Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Do you believe in destiny?

Photobucket - Video and Image HostingLet me tell you a story…

My junior year of college, I decided I wanted to study abroad. My University had a great exchange program, so I applied and crossed my fingers I’d get accepted. While I waited to hear back, I started looking for possible summer jobs. The campus newspaper had an ad for counselors for a girls’ camp in Massachusetts. I thought that sounded like a nice change from the same ol', so I wrote off for an application.

Shortly thereafter, I found I’d been accepted into the exchange program. I was going to England!!! While a summer job at a New England camp might be fun, it didn’t pay nearly enough to finance a year abroad. The camp application went in the trash, and I got a job waiting tables. Less fun, but more money.

Come September, I crossed the Atlantic and checked in to my dorm. (It was actually my third choice of dorms, but I was over my disappointment about that by then. Really. I was.)

That’s when I met the Darling Geek.

Oddly, though, DG was sporting a pretty good tan that fall—something you don’t see much of in a cold, rainy country. I asked him about it. Turns out, he’d spent the last summer teaching sailing at a boys’ camp in Massachusetts. He’d had a great time—not so much with the pre-teen boys at his camp, but with the counselors from the girls’ camp across the lake.

The same girls’ camp I’d gotten an application for.

If I hadn’t been accepted to the exchange program, I’d have spent the summer at that girls’ camp. And I’d have met the Darling Geek there. Instead, we end up in the same dorm five thousand miles away.

DG claims not to believe in destiny or fate, but I think DG and I were meant to be together. One way or the other, I would have met him. I guess if your soulmate lives in another country, Fate has to get creative and hedge her bets.

We just celebrated our 11th anniversary. Thanks, Fate.

Do you believe in Fate? What about soulmates? Do you think you were destined to be with your Darling? Tell us your (or someone else’s) love story. Best tales will win books.

9 comments:

Angel said...

I most definitely believe in destiny! But only in the sense that the opportunities are there, it's up to us to take advantage of them.

My husband and I grew up together, after meeting when I was 12. Now, he says he knew the minute he saw me that I was The One. And I knew he felt that way about me, but I didn't feel that way about him. Not until about 4 years later, then BOOM! the feelings were there. Thank God he was patient!!!

Even though we were young, and married at 20 and 19 respectively, I've found over and over that we were meant for each other. Opposites in many ways, but identical where it really counts. I'm so grateful to have him as my soulmate!

Angel

Katherine Bone said...

A friend of mine tried to set me up on a blind date (my first ever), with someone her husband worked with. I looked at a picture of this man in his uniform, mustache, hat and glasses covered much of his face making him look old at 23, and I said he was too old. He looked at my picture (my Senior H.S. picture, I was 18), and said, I was too young. 6 months later, I was with the same friend at a Disco and there he was. Appearing out of the crowd, he was enshrouded with light. I knew then that I would marry him. Introduced at 24 and 19 years old by the same friend, we've been together ever since. We'll celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in May.

I'd say fate definitely had a hand in our meeting and being together all these years. Especially when you have to take into account that he would have had to be assigned to work at the Army base my father worked at in order for us to meet in the first place and that my college friend happened to be married to a man who worked with him.

Kathy

Anonymous said...

PC, I *love* your story. It always gives me the warm fuzzies.

My dh and I met as a result of one of my friend's dating my dh's room-mate. She kept saying, "Oh, you've got to meet him. I really think you'd like him."

And I did. :-)

My friend and dh's room-mate didn't last a month, but fifteen years later, here we are.

Andrea Laurence AKA Smarty Pants said...

I love that story. I wish I had a story like that. The closest thing to fate for me and DB was his ex-girlfriend sending him a Halloween e-card from Yahoo. On the bottom was a link to yahoo personals. There, he found me. He sent me a message that he thought my user name was not appropriate for someone as pretty as I was. Our weird senses of humor meshed immediately via IM and the rest is history.

SP

Andrea Laurence AKA Smarty Pants said...

Well, at the time I created it (my senior year in high school) I did, in fact, have red hair. Flaming auburn. One day my friend and my mom waited for me in the car while I ran into the store for something and apparently I took too long. When I got back to the car, that's what he called me. (In a loving, best gay boyfriend kind of way.) It kinda stuck. Later, when I was trying to make up a yahoo ID, I was having trouble with something normal and I entered it as a joke. Guess what!! My new email address...

Katherine Bone said...

I forgot to wish you Happy 11th Anniversary, PC!

Kathy

CrystalGB said...

I do believe in destiny. When my husband and I were younger, I used to bake him and my nephew cookies and I always thought of him as a kid. Many years later, my brother forgot to pay his water bill one month and the service technician who came to collect his money for the bill was my husband. Needless to say, we reconnected, had a whirlwind romance and got married.

Kira Sinclair - AKA Instigator said...

No question, I believe in fate. But I also believe that things happen when they're meant to.

I grew up with DH's brother - same school, band, church, youth group...and yet I'd never met his brother. There were several times over the years that we should have met but just didn't. I don't think either of us were ready. Instead we met at a party at the boat docks out by the refuge and the rest is history (a bit messy history none the less :-)

Instigator

Andrea Laurence AKA Smarty Pants said...

Such romantic stories! Makes me a teensy bit jealous. How about this (not a romance, but equally important)...

When I graduated high school, I had a choice of colleges in Arizona, Oregon, Texas and Boston. I opted for Arizona, which had an accelerated program. Because of that, I ended up back in Las Vegas 2.5 years later and got a job with a company I had done a high school internship with. The company lost their big contract and my boss accepted a job in Alabama. She offered me a position to go with her. I did and because of it, my mom got married and I have a little sister, I met DB, AND I got involved with the wonderful ladies here.

If I had gone do a different college where I spent 4 or 5 years, I might have ended up somewhere completely different! It all happens for a reason.

SP