Soul Magic

THE UNEXPECTED SECOND CHANCE
By Patty

What do you do when love comes along,
and offers your heart a chance to move on

With no guarantees, no safety net
you trust what you feel, you take that first step.

- Trisha Yearwood

I was given a second chance to experience love – real love. It’s a feeling that makes me smile when I hear his voice, and look at his picture. It’s a flutter in my heart. I had no idea how it felt until I found it, the second time.

I had been married for 31 years. My now “ex” floored me when he said the words, “I want a divorce.” I still like to refer to it as his mid-life crisis.

I am a firm believer in positive thinking, having faith and that thoughts become things. Every day after the divorce I asked God to bring me a kind, gentle, loving man who would adore me as much as I adored him. That is what I intended to manifest for myself. I would not settle for less. I wanted a relationship built on trust, honesty and a willingness to let go of life’s unexpected bumps and be able to move ahead with the anticipation that tomorrow will be better than today and to look for the silver lining in everything.

So how does a fifty-something woman enter the dating game after 33 years? It’s scary, let me tell you. A friend urged me to try online dating. I didn’t have to actually go out on a date. I could just play the game until I felt ready to meet someone new.

My first match wanted to meet pretty quickly. I was scared to death. I was a newbie! A dating virgin! I made up a reasonable excuse not to meet telling him that I wasn’t ready to start dating.

Pretty soon I was getting emails weekly and gaining confidence, and had a few more dates that I knew were just stepping stones to the path that would lead me to that “special someone.”

And then one special day, March 14, 2005, I received an email. His name was Dave. But to my dismay he lived forty miles away. The men I had dated all lived within ten miles of me, my comfort zone, which also made for a quick get together during the week. “Spontaneity,” I said, “is important in a relationship.” I had a hard time deciding whether or not to give it a chance.

Dave wrote sweet, thoughtful, amusing emails during the short interval before our meeting and I was hooked. I was curious to meet the man behind those enchanting words. And besides that, he wore a tie-dyed t-shirt in his one and only online photo. I had to get to the bottom of that! Later we joked that it was a “chick magnet” and had pulled me in!

Our first date was quite memorable. He was tall, dark and handsome, just my type.

He told me that when I walked into the restaurant, he had hoped I was his date. The thing I noticed most during the evening was that he never looked at anyone else in the restaurant. He stayed focused on me, all night. He is still focused on me. I went home and wrote in my journal, “I think I’m in love. I know love at first sight sounds corny, but I can’t fight how my heart feels, it’s smiling.” I received a text message from him on his way home saying “I was his best date so far.” That gave me all the confidence in the world.

We started to exchange daily emails. I learned about his daily routines, his likes, and dislikes. I felt Cupid’s arrow aiming straight for my heart because I felt warmth and tingling run through me as I read words that he wrote from his heart. I had never known a man to write such thoughtful, endearing words and not be afraid or embarrassed to express what he was feeling. I would awake every morning and rush to my computer in anticipation of reading his next email. One morning there was a poem that he had written about us. It brought tears to my eyes. It was the first time anyone had written a poem about me.

I also wrote long, daily emails to him. I discovered a side of me that had been hidden and suppressed my whole life. The words came naturally because it was how I felt. I had feelings that I had never experienced before; affection, adoration, joy, love, passion, giddiness. It was a wonderful change for me and an outlet that I so needed to allow these hidden buried feelings and emotions to surface and take on meaning. My friends told me that my eyes sparkled and I had a bounce in my step. What a wonderful testament to the new beginnings that I had an opportunity to embrace.

Dave is sweet, adorable and attentive, just what I asked for. I would (and still) catch him staring at me. He just smiles and says, “you are so gorgeous, I can’t stop looking at you.” He also confessed that he looks at me while I sleep. What’s there not to love about that?

An added bonus for me is that he loves to cook and bake. Am I lucky or what? The first time I went to his place he prepared a very special dinner for us. He even gave it a “theme” and printed out a menu!

When we first met online I told him he lived too far away and I didn’t think a relationship could work. He told me that it was only 38 miles away—but he called the miles lemons—and wrote back, “one can sure make a whole lot of lemonade with 38 lemons, don’t ya think?”

So . . . the theme of our very first home cooked dinner together was Lemons! We had shrimp cocktail with lemon wedges, salad with lemon and olive oil dressing, garlic lemon chicken, lemon thyme rice, lemon chiffon pie and the after dinner drink was lemoncillo. How creative and special is that? Following the dinner was a romantic bubble bath with lemon bath salts, lemon body lotion and lemon shower gel that he purchased himself. How many men have you seen in a Bath & Body store?

He definitely went the extra mile to show me how much he cared for me and two years later I am still being treated with the same adoration and loving thoughtfulness he displayed then. That was not just a one time deal to impress a new girlfriend. It was the real, down to earth, caring, romantic, genuine Dave that I have fallen in love with.

He calls me many times a day just to say hello and let me know he is thinking of me. We are not living together yet, so he will not let the day end until he calls to say “Good Night and I Love You”, so we can share our daily activities and thoughts.

A relationship doesn’t get any better than this! I believe that I have found the most treasured gift in the entire world and am truly blessed by the turn of events at this stage of my life. I haven’t stopped smiling since March 2005.

This is how Love found its way to my heart and I was given a Second Chance to experience it. I’m so very grateful for my Second Chance. I would have missed something, someone extraordinary.

Thoughts Do Become Things. Just Believe.

“You trust what you feel, you take that first step.”

— © Patty

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