Roll back the tape to right
before their first date, and you probably would not predict we would end up
here tonight. Just listen to Jessica and Matt’s descriptions going in.
Jessica says, “I had been
extremely unsuccessful in the dating world, so I had little expectations
walking into the coffee shop.” She adds, “I had recently been on a trip to South Africa and
loved it, so the fact that he was South African was intriguing. I knew even if
the date was bad, I would enjoy the accent.” Talk about damning with faint
praise!
Matt recounts how he had
ended a relationship, and so he was not interested in, “anything that could
resemble a long term relationship.” Despite that, Matt says that they, “seemed
to click immediately in the messages that we sent.”
Even after their first date,
Matt says, “I had told Jessica that I wanted to keep things casual early on and
she agreed.” However, this is where things began to turn, because Matt admits,
“the amount of time that we were spending together did not show that this was a
casual relationship.” Jessica sums it up well when she says, “By the time we
got to New Year’s Eve, despite insisting that we were very casual, it was
evident that we had a real connection.”
Ronald Reagan once said,
that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, “I’m from the
government and I’m here to help.” Jessica and Matt might agree, that in their
case this was true. One bright day when Matt was told by his company that his
services were no longer needed, the added coda to that from our government was,
“See ya!”
Fortunately, Jessica stepped
up to the plate. As Matt says, “Jess did everything that she could to try help
me. She offered to let me move in with her since my lease was expiring and sell
whatever I had accumulated in the US (she seemed a little too eager to sell all
of my stuff) while I tried to figure out what my next step would be.”
Still, leave he had to, and
Jessica says, “He left, and our relationship was rather undefined as we figured
the distance would make things impossible.”
Then, something pretty
incredible happened. Jessica says, “It
was that distance however that sealed our relationship. As hard as the past two
years have been living apart, it is what has cemented our lives together. The
distance made us both realize how much we loved each other and wanted to spend
our lives together.”
Matt agrees: “I would not
have realized how important she was to me to me or the depth of our love
without leaving the US .
Now, all I want is to be back with her and to start our life together, to make
her laugh and to see the expressions that she makes, in person, when I rile her
up.”
Now, though Jessica and Matt
talk about these circumstances as the cause for their deepening love, I believe
they are being a little too humble. None of this happened automatically. The
deepening and cementing of their love story is due to Jessica and Matt making a
choice. They would not allow their love to end. They would rise above their
circumstances. They would harness their adversity to write an even better love
story. And, that is a great lesson for all of us.
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