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The following is an inspirational story from my friend Stephanie... you know... the smart girl who turned Arnie down live on the air way before Natalie Gulbis got the chance!!! (Oh Arnie, I'm just kidding) Anyway, she has such a great story, and I wanted you to read it. so here it is...

Stephanie's Inspirational Story

When Dawn told me she wanted me to write my inspirational story I thought, “How flattering,” and then, “Wait, what’s my inspirational story?” Seriously, though, I have to say I’m one of the most blessed women on the planet, and I’m thrilled that Dawn would ask me to share it. It’s not often that we are blessed and then given an opportunity to share our testimony.

From the first moment we met I valued Dawn highly and am grateful to now consider her among my closest friends. Ever since we have known each other I have always been the token single friend in my social circle and figured, “Well, every group has one….I guess for this group it’s me.” Unfortunately, this wasn’t a pleasant thought because just like Dawn I have wanted to find that “right” guy and have a family some day. You can work and work, acquire lots of stuff and do all the right things when it comes to the surface level of life, but at the end of the day if you don’t have anyone to share it with what’s the point? I didn’t want to be just the favorite aunt….I wanted to be the mom, too. However, my life was shaping up to be one where I would have to find a role in someone else’s family rather than having my own.

To top everything else off I have, by far, the most ludicrous dating histories of any one human being I know. I should have seen the handwriting on the wall when my boyfriend in highschool said we had to break up because we were such good friends, that kissing me was like kissing his sister. Ouch.

Dawn asked me to share a little of the insanity, so here’s a brief breakdown of what life was like for me:

There was the guy who gave me a choice of what our first date options were: 1. Stay at a friend’s cabin in the woods, 2. Stay at his uncle’s cabin in the woods, or 3. Dinner in Carson where I live. After making the safe choice of dinner within walking distance of my home, he called me back fifteen minutes later to tell me driving to Carson was too far and he just didn’t want to do it. Sweet.

There was the guy that I had been friends with, but had always had a crush on. Out of the blue he took two weeks off to travel here from Michigan to look for a job and a home because he wanted to be closer to me and pursue a romantic relationship. After hanging out, showing him around and driving him to Oregon to visit his family he kissed me good-bye and said he’d call when he got home to let me know what he was going to do. I never heard from him until about a year later when he confessed he had accepted a job in Oregon and just felt bad telling me. Because of course never calling me again made me feel much better.

Then there was one of Dawn’s personal favorites. The guy who met me at the restaurant dressed in a bow tie and quivering. He had gone to the restaurant twice that day to scope out the best table, and ensure they had a bottle of non-alcoholic wine available (I had donated blood earlier that day). When we sat down a huge vase of flowers stuck out so far on the table we kind of had to bend back branches and such, so we could see each other. I immediately took the very smart Dawn route out, and ordered a bottle of very alcoholic wine. When I returned from the bathroom he told me he got the review from the wait staff who encouraged him by saying that we made a “cute couple.” Super. Oh, and just for extra fun, he “forgot” to tell me that the divorce wasn’t final and that he had a one-year-old. I am not even kidding about that.

Then there was one of my personal favorites: The dating interview. Yes, a man actually “interviewed” me to see if I was worthy of future dates because naturally he was a catch and the jury was still out on me. What I thought was going to be a business lunch turned into questions like, “How do you feel about dating a Jewish man?” “How do you feel about living in LA?” “How do you feel about pulling in a six figure salary while still raising the children.” Yes, that was something he insisted his future wife would do. This all in rapid-fire succession. While my head swam with his logic that it was a wonderful option to have a house down the street that he could retreat to when he and his wife had a tiff, I suddenly realized I had a way out. When I told him I loved hiking and camping he turned his nose up and said with distaste, “I’ll go out in it, but I won’t sleep in it.” “It,” being nature of course. He then asked if I was a smelly girl and whether or not I shaved my legs. Though I do have good personal hygiene, for reasons of saving my clinging sanity I confessed that I chose to go “au natural” and he promptly called for the check.

For quite a while I felt sorry for myself and thought God was saying, “Stephanie, your calling is this: you will remain single and have your life serve as a warning to others about why staying single sucks very bad. Don’t do it” Seriously. Dawn thinks I should write a book about my dating experiences because then she would have something funny to laugh at on bad days. Sometimes the dating experiences were funny and entertaining, but oftentimes they were painful and discouraging.

Dawn has counseled me many times through those tough moments of trying to figure out why every single person around me seemed to be coupling up at break neck speed. She has boosted my confidence and my spirits, and because of the way she handles her own life she has been an extraordinary example. She is actually the person who truly inspired me to look at life a different way and accept that when it’s all said and done, it doesn’t really matter who you have relationships with, it’s how good the relationships were with the people you knew.

Then one day last fall a friend of mine said she had a guy she wanted me to meet. He was someone she hadn’t seen in a long time, but had wanted to set us up for a couple of years. As usual, I was accommodating and said I’d meet him only if she and her husband would agree to go and serve as a buffer. The last thing I needed was yet another freaky dating experience with some guy who couldn’t hold a conversation. To be honest, my concern was that he was a Christian. While I truly wanted a man in my life that shared my spiritual beliefs, my experience in the past included a man who had used his religious beliefs to judge me to the point where I was left with nothing else but to run the other direction. I wanted the combination of sharing my spiritual beliefs while being accepted for exactly who I am: a fallible person with good intentions who believes in God, and has a commitment to being a better person everyday.

I was so not excited for this date I showed up about twenty-five minutes late. He was a mere ten minutes earlier than me, which still made us both significantly late. See, I’ve always thought it was all about me, and I forgot that the guy is sometimes a bit apprehensive as well. When I first approached this guy and my two friends he wouldn’t even look at me. For what felt like the longest time I was thinking (but he insists was two seconds in man time), “Hello, over here. At lease make some pretense of being interested in meeting me.” I thought he was somewhat arrogant or something because his body language said, “I know I’m a catch. I’ll address you when I’m ready.” Later, I found out what he was really thinking was, “Please, God, let her be pretty and let her not whistle Yankee Doodle Dandy through her nose when she talks.” Funny how a situation like that can prove a self-proclaimed giver-of-the-doubt is often a glass is half-empty kinda gal.

We had so much fun that night. We all sat and talked over coffee for a while and then went to a church where a youth group was having a fundraiser variety show. Yes, I can hear the collective groan. But wait, it gets even better. We all did the hokey pokey at one point. And I thought that dance was only reserved for weddings. Talk about foreshadowing.

This guy did all the wrong things when it comes to “guy” rules. He called me the very next day and asked me to go to lunch. No waiting for the appropriate five days before calling and “kind of” acting interested. He even took me out to play basketball. It was probably one of the most real experiences I’ve ever had when it came to dating. I mean, come on, how often do you get to smack talk your date on the basketball court. And, he didn’t even let me win!

This man and I started seeing each other regularly, and for the most part I kept my heart close to myself. While he made it clear that his feelings for me were long term and in fact, forever, I was still in that wait-and-see kind of mode. It’s easy for a guy to fall in love after two weeks; it’s staying in love forever that’s the real test.

While I was carefully controlling the speed at which this relationship was going to progress God had other plans for me. One day my mom and I went to lunch and were having the typical mother/daughter conversation of entertaining the thought of what would happen if this guy were the one. What would our lives be like together, how we compliment each other, how quickly I could redecorate his home, etc. Stuff that you never expect the rest of the world to hear.

Later that night when he and I were at a friend’s dinner party he repeated something I had said to my mother in the course of our conversation and naturally I thought, “Wow, that’s quite a coincidence.” Then he said another thing…. and then another. When I in my great brilliance I didn’t quite pick up on what he was saying he finally confessed that my phone had called his office while my mother and I were at lunch and he had heard part of our conversation. While I immediately panicked and thought, “Dear God, this is it, he’s giving me the boot,” he was telling me how thrilled he was to hear that I was willing to think of a future with him. This had to be the most embarrassing thing that had ever happened to me and all I could think of was how he could have interpreted anything wrong and be hurt by it. I finally realized that my instinct was telling me I didn’t want to lose this person. That was the night we agreed to jump into a serious relationship with both feet. I can confidently say it’s been one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made.

I can also say that not one day has passed since we’ve met that we haven’t talked, and now we’re planning our wedding for the late fall. If a year ago someone had told me I would be planning my wedding just one year later I would have said that person was crazy. And if that same person had told me that I would get to marry someone like Troy I simply wouldn’t have believed that would be possible.

All I can say is that you have to allow room to experience for yourself the blessings God has in store for you. You can never actually believe, no matter what others may tell you, what God can put into your life until you experience it for yourself. I think there’s purpose in that as well. We’re meant to value our own experiences singularly for a reason, since they aren’t meant for anyone else. For those of us who tend to make comparisons, that’s just the way it needs to work. Plus, there’s a specialness to knowing that God doesn’t want us to be a copycat…that we’re allowed to have a unique experience that nobody else has. It allows you to relate a little to others while still reserving something private for your own life. Just like we’re all supposed to be: overlap a little to share in the experience of life, but still hold something back to make it unique to us as individuals.

After so many years of thinking that for some reason God had it out for me I realized that He simply asks for us to get out of our own way so He can do what He needs to do. My brother is probably one of the people I admire most. You’ve all heard about him, the Navy Seal that gave Dawn the tour of Navy Seal school and provided her with plenty of opportunities to feast on Navy Seal eye candy.

My brother, John, in an instructor who trains future Navy Seals and is fond of saying, “The definition of insanity is constantly repeating the same behavior while expecting different results.” It took me a long time to understand what that truly means, but thank God I did, otherwise I would probably still be feeling sorry for myself and thinking that God actually uses us as negative instead of positive examples to others.

It’s trite and I hated hearing it when I was single, but you really do have to come to a place of accepting your life for what it is today. It’s not better one day and worse another, it’s your perfect life because it’s your unique experience. When we are able to shift our perspective, that’s when the really good things are possible.

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