LOVE>DISTANCE

             Tomorrow is a big day for Chris and I. We are getting the keys to our new apartment. We can’t wait to settle into our new digs, which will be our home for the next ____ years.  We don’t know. We both have moved around quite a bit since college, grad school, etc. We’ll certainly be glad to be in one place for a while, to build our lives together, to build our careers, our family, to plant our feet at a church to serve and to worship. Exciting times lie ahead.

            An interesting coincidence God thing is that a girl in my bible study group that I’ve been attending (I got involved with this group through a friend I went to Dobyns-Bennett with. It’s a small world.) lives within walking distance of our new apartment and the church she invited Chris and I to attend with her and her husband (also named Chris, and also super tall!) a month ago is in between both of our apartments. Very excited about that!

Our new neighbors!

            This move into a new apartment made me reminiscence about the time Chris and I spent apart invested in our relationship.   I remember when Chris told me he was moving to New York, in March of 2011.  He called me late one night while I was finishing a homework assignment. “I just bought a one way plane ticket to New York, “ he said.  Cue the tears. I wasn’t sure what to think. He had told me he was thinking about moving but hearing those words made me realize that it’s really happening. Of course there’s the “I want to be supportive” thought but then there’s also the selfish part that wants him close to me. He was making the decision for us though, for our future. I knew a move to New York could mean that we would be moving into the scary territory of long distance.  We had been an hour and a half apart seeing each other on the weekends, but that didn’t seem too bad at the time.

            I got advice from a lot of people about long distance relationships, mostly unwanted and mostly all bad advice. I had so many friends graduate last week and I know some of them are going to have to deal with a now long distance relationship as one or maybe both accept jobs in different cities. So here are my feelings on long distance, take them with a grain of salt.

1)   Don’t listen to people who only offer negative advice. Whether or not your relationship survives long distance has nothing to do with “my sister’s college roommate dated a guy for four years and then he moved away to start a job and ended up cheating on her with some girl he worked with.” Your relationship is different and just because other people’s long distance relationships didn’t work out doesn’t mean yours won’t.

2)   I’m lucky that I had several role models for long distance relationships in my life who helped me a great deal. One lady who was in my couples Sunday School class with her husband and Chris and I before he moved, told me about when she spent a year in Indonesia while she was dating her now husband. It was difficult but they made it work. They recently had a baby girl to add to their bunch and are now a family of seven!  Also my sister and her husband dated for five years (!) long distance while she was finishing school. I remember one time I asked her how she knew her husband was the “one” and she said “I couldn’t see the relationship ending.”

3)    Expect long distance to be difficult, because all relationships take work, but realize the reward in persevering. By far, the most difficult time of our long distance relationship was the two weeks after I graduated ETSU and right before our wedding. We were so close to ending our chapter on long distance but I swear those two weeks felt longer than the entire two years. I was feeling a lot of pressure from different people about wedding issues. I was being pulled in a lot of different directions. I needed and wanted Chris to even just be in the same room with me and he wasn’t there. It wasn’t his fault, it wasn’t my fault, it was just the circumstance. Don’t let circumstance end your relationship because the circumstance is temporary.

4)   Realize the importance of building a relationship that is not solely based on the physical aspects of the relationship.  (You don’t have to test drive a car before you buy it. Well you should if you’re actually buying a car…but you know I’m not talking about a car, right?)
True love is worth waiting for.

5)   Try new things, pick up a new hobby. I ended up going away for a long weekend to San Diego for a conference when I was a senior in college and took another three week trip to Rome, Italy when I was in grad school. I probably wouldn’t have done that if Chris and I had been in the same city. Long distance can be a blessing if you choose to let it.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s difficult, but I think about our life together now and am so glad we fought through the hard times.

Chris and I spent almost all of our dating relationship apart. After a particularly difficult night with many tears I’m sure, my husband said this “When we’re in our 80s and have been married 60 years, we’re going to look back at this time and think two years is nothing.”

 That’s why I love that man of mine! A voice of reason. So as we move into our new place this weekend, we celebrate the work we put into our relationship and the joy it brings to both of us that we didn’t give up on each other.

I have found the one my soul loves. Song of Solomon 3:4

A bonus of long distance relationships is that the time spent together is extra special!

Remember that trip I took to Rome? Someone was there to meet me at the airport.

And ask me an important question....