When Julie met Robert - Part 2
Hey guys, sorry it’s been a while since the last blog! If you didn’t read “When Julie met Robert” you may want to read it before reading this one so it all makes sense! Now where were we…
Okay, so it was the 2nd of January, 8 years to the day that my marriage ended that Robert and I were going to catch up without our kids for the first time. I invited him over for a pot of tea (so seductive I know haha!) and I seriously cleaned my house like it’s never been cleaned before…or probably since for that matter! Anyway, I was fully aware of the date and timing and honestly thought, “Okay God, this is it, You’ve told me I’m going to marry this guy, this is amazing, let’s get this show on the road.”
So Robert came over and we hit it off, just talked, drank tea and had a great night getting to know each other. Then we started talking a bit about how our marriages ended etc. which was all fine until the point he said ...”yeah, I don’t think I’ll ever get married again.” Ummm…huh??!! I sat there smiling like “yeah…no that’s great...good for you” but in my head I was going, “Whaaaaaat???” When Robert left that night we decided that we’d be friends. After we said goodbye, I shut the door but was in a little state of confusion. I was like, “Have I totally missed it by a country mile? God, I thought you told me he was the guy!” I sat, pondered and prayed and by the end still felt a strong conviction that Robert was that guy but that he was just not ready yet and I was going to need to be patient. I had no idea how patient!!!
Just because something is right, doesn’t mean the timing is right.
The next few months we saw so much of each other, sometimes with all the kids together and sometimes just us. We had so much fun and became great friends. It was kind of like we were dating except that we were “just friends.” He was so sweet and would go out of his way to do all these lovely things for me, which was so nice after 8 years of nothing! It was clear we both liked each other (Robert still won’t admit to this mind you…but I know he did haha!) but anytime we got too close, e.g. Robert letting his walls down, he would call me up the next day to meet up just so he could remind me we were “just friends”. I’d be like, “Okay, great, thanks for that!”
Seriously, there were so many times, I felt like, you know what…forget it! Here I was trying to be open and vulnerable for the first time in 8 years, only to feel like this wonderful guy was (unintentionally) messing with my heart…being so nice and treating me so amazingly but then keeping his walls up and me out. After about 4 months of intense friendship, I decided I felt too vulnerable and had to end it. So even though we were only friends, we kinda broke up. I had to just surrender and give it to God and trust that if God was in it, He’d bring it back around. It was a really hard thing to do!
During that time, I had a dream. You know the kind of dream where you wake up, remember everything vividly and just know that it was a God dream. In it, I was on a jet plane as it was going along normally and then it suddenly starting slowing down and came to a complete stop mid-air. In the dream I was thinking, “This doesn’t feel right, I don’t think it’s meant to stop mid-air”, only for it to slowly start accelerating again and then slow down and stop again. This happened several times until after the last stop it just accelerated super-fast and came in to land at full speed but safely. I woke up and knew this dream was about us. That it was going to be stop/start until the right timing but when it was right, it would be quick. And that’s exactly what happened.
Over the next two years, we were friends, best friends in fact, but on again, off again because I would get frustrated and Robert still wasn’t ready. Even though I knew what God had spoken, sometimes the circumstances seemed to be the complete opposite. There were times I literally thought, “God, am I delusional? Did you really tell me that we were going to be married??” There were moments I couldn’t actually imagine how it would ever happen and yet I still felt just to trust God, have faith and be patient.
“Don’t put a due date on something God is going to deliver in due season.” Christine Caine.
Cut to New Year’s Eve 2013. Robert had invited me over to his place for New Year’s. He had his gorgeous kids there but mine were away. We’d had a great few weeks previously, and he’d done all these amazing things for me for my birthday and for Christmas…but you know, he didn’t like me at all that way apparently…it was seriously getting frustrating! After the kids had gone to bed we stayed up talking and I just had to bring it up. “What’s happening with us?” I asked. Robert replied, “What do you mean, we’re just friends.” Oh my gosh, he was so stubborn!! I was just going to leave, feeling quite devastated and thinking I can’t do this anymore, when things literally changed in a moment. It was like, all of a sudden, the walls Robert had tried so fervently to keep up, just came down. We talked openly and honestly till the early hours of the morning…turns out he did like me after all ;-). Nothing happened that night, but I came away amazed at what God was doing…finally!
Robert had bought us tickets to the tennis, on guess which date…that’s right, January 2nd, now exactly 10 years to that fateful day. Late that night, after the tennis, he told me he knew we were right and that God had spoken to him and that we were going to be married. Six months later we were. Seriously, how amazing is God?! That plane came in to land swiftly but safely! It was such a crazy ride but He totally kept His word and brought it to pass in His timing.
I’m so glad we had those 2 years of pure friendship before we became a relationship. I thought it was just Robert who wasn’t ready and needed time but I look back and realise I did too. We all needed that time for God to do His work in us and prepare us for the next season…including our beautiful kids. God is so good and He is true to His promise but even when He begins to bring that promise to pass, it sometimes still takes faith to walk it out! There are so many illustrations in the Bible of this!
I didn’t tell Robert my side of the story of how God had spoken to me way back before I even knew him until after we were engaged. He was blown away. So that’s our little story. It’s pretty special to us and we love it…and God gets all the glory.
Love Jules x
