My Husband (part IV)

Hello dear reader.

Today I’m going to finish the love story I’ve been writing for you. No, that doesn’t sound right. Let’s say today I’m going to finish the story of how this relationship became what it is now. The love story continues.

Where were we? Oh yes, the Christmas Eve proposal. There’s one more piece of that still to be told. My daughter and son-in-law were on their was to spend Christmas with us. They had been in Texas visiting with his family. That’s a really long drive and I knew they’d be exhausted. So even though the plan was for them to meet us at the church, I texted Louissa and told her they should just go to the house and relax. At the same time, Tim was texting her telling her they needed to come to the church even if they were late and for her not to tell me that he said that. In other words, I was telling her not to come to the church at the same time Tim was telling her to make sure she did come to the church. She told me later that she had a pretty good idea what was going on. Thank God she’s smart! They arrived a little bit late, but they were there and got to see it. Needless to say, we had a wonderful Christmas that year!

Tim and I have called each other husband and wife since we moved in together. The joke was that we got demoted. He went from being my husband to my fiance and I went from wife to fiance.

We decided to have the wedding in August, right after Tim’s birthday. However, August is the busiest month of the year in Leadville. There’s something going on every weekend, from Boom Days to races like the Leadville 100 race. I’ll tell you more about those another time, but you can click on the links and find out what they are if you don’t want to wait. The bottom line was we couldn’t get a wedding cake made in August. So we moved it up to July 27th. Tim had never been married and he turned 50 just over a week after the wedding. Good timing!

This is where my best friend, Heather, comes in. Even though Tim hadn’t told her he was going to propose (he didn’t think she’d be able to keep from letting me know) and she wasn’t there for it (she still fusses at him about that) she jumped in with both feet to help pull things together. She was incredible!

You know, I just realized that I was writing this blog when Tim and I got married. Anyone who’s interested can go back to those posts and read what I was feeling and doing leading up the wedding.

Our wedding was wonderful. It was sacred and meaningful, but it was also a blast. We had a great time! I don’t know why I don’t have pictures on the blog, but I’m going to fix that today.

There have been very few days that hasn’t happened. So it was fitting that our wedding was full of laughter.

Somehow, once again, this post got long very quickly. I could write about Tim for days at a time. You’ll be reading more about him as this blog continues, but the bottom line is that I’m a very fortunate woman. Tim and I are very happy together and neither of us takes that for granted. We have a lot of fun together, and that’s important.

I’m going to put up pictures as promised, and please feel free to read the posts from that time. I’ll get back to writing about other things, I promise. But I hope you’ve enjoyed this little bit of our love story.

Until next time…

My Husband (Part III)

Hello dear reader.

I’m continuing my great love story today. So where did I leave off? Ah, yes, I was recovering from major brain surgery…

About three years after the surgery, Tim and I split up. I’m not going into the how and why, that part doesn’t matter. We were apart for almost a year. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever dealt with. It was also the best thing that could have happened. I grew so much during that time.

Anyway, this is about Tim and I, so let me get back to that. When Tim came back to Colorado we started talking. We were trying to rebuild our friendship. Slowly that happened. There was a lot of pain on both sides, so we took it real slow. We discovered the friendship that everything had all been built on was still there. Eventually we decided to get back together. We did couples counseling for quite a while and we both worked very hard.

All of this was a huge deal and I’m minimizing how hard it was because I want to focus on the good that came out of it. The good was that when we made the decision to get back together, we both knew for certain it was what we wanted. Our relationship became much stronger than it had been before the separation. Once again, we started from a base of friendship.

That summer, Tim, my son Jack, and I hiked to the top of Mt Elbert. That’s the highest mountain in Colorado and the second highest in Continental America. I had wanted to do that for seven years, and finally I did. That hike was life altering. I left all my can’ts on the top of that mountain.

Tim bought us a wonderful Victorian house and life was good. I was still sick, but was having more good days than bad.

Christmas Eve we went to the candle light service at St George’s, as always. The service was beautiful and moving, as always. At the end of the service the bulletin said “A Christmas question.” Ali (our priest) is good at that. I knew she was going to give us a question to think about over Christmas. Instead, Tim says, “Most of you know Lynnette and I know she means a lot to you. I don’t know if she realizes how much she means to me.” He then got on his knee, held out a beautiful sapphire ring (my favorite stone) and asked me to marry him. I was so shocked that I couldn’t speak! Tim had been chopping wood earlier in the day and had bruised his knee, and he’s down on that sore knee waiting and I can’t get a word to come out of my mouth!! I finally managed to stammer out, “Of course!”

I think that’s a good place to stop for today. I’m going to end by saying I’ve never regretted saying yes.

Until next time…

My Husband part II

Hello dear reader.

I kind of left you hanging with my last post about my husband. I told you I’d give you more of the story the next day. Obviously, that didn’t happen, but I’m here now.

Refresher… Tim and I met at church and spent two years getting to know each other and building a friendship before we got together. Now I think you’re all caught up. Ready to continue? Here we go:

When we told Ali, our priest, that we we’re seeing each other she gave us an assignment. Tim had to cook for me and I had to let him. For most people, that wouldn’t be a big deal, but Ali knew it would be a challenge for us.

First of all, Tim doesn’t cook. He survived primarily off TV dinners and pizza. The first time I looked in his freezer, the only thing in it was an elk leg. Yes, you did read that right.. the leg from an elk, fur and all. One of his friends was a hunter and would save the legs for Tim’s big (100 lbs), beautiful dog, Sampson.

The other reason it was such a challenge was I love cooking and I normally would have been cooking this for him, not the other way around. I’m also just a tiny bit of a control freak in certain areas of my life, and cooking happens to be one of them.

But we did it out of love and respect for Ali. So I sat in Tim’s living room and he cooked. I was hearing things banging around and ‘not nice’ words coming from the kitchen. I can’t begin to tell you how hard it was for me not to go into that kitchen! Eventually, I was presented with a steak dinner with mashed potatoes and green beans. Surprisingly, it was good!

We decided after several months that it was insane for us to be paying rent and utilities on two places when we were together every night either at his house or mine. So we rented a very small house together. Poor Sampson had to back out of anywhere he walked. There wasn’t any room for him to turn around.

I had my first Chiari decompression surgery 9 or 10 months before we moved. I was working three jobs (the General Store/Post Office, cleaning houses, and cooking one of the community meals at the church) when we moved into our house together. Within a month, the surgery failed and I was in worse shape than before. I couldn’t function at all. A good day meant I had made it from the bed to the couch. All of a sudden it was all on Tim. I told him several times that this wasn’t what he’d signed up for and I’d understand if he wanted out. He reassured me that he wasn’t going anywhere.

Eventually (almost a year later) I had another brain surgery. This one was much more invasive. When it was all said and done, they had removed 12 cm from my skull, the C-1 and C-2 from my neck, and cauterized the back of my brain so it wasn’t pinching off my brain stem anymore. They placed a plastic mesh of some sort to hold my brain in place.

I know it sounds like I’m going of on a tangent, but I’m actually not (for a change) this time. I’m trying to express what Tim ended up dealing with very soon in our relationship.

That surgery took about two years for me to recover from. I had to re-learn so many things. But Tim was beside me holding my hand through it. It was as hard for him as it was for me. The woman he fell in love with, his friend, had vanished, in her place was a stranger. I had him to lean on. He was on his own with it.

Once again, this has gotten long very quickly. I won’t keep you waiting so long for the next part.

Until next time…

My husband

Hello dear reader.

Earlier this week I published a post called Finished. In it, I spoke briefly about my husband and said I would tell you more about him in another post. Well here’s that post 😊.

I want to start this story at the beginning, so it may take more than one post. We’ll see how it goes. Ready for an awesome love story? Here we go.

I met Tim very soon after moving to Colorado when I went to the ‘wrong’ church. I fell in love with St. George’s the first time I went there. All my life I’ve heard churches preach about feeding the poor, and helping people who needed help. St. George’s doesn’t preach it, they do it. I wanted to be a part of that. Anyway, I’m getting off on a tangent here. I’ll do a post about St. George’s another time.

Anyway, Tim and I both smoked cigarettes and after services we’d both be outside smoking. We spent a lot of time talking about a lot of things and developed a good friendship. Tim was 9 months sober at that time after struggling with alcoholism for most of his life. We talked about that a lot and I tried to encourage him in his sobriety.

I have to be honest with you. That’s a promise I made when I started this blog. Truthfully, I was very attracted to Tim the first time I saw him. But because I was married, I never acted on it. Tim also respected the fact I was married and never even flirted with me.

My marriage was on life support and I was trying very hard to save it. I was severely depressed and Tim made me laugh. I never talked to Tim about how bad my marriage was. I’ve always thought talking to someone of the opposite sex about problems in your marriage is a recipe for disaster. It never turns out good.

So Tim and I spent two years talking outside the church and getting to know each other, both of us knowing we weren’t going to be anything besides friends. I helped him with some things he was having trouble doing on the computer. He came to my house and cut up a bunch of wood (I paid him). The main source of heat in that house was the wood stove, so I was cutting up enough for each day myself with a bow saw. I was very thankful for the help.

We both got elected to the vestry at St. George’s the same year. I ended up having to go to Ohio for my first brain surgery. I was gone for three months. When I got back I was very excited to begin my work on the vestry. The day of the first meeting after I got back, the alternator in my car went out. I was so disappointed! Tim called to remind me about the meeting and make sure I was going. I had to tell him I couldn’t go because of my car. I lived about a half hour’s drive from the church and it was dumping snow, so I couldn’t walk there. Tim said he’d come get me because he knew how badly I wanted to go. He took me to the meeting and brought me straight home when it was over. Again, we never even flirted.

Two years after moving to Colorado, I finally pulled the plug on my marriage. Tim and I started dating shortly after. Everyone kept saying, “It’s about time you two got together!” They talked about seeing sparks between us.

Wow! This post got long fast! I’ll pick up where I left off tomorrow.

Until next time…