How I wound up in Merry Old England

People on both sides of the ocean are all the time asking me how I wound up over here in England. I guess it's time I told the story. :^)

Back in 2005, I joined an online Christian singles site called Christian Mingle. I did the usual constant browsing through all the women's profiles without results for a few months. Then I started getting involved in the forums on the site. In this way I come to know quite a few friends that are still with me today. Because of the nature of the Internet, more than a few of the people I got to know live in other countries, one of them being my wife, Rebecca, of England.

Just as in real life, I was quite the talker/poster on the forums, and as such, more people knew me than I knew them simply because they read my posts without having to respond. The term for those who simply read the posts without ever getting involved in the discussions, is "Lurker." They are merely the spectators on such sites, without participating much. As it turned out, one of these "lurkers" was a woman named Rebecca Jeffreys. She participated in the forums occasionally, but not much. Nevertheless, I noticed her and looked up her profile (as I did with all the women I interacted with in the forums). What I read and what I saw in her picture really attracted me. One thing led to another and pretty soon we were chatting away one day via the site's instant messenger service. We really hit it off! There was that spark that single people are always looking for that may lead to a relationship.

The only problem was that she lived in England and I lived in America. She plainly stated in her profile that moving to another country was not an option for her because of her daughter. Rebecca's ex-husband was, and still is, very much involved in her daughter's life. If she tried to move to another country, there was a good possibility that he would instigate custody proceedings. It saddened us both that even though we found this amazing spark between us, that there was the barrier of 4000 miles of water, not to mention national boundaries, between us also. So we agreed that there was no possibility of a relationship.

A woman down in South Africa who was a friend to both of us counseled me when I admitted to her the problems keeping us from seeking a relationship, that if God was in this relationship, then 4000 miles of ocean was small potatoes; that He would bridge the gap between us. Wow! I never thought of that! If God can create mountains . . . heh, what am I saying? If God can create galaxies, whole systems of stars and systems of galaxies, what's an ocean to him?

Well this clicked with me in an instant! I promised my friend that I would contact Rebecca and share this epiphany with her. And so I did just that - in a rather lengthy email and I told Rebecca that if she was of the same mind, I wanted a relationship with her and that the matter of the Atlantic Ocean would not be an issue! That's all either of us needed. :^) This was at the first of February of 2006.

Over the course of the next several months, we started building this long-distance Internet relationship. I have to admit that within a couple of months, I was in love with Rebecca. I told her as much too. How much of this was true love? I don't know. But I do know that I wanted a much more serious relationship with Rebecca!

By May and June, we started talking about meeting in person. We both agreed that it would be better for me to come to England to meet her and spend some time with her so that we could see if we liked each other in person as well as in virtuality. I was scheduled to have Lap-Band surgery in the middle of June, so June was out of the question. I figured that I would need a month to adjust to having a Lap Band, so I suggested the latter part of July or August. Rebecca said that since school was out during August, she would be in a better situation to entertain me then (have time to take me around to places of interest). So August it was!

I figured that since we would have to make the most of our time together, I better plan on staying in England for as long as practical and as long as I could afford. God provided the means that enabled me to stretch out my visit to England to three weeks. A couple who had kind of taken Rebecca under their wing at an earlier time and gave her a great deal of help as she established herself here in the neighborhood where we now live, told her that they were taking their family on an extended holiday and that I could house sit for them. That's all we needed, so I planned my trip around their plans for their holiday. Without going into too much detail of my visit, I can say that by the end of my visit, I proposed to Rebecca and she accepted! :^) We both felt it was the right thing to do and when her father gave his blessing, that cinched the deal, so to speak.

We later planned on a wedding back in Georgia for the 30th of December, 2006. Two days after Christmas of that year, Rebecca and her daughter boarded a plane and flew to America. A few days later, we married in my church, Adairsville 1st United Methodist Church. With all the Christmas decorations still up (minus the Christmas tree), we had a really nice wedding there. Afterward, Rebecca and I enjoyed a rather cold, rainy and unusual honeymoon up in the Blue Ridge mountains of North Carolina (a story for another time). A week after our wedding, we both made a mad dash up to Chicago so that I could get my visa from the British Consulate there. That was the closest consulate that issued visas. :^/ On the 10th of January we were on another plane bound for England where on the next day, I took up residence. The transition was . . . well, that's what this blog is all about, isn't it?