I Married a Mormon Page 2

To my great surprise, guess who showed  up . . .
Page 2

To my great surprise, guess who showed up at the Wednesday night service dressed in a snazzy dark suit and tie and carrying his scriptures?  Jamie spotted him first and nearly knocked me off the church pew trying to get me to "look who's here!"  He confidently walked up the isle and planted himself down beside me.  My heart starting doing its own dance and I was hoping he didn't notice.  

In his hands were his beloved scriptures.  One of the books he was carrying was a Book of Mormon.  The only thing I knew about Mormons was that their religion was a cult and one would be wise to avoid them.

I was raised Methodist to Pentecostal.  I spent most of my growing-up years attending the Church of God.  Steve had been born into and raised as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or the Mormon Church for short.  When I saw the Book of Mormon in his hands, I felt embarrassed and asked him to please put the book down where no one could see it.  He really could not understand why I would ask him to hide the Book of Mormon because the church we were attending was a christian church and his book was another testament of Jesus Christ, his Lord and Savior.  This seemed strange to him.

After church, I tried to explain my reaction to the "Book of Mormon" only to realize that I honestly didn't know very much about it.  My opinion was based on what I had heard others say and the little I had read about the Mormons.  There was something so unique, sweet and sincere about Steve that I was overwhelmed by curiosity.  Still in the back of my mind was the idea that I would convert him to my religion.  

I was working at Chesapeake College when I met Steve.  From the night we met, we never missed a day of seeing each other.  He would go to the college's pool in the afternoons and wait for me to get off from work.  We would enjoy dinner together and talked into the wee hours of the morning.  After a few nights of this, I thought, "I'm going to have to marry this guy just to get a good night's sleep!"  I was afraid my boss was going to find me sound asleep with my head in my trash can or plunked on my typewriter!

I decided to sneak over to the pool one afternoon to see if Steve was there.  I quietly watched  through a small window that gave a full view of the  college's olympic-sized pool.  There were young women in their bikinis walking around and swimming.  I watched Steve to see if he was watching them.  He wasn't!  He didn't seem the least bit interested.  Mystified, I continued to observe for quite a while when it dawned on me that he just wasn't that type of guy. 

Almost immediately after we met, we started discussing marriage.  There was a slight problem though, I was engaged to another young man and had the marriage licence to prove it.  Steve swept me off my feet and I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was the man I was supposed to spend the rest of my life, even eternity, with. 

I was extremely close to my Grandmother Sadie.  I told her everything.  She grew up with me.  When I was five she was five.  When I was 12, she was 12.  When I needed a home, she opened her heart and hands to me.  I told her all about the kind of man I wanted to marry, his attributes and ambitions.  I loved her dearly and she had passed away a couple of years before I met Steve.  But something from somewhere, someway, somehow was whispering to my soul, "This is him. " 

I felt that my grandmother had something to do with arranging for Steve and I to meet.  After all, on the night I met Steve,  wasn't I headed home in an entirely different direction when I felt compelled to turn around and go back to Greensboro.  

Steve and I were married shortly after our first meeting.  We had planned to wait for at least a couple of months but I knew that when my family and friends heard that I was going to marry a Mormon that they would try to talk me out of it.  I knew that once my parents accepted the fact that we were married, that they would fall in love with him just like I did.  And they did. 

I was renting a little red one-bedroom house in Wye Mills not far from where I worked.  I was all set up for housekeeping.  There was really no reason to wait so less than three weeks after our first meeting, we eloped and were married by the Clerk of Court in Caroline County, Maryland. My little brother was living with me at the time, sleeping on the sofa bed in my combined kitchen-living room and I had to move him back home with our parents to make room for my new husband. 

I am ashamed to say that I avoided my finance' during that time.  I just didn't know what to say or how to explain things.  I regret not talking with him and have asked many times for forgiveness from my Heavenly Father for hurting him.  I was told when he heard the news, he took it very badly.  I have seen him once since that time but did not get a chance to talk to him.  I have prayed that he is as happy in his life as I am in mine and if he ever comes across this story, I ask that he accept my sincere apology.