I wasn’t looking for my husband and he wasn’t looking for me
but as it happens, we found each other anyway.
The first time Travis and I went out, he showed up in an ‘88 Mustang
a muscle car of all things. It fit perfectly with the tight shirt he was wearing.
The shirt was stretched over bulging muscles that I was sure were his primary focus.
We were both 23. He picked me up at my parents' house.
Travis didn’t talk much, which was fine ...
since I wouldn’t have been able to hear him over the roar of his car.
We went to dinner. He didn’t make very many comments,
except to tell me that he’d never had a girl finish her food before he did.
Yes, this was definitely not going anywhere.
I excused myself to go to the restroom while he paid for dinner.
When I came out he was gone.
I went outside thinking he may be waiting for me out there.
I noticed a homeless man asking people for money so he could eat.
That’s when I saw Travis come outside.
He didn’t notice me and must have thought I was still in the restroom.
I saw Travis had a bag of food he must have just purchased from the restaurant.
He promptly walked up to the homeless man and gave it to him along with $20.00
“I thought you might be hungry," he said. He never knew I saw.
On the way home, I made more of an effort.
By the time he took me home, I knew I had judged this boy wrongly.
It was me that had been lucky to go out with him, not the other way around.
From then on, we were together. It came time for us to either get married or part ways.
I didn’t want another heartbreak or to waste my time on something if it wasn’t going anywhere.
The only problem was, neither of us knew how to tell if it was right.
Weren’t you supposed to feel butterflies? Or stay up laughing all night?
Or have a booming voice from heaven, or get some kind of guarantee that he was your soul mate?
Neither of us got any of those things.
All I knew was that I was completely comfortable with Travis,
that he was a good human being, and tried to do what was right.
Somehow I had fallen in love with this man who was the opposite of my soul mate.
The best advice: It doesn't matter Sometime after that,
I received what could possibly be the best piece of advice I have ever been given.
I asked a wise older man at church, how to know if Travis and I were right for each other?
He laughed. “You’re both very good people," he said.
"It’s your choice who you end up with and what kind of marriage you have.”
In that moment I realized something: It doesn't matter whether or not we think we've found our soul mate.
A soul mate is whoever we choose it to be.
When I got married, I, like you, didn't get a guarantee that our marriage would work out.
Such guarantees don’t exist.
What we did get, however, was a choice.
I get to choose to be the wife I want to be.
I get to choose whether to become closer or whether to drift apart when times are hard.
I get to choose to have the marriage I want with the man I choose to marry.
And the more I choose us, the more I realize something:
I didn’t marry my soul mate, but that doesn't matter. He has become it.
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