background

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Mawage... Twu Wuv


Rusty and I will celebrate our SIX (now seventh) year anniversary, February 13th!  I can't believe it.  It's gone so fast that I don't know who's kids are running all over my house. Six (seven) years ago I was nineteen years old, desperate to get married to Rusty, and on my way to Africa to figure out if I even still liked the man for whom I wore the diamond ring!  Many don't know what actually happened in Africa, they just know I came home with a skinny, tan, white dude, who claimed to be my forever boyfriend.  So here's the tale:

I moved up to Denton, TX to attend the University of North Texas.  I volunteered with middle school girls, at my church, and went to most of my classes.  Come February 14th I am getting ready for my date with a guy named Dustin.  He calls and lets me know that he's been snowed into the other side of Dallas at his lacrosse game. So I call up one of the other middle school workers to ask if I can go to the Singles Awareness Valentine's Party that they were hosting.  She agreed AND offered to come pick me up. When I get there I see that I know less than 25% of the people in attendance.  If you know me, you know that I don't do well when there is a majority of strangers in the room.  So I stuffed paper towels into my armpits and gave myself a tour of the house.  On my rounds, Rusty took notice of the freakishly tall, dark haired girl, with see through skin.  He asked one of his friends, and one of my fellow middle school volunteers, to introduce him. Priyank said, "no way, man." I still don't know why he wouldn't introduce him, but he didn't.  So Rusty had to find the opportunity to introduce himself.  This party consisted of an hour of milling about making small talk, a three course dinner, desert, and then free time.  The hour of milling about went a bit like this:

"Hi my name is So and So, may I take your jacket" *faux British accent*
"Hi I'm Jessica, no thanks, I want to be free to bolt at any given moment"
"Oh, deary me, that's simply a riotous thing to say, tee ha hee hee hoo!" *insincere blah blah*
"That's fantastic, you're not listening to me are you?"
"Excellent, just simply marvelously excellent." *ridiculous non-human behavior*
"I'm sorry, am I in the candid filming of Clue?"

And so on.  It was insane how everyone was acting.  It was the most absurd party I've ever been to, and why I try my darnedest to avoid parties thrown by Christians (judge away). At this point I realize that I am physically trapped here because I was stupid enough to catch a ride with the hostess. I suck it up, eat dinner, and put on my best Mrs. Peacock impersonation to get through the rest of the night. After dinner I get up to go talk to some people at another table.  Mid-way through that conversation Rusty stands up and sticks his hand in my face and says, "Hi, I'm Rusty! This is my friend Troy *gestures to T-Roy across the table*" I shake his hand and mumble my name or something, and then I forget all about him. Cold, right? But later he cornered me in the kitchen and we talked for a long time.

Turns out he wasn't an incognito actor in a candid film!  We realized that we are both Air Force kiddos, and that we both lived overseas, and all kinds of good stuff.  The only red flag that I overlooked was when he touched my hands, for a reason I can't remember, said, "ooooh your hands are so cold!", then put them up to his mouth to exhale on them for warmth... freakish, right? I put on my best poker face and continued with the conversation. We talked about how much we like dancing at exactly the right time because in walks Kristy (another hostess) and she announces, "OKAY EVERYBODY!!  It's time to go play UNO!!!" I immediately considered walking home in the snow, but Rusty saved me by saying, "You wanna' go dancing, instead?" I immediately agreed and so Rusty, Matt, and I all got in Troy's Jeep and drove away from the oddest party I've ever attended. *Note to other freshman girls in college: Do NOT, for any reason whatsoever, get in a car with two guys you've known less than a day*

We met up with some of Rusty's friends at a place called Billy Bob's.  It was incredible.  It's a country dance bar in Ft. Worth, and we danced all night.  At some point Rusty remembered to ask how old I was. Jessica: 18 Rusty: 25 Fortunately, he was already hooked, so my age, and the fact that I lived in a place called a dorm, didn't discourage his affection.  When he dropped me off that night he did NOT ask for my number.  At church the next day, he did.  He called me before I could leave the parking lot and asked me out for coffee.  The rest is a bunch of "studying" at the coffee shop, and dinner dates.  I loved him within weeks!

Six months later we were engaged. Two weeks later he moved to Africa *planned trip, not to get away from me ;)* Six months after that, I broke off our engagement.  I freaking hated that guy.  We did nothing but fight about the wedding, and the cruddy Internet connection, and the thousand dollars that I spent to call him at 3am, my time.  Rusty ignored my break up request and continued to call and email.  I decided that I liked his gung

He met me at the Nairobi airport, and I was immediately not so mad that the TSA guys made me throw away those really sharp tweezers.  I loved him.  His skinny, scruffy, self was wonderful.  We spent the day in Nairobi waiting for our next plane, and we had a great time.  We flew to Mombasa, and still liked each other.  A few days later we were still friends and we decided that we were going to get married before we changed our minds.  The missions group that Rusty was working for disagreed, so we changed our plans, again. We married ourselves. What?!  I know, crazy right.  It went a little like this:

R: Jessica, I love you, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you.  I pray now that the Lord would view us as married, and that he would hear my promise to be your husband until the day that we die.
J: snivle, snot, tears, and an "uh-huh, yeah me too"

Romance at it's finest.  About twelve hours later, Rusty got fired.  Yep, good start to our life together.  So we flew our hippie married butts home to TX, to break the news to the family.  Shockingly enough, nobody was surprised.  I think they were confused about our methods, but not so surprised that we'd hitched our wagons.  Two weeks after our Flower Child wedding we went to the justice of the peace to pay our taxes and get an Alamo clad marriage licence.  LEGAL!

So that's about it, friends, or random people who stumbled across my blog.  This is the story of my wedding.

*engagement photo