didn’t know at the time that he was on the site at work and did not have a home computer which is why his contacts were brief.
*But then ……..*
The local Christian radio station asked me to be the prize captain at their fundraiser golf tournament that was coming up in June. Since I was laid off and had time I agreed to help them. Originally I had not planned on attending this golf tournament since I didn’t really play golf.
On the day of the golf tournament, however, I was at the prize booth telling all the guys what to do with their raffle tickets. I saw Jim and he caught my eye. I thought he was handsome, clean-cut and he didn’t have a wedding ring on. At the time it did not occur to me that this was someone I was talking to on ChristianMingle. I just thought he was cute and I was really attracted to him. I even drew winning raffle tickets in his name and my son presented the prizes to him. I never got his name that day.
The next day I decided to go back on my ChristianMingle profile and check out who had looked me up in the past. When Jim’s profile came up I saw his picture and finally made the connection. I screamed for my son to come to my room. I couldn’t believe that this was the same guy. So I decided to take a chance and send Jim an email, asking if he was at the golf tournament the day before. I wrote that if he was there, I had met him. Jim wrote right back and said it was him. Then we became *real* to each other. We communicated through ChristianMingle several more times before finding out that we had mutual friends. I contacted these friends and asked what they thought of Jim. When he got high ratings and recommendations I felt comfortable giving Jim my phone number and email address. We emailed and texted quite a bit over the next several months.
We finally were able to meet face-to-face at the end of September 2011 when Jim met me at my church. Our first date was two weeks later on October 1, 2011 when we went to a restaurant and talked for over three hours. It was like we had known each other all our lives. I was very comfortable with him and could just be myself. We would have talked longer but they closed the restaurant on us… LOL! Jim and I are so much alike that I tease him. I tell him that he is the male version of me. He calls me his Princess and treats me like one.
When I got home that night I told my son that I finally found someone who can talk more than I do and that I think I found my “fudge.” From that point on, Jim and I were together almost every night and weekend. He had a 9-year-old son and the only times I did not see Jim was when he had visitation with his son. Eventually we were all able to do things together as a new family.
I followed God’s will by allowing Jim to lead in our relationship. He prayed and asked God when he could kiss me, tell me he loved me and asked for my hand in marriage. We had both been married prior and had not done in our relationships God’s way. This time we made a commitment to each other and to God to abstain from relations until we were married. We set clear boundaries and helped each other to make this a godly relationship. We also made the commitment to put God first above each other and our children.
On Thanksgiving 2011 we were watching a Christian movie in which the main couple’s names were Jim and Donna. Jim proposed to me the very next day. Since we both had been married before and gone through the big weddings, we decided to keep it simple. A friend of ours is an ordained minister and on December 18, 2011 he married us in his daughter’s home in front of their fireplace. We were married in the golf shirts that we wore at the golf tournament. Keeping to the commitment for purity has given us much more respect for and a deeper love for each other and our marriage.
Jim and I compared our lives in Arizona and found that we had been in the same room, or at some of the same functions, at the same time. But we never met until ChristianMingle allowed us to. We tell people we met on the golf course BUT ChristianMingle brought us together. Jim tells everyone that he won the grand prize at the golf tournament – he won my heart! We love to tell our story and have even written it as a children’s book.