This is one story that I am super excited to write about! Shall we begin?
I think it's easy for us to come up with standard do's and don'ts for everyone when it comes to dating. I can think of more than one person who felt positive that a given person needed to date for a solid 6 months atleast before they could adequately know who they were up against (no pun intended). I too always planned to take my time in dating because I like to over think and analyze and scrutinize and every other ize out there until I feel confident in my decision (or vice versa). But we'll talk more about that later!
Let's back up a year ago, I was sitting in my mission president's office having my final interview before returning home, and I was concerned about the transition of leaving my mission comp to finding an eternal comp. Now, we have to realize that I love lists. I love being told specifics and having lots of check boxes so when I asked my mission president the following question I was very prepared with pen in hand to start jotting down his list of recommendations and cautions.
The conversation went something like this,
Me: "How will I know when I have found the right one to marry?"
and my loving mission president's advice was (bless his heart): "You'll just know sister Stucki. It will just feel right."
.........
Wait, did I miss something? Where was my long list of "well you will know if he is the right one if he does this and looks like this and says this..."...etc
I was a little disappointed not going to lie because even though I am a highly emotional person I do not like basing life altering decisions on simply "my feelings"...
So I walked out of that interview determined to look else where for a basic "Find Your Eternal Companion" cheat sheet. Ha!
Shortly after returning home from my mission I moved to Draper. Unbeknownst to me was that at the same time an Elder Gleason was returning home from his mission to Draper. Not long after, we happened to meet at a singles ward Munch and Mingle. I was becoming friends with his younger sister Maddie and upon seeing her cute older brother I couldn't take my eyes off of him haha just kidding. Actually I just chose to sit next to Maddie and being very friendly and wanting to meet lots of people struck up a conversation with McKay. I soon found out that he was dating another girl named Jessica who HAPPENED to be a Fort Worth Texas missionary, who I HAPPENED to know because I HAPPENED to replace her in my first area (which wouldn't be the last time that I would HAPPEN to "replace" her) Ha! Oh the irony!
My conversation with McKay was not extensive by any means, but he was easy to talk to and had really kind eyes and a very sincere personality (atleast that was my vibe in the first few moments of meeting who would later become my eternal companion). Unfortunately because he was dating someone else I didn't dwell on him that long because I figured he would marry the girl he was dating because he was just that on top of life...Haha (He would laugh to hear me say that now!) We somehow became friends on Facebook though...and I honestly couldn't tell you who requested who, but either way I would notice time to time what he was up to according to his Facebook posts just out of curiosity.
In the meantime, I got caught up with another boy (no need to name names so I'll just say T Peterson or TJ P). Also unbeknownst to me was that about the time I started dating TJ, McKay broke up with the girl he was currently dating. Unfortunate timing wouldn't you say? Haha but let's be real, the next 7 months held some valuable learning experiences for me that helped me grow and mature in valuable ways so we can't be too disappointed now can we?
And thus concludes part 1 of the series. Stay tuned for more because it just keeps getting better!
