After being divorced for a couple of years and having no real dating relationships, I found myself being constantly questioned by friends and family about why I wasn’t dating yet. It even got to the point where my 11 year old son began suggesting ChristianMingle.com consistently. I laughed and blew it off because he was 9 at the time when he started and he couldn’t possibly know the fear and concerns of dating, especially with three sons! I told my mom and church friends about this and I become the new “joke” about internet dating. So, in order to show them all that I didn’t need a dating site to help me find God’s perfect match for me, I decided to create an account and browse for free.
It was totally a God sign when at 12:30 in the morning on a Saturday night, as I sat home alone on the couch with my laptop open, the ChristianMingle commercial came on. Meanwhile, I was fighting with myself as I continued answering more questions, then I completed the essays, and then took the COMPASS test! At this point, I still had no intentions of chatting with someone, let alone dating them.
Soon, I started getting smiles and messages and realize I had to be a paying member to read them. I almost didn’t. I texted my mother from work and said “What do I do”? I couldn’t take it any longer and paid for the membership. There wasn’t anyone in my inbox that made me grateful for the decision until the next day. Yes, I had been on ChristianMingle.com for less than 48 hours when I found “the one.” Ben was one of my matches and I had deleted every match but two and he had made the cut. Stubbornly, I was NOT going to message him because this was only for me to prove a point!
Ben messaged me a simple hello and small talk on June 18, 2012. We started chatting via IM and talked until 2am. I only slept two hours and then went to work a long 14 hour shift. I couldn’t wait to get home and get back online. I prayed he would meet me back again that night to chat. Just as he said he would, he did! Again we chatted until the middle of the night and then our computers had a glitch. We exchanged phone numbers and texted each other until sunrise. The next night, we talked on the phone and I fell in love with his voice. We were both so guarded from previous relationships and hurts. He too has 3 boys. Yes, in case you were counting, that is SIX boys!
We went on our first date that Saturday June 25, 2012. It lasted 12 hours and neither of us wanted it to end. I’m a worship leader and had to get some rest for church that morning and Ben drove an hour and forty-five minutes to meet me for our date. We lived 53 miles apart and that was the city we chose to meet in. He drove an hour longer than I did.
I knew he was my soul mate before I met him, and the chemistry was there when we were together in person. I told my mom after a week that he is the man that I was going to marry. It was no time before Ben and I were discussing marriage and on July 30, 2012, I officially said “Yes” with a ring on my finger. We had a lot of obstacles to overcome as we planned our wedding. Ben is in the Army and was away for two weeks at a time twice in our short dating period as well as other weekends, he was also single parenting three sons, I am a worship leader, a full time Registered Nurse, and also a single mother of three sons. And yet, we planned our wedding for October 6, 2012.
Our wedding day was the most magical day and God was in every single step. Our SIX SONS stood beside us and celebrated the end of heartbreaks and the beginning of eight lives being restored by God’s love and perfect plan. Ben’s three sons’ biological mother had died three years before we met, so not only did we find love God’s way, but so did our sons.
Our lives have been abundantly full of God’s love and promise every step of the way. I still tease Ben and tell him that he was the best $26.99 I ever spent. We thank ChristianMingle.com from the bottom of our hearts and realize that this ministry is truly the hand and footwork of the Father. We proudly tell everyone we met here.