Change (a mini series)

I would like to take a few posts to talk about something very near and dear to my heart....my husband and his vision.....  19 years ago a girl met a boy.  The girl came from a good home, parents who were married my entire life who loved me and my siblings with everything they had.  My dad worked tremendously hard to set up me and my four siblings for a normal life.  We always had a home, food, entertainment and vacations.  I took this for granted and whined and disobeyed like most teens.  Then a fateful night I was driving around what we called the "Franklin 500" basically a parking lot where boys and girls would meet each other.  I was wearing a long Abraham Lincoln beard goofing off when I came upon a very tiny roller skate of a car...a geo metro.  It had 2 young men inside and we started talking to them eventually getting their phone numbers.  A few days later on a break from my job as a preschool aide, I nervously called this older guy ;)  He was all of 18 and I was 16 and so he came to pick me up on the first date wearing WAY too much cologne, but that night something special started.  So as we began to get to know each other I realized our lives were very different.  He had graduated high school the year before and was currently living with a friend's family.  He was technically homeless.  He was working as a security guard to make ends meet to pay for his car.  As we talked I learned his mother had divorced his step father and they had moved from their home.  However they left my husband behind at 16 to finish school in an abandoned house with no lights, water or anything else by himself.  So his senior year of high school he lived in this house cooking from a car battery contraption making sure to get to school and to his job at Burger King.  His determination was nothing like I had ever seen.  He had been abused, abandoned and neglected and yet he was the hardest working most caring guy I had ever met.  We began dating pretty immediately and I watched him save up and get an apartment with some friends and then another apartment.  I am not going to lie at 17 and a senior having a boyfriend with an apartment was super impressive :)  However we quickly learned that we were on a journey not a sprint to a "real" relationship.  At the time I was coming out of a difficult time and had been spending my weekends partying, experimenting with things I should not have been (keeping this the G version).  I quickly found out that my husband wanted none of that in his life.  I learned his childhood and adolescent had involved too much alcohol and drugs and he was not interested in a girlfriend into that.  I had to make a choice to leave the lifestyle I lived for the past few years for a boy I had only known for a few months.  Something inside me said he's worth it.  We had many struggles in our first few years, our lives had resulted in dealing with a lot of insecurities, jealousy and other problems we both dragged in.  However we stood by each other and stayed together, not ever breaking up or taking a break.  My parents loved him, he quickly became one of the family even staying at our house many nights (on a totally different floor!) even though he would say he NEVER lived with us :)  I watched my dad help him get a new car when his was repossessed and my Mom took the role of making him birthday cakes and giving him Christmas presents.  Don't get me wrong, he was no charity case, he was the reason their daughter had stopped partying, he picked me up at work every day and he always was helping out around the house.  I watched how one person made such an impact on my life, he gave me direction, confidence, made me feel beautiful and happy.  He taught me not to take my life for granted and how to stand by someone.  I watched how my dad, one man, gave Randy confidence by doing what he knew how to do, help him write a resume, learn to tie a tie, show him how to buy a car and NOT get ripped off.  I watched my mom do what she did best, she made him feel welcome, made private jokes with him, made sure he was well fed (she was Italian and we both gained a lot of weight those first years!).  I watched how 1 person began to change so much in the world..... to be continued