What About Her?

A New Life Begins

It was the beginning of January 2001 and I’d been searching around and trying to figure out how to find friends on the internet and I found a website that would do just that. It was a Christian email pen pal website. It was called C-pals and it was a Christian pen pal website. I put an ad in that website saying, “Hi from NY!” and went on to introduce myself. A few days after that I got a response from “Puppy” in Northern CA, saying hello. He was a Christian singer and he was trying to sell cassettes of his music. I wrote back and did end up buying two of them. I’m really glad I did because his voice was angelic and it was so soothing for me. I would take them to work where I was still working as a Medical Claims Processor and I’d listen to them on my recorder with my headset on while I did my claims. I’d listen and listen to those songs. They took me away from the life I was living.

“Puppy” and I emailed each other back and forth from January through March. After that we pretty much just sent each other forwards for the next eight months. Then in November something changed. We started writing emails back and forth getting to know each other. We started having some fun by sending each other ‘quizzes’. Ten questions that he’d answer then I’d answer. And so on. We asked everything that we could imagine. From ‘what would you do if you found 50 bucks on the road’ to ‘what’s your favorite this and that’ to ‘how would you respond if you were witness to a tragic accident” such as a car crash. We started finding out that we had a lot in common. We started opening up to each other about our lives. We told each other all about the things we both had gone through in our lives. We were confiding in each other about literally everything. And we talked about Jesus. A lot. We both knew that we were followers of Jesus and that would never change. We kept Jesus and prayer at the center of our relationship. I had finally found my friend.

He started writing songs for me and about us and our friendship. By December we were even closer. We started instant messaging back and forth. That brought our friendship to a new level, because we were actually able to be interactive with each other. We spent lots of time on instant messages. We would take virtual walks down tree filled dirt roads and we’d have picnics by a lake in a giant park. We’d see deer and geese and other wild life. We’d walk under covered bridges. We also started recording cassette tapes for each other, talking and telling about our life stories. I told him all about mine and he told me everything about himself. And he prayed over me, every night, faithfully. In fact, for every awful word “serpent” would say to me, “Puppy” would have a handful more to counteract it. We were building a foundation; forming a bond. We were falling in love.

The end of December we made our first phone call to each other. We were finally talking ‘ear to ear’. We had a blast. His very first words to me were, “I love you”. He breathed those words into the phone so soft and gentle, that I just about passed out. I had finally found my Prince Charming. I finally found the man that God had planned for me, so many years ago. And to think, he was clear across the United States.