Your Stories – World’s Apart! By Brock Heasley

Hi there. This is another beautiful story about how a fellow blogger met the love of his life. Another addition to my Feature “Couples”. If you would like to find out more, head over to “Couples” and find out more.

Thank you so much, Brock, for sharing you story 🙂

“I was a recently returned, 21-year-old missionary just back from a 2-year, full-time, Spanish-Speaking tour of duty in Arizona. She was the blonde sitting in the row in front of me in my college Spanish class (easy A) with the incredible nose. I introduced myself by listening for her name as the roll was read and then used it to call out to her. I thought she was pretty hot. She thought I was a stalker. I kept following her back to her car after class until she was convinced otherwise and became my friend (that should not have worked).

She had three faults:

1) She was 17-years-old

2) She had a boyfriend

and

3) She wasn’t Mormon. In fact, she was quite strong in own, Protestant-flavored faith, thank you very much.

By the end of the six-week summer course (which she took between her Junior and Senior years of high school), we were study partners and debated our religions constantly. One night, I offended her so terribly she said that if I couldn’t shut up about religion then we’d no longer be friends. I agreed to shut up.

Over a year later Erin finally entered college properly as an 18-year-old. We’d remained friends and study partners, but now things got weird. Her relationship with her boyfriend was on the rocks and those old, initial feelings came back–only this time it seemed they were being reciprocated. Our strict friendship was crumbling away to something new and better and utterly, completely frightening.

We’d both made commitments in our youth to never date outside of our religion, but there was a pull towards each other that was undeniable. True to my commitment, I hadn’t brought up religion since that errant, arrogant night, but if we were to date there would come a point when the issue would be unavoidable. To date would be to court turmoil.

We dated anyway, in secret. Mormons were a bit of a hiss and byword in her world and I was not allowed in her parents’ home, so we hid our relationship from all but my my family and friends, who more or less were willing to give me the benefit of the doubt that I knew what I was doing. Our first real date was at my mom’s wedding reception, in which she met everyone I knew on the planet. That she didn’t run screaming was basically confirmation that we’d get married, eventually.

We did, but not without some tough compromises, lots of tears, a confrontation with her parents over secrets and lies, and a pleading from her mother that I not go through with the proposal.  Everything leading up to our wedding was gut-wrenching, beautiful, awful, and romantic, all at the same time. Hopefully, I’m not shortchanging this guest blog by cutting out here, but it’s there’s a bit too much for this space for what is, honestly, a pretty great story.

Which is why I wrote a book about it…”