Getting married as young as I did - a month shy of twenty, has had its share of ups and downs, and has greatly contributed to the person, the mother, and the wife I am able to be today, as it gave me plenty of room to grow, blossom, and bloom in this vocation.
First Impressions
The retreat was over a weekend and he ended up spending a lot of the weekend with another girl I was friends with, and I reserved myself to not being attracted to him, which ended up coming across as me being stuck up - his first impression of me.
At the end of the weekend, I made a point of hugging him goodbye, hitting him with my slipper, and for some reason or another, this intrigued him about me.
This is the part of the story I do not understand, and he cannot adequately explain.
He went to Rome the next day, but before he went, added me on Facebook, and although he was in a completely different time zone, would set an alarm on his phone to get up and talk to me, sometimes at two in the morning. At this point, having written him off as a guy my friend was interested in, I felt completely platonic towards him.
Making a Mess of Things
On both occasions, we were inexplicably drawn to each other, though we were practically no more than strangers. In fact, the second time I saw him, I began talking to him like I had known him forever, and my friend asked me who this guy was because it was clear something was going on.
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Over that period in my life, I was in an on-off again relationship with a boy from my hometown. Due to this push-and-pull relationship, I was off-balance, drawn to Tharin for our inexplicable friendship, and confused over this other boy.
When Tharin came to a conference in July which my family attends every year, we spent a lot of the weekend together, and though I was interested in a few different guys at the time, there was something about Tharin which endeared him to me above the others.
He was shy and sometimes quiet, and my mom regrettably referred to him as the puppy dog, but the Saturday evening, we stayed up at the campfire long after most everyone else had gone to bed talking for hours. It should have been clear we were interested in each other, clear that it was a relationship worth pursuing, but I was confused.
After spending World Youth Day Spain that August in Spain with a friend of mine discussing some big decisions, I came back having decided to break up with the boy from my hometown for good, date another Catholic boy who was interested in me - a boy who wasn't moving ten hours away to go to bible school, and tell Tharin we could not talk anymore.
This is my favourite part of the story.
Tharin felt blindsided by this decision and told his mom he had really thought there was something special about me.
She told him that if he let me go and I came back, it was meant to be, and if not, it simply was not. He went to bible school with this on his heart and offered up his daily Chaplet for his future wife, and for me.
The Big Reveal
February came around, the weekend of the Search retreat we had met at a year before, and I very clearly remember seeing Tharin. He had been standing on the other side of a huge room, wearing a green sweater, his back turned to me. From that distance away, my heart hit the floor.
I liked him, and I liked him a lot.
It had suddenly been clear as day, laughable that I had been trying to tell myself otherwise.
I spent that weekend seeking him out, though he was working in a different area of the retreat than me, and we managed to spend almost every moment possible together. At the end of the weekend, when he was finally released from his duties, I thought I was very clear about my interest in him, as I, very literally, trailed him around the school. It was my turn to be a puppy.
He did not pick up on this, and we parted ways without knowing where we stood.
After that weekend, we were texting again, and after about a week or so of Tharin not picking up on my hints, I said, quite bluntly: Tharin, I want to be your friend. From then on, we talked almost constantly and were soon talking on the phone for hours every night, though I had never liked talking on the phone and he was not supposed to be pursuing a relationship at bible school.
The night after we first talked on the phone, I wrote in my prayer journal that I thought I was falling in love with him.
There was such a feeling of home, of rightness in him, although this did not mean I made it easy for us.
When I had broken up with my previous boyfriend, I had started talking to the boy from my hometown again and was thrown right back into the confusion of our relationship.
Ater that retreat where I realized my feelings for Tharin, I had told him that I had met another boy, that I was seriously interested in this boy, and that we could not talk anymore.
This boy told me I would be talking to him again in a month. How wrong he was. Although, it took a really long time for me to be really and truly over him.
It was had for me to stop wanting to make irresponsible decisions, hard for me to get over the boy from my hometown, and, as a result, I had a hard time allowing myself to be settled. Even so, it became more and more clear to me that Tharin was my future; I felt God being very forceful about this.
I Didn't Know How Much I Needed a Rock
Those months of our relationship while Tharin was still at bible school where months he spent fighting for me almost daily. On the phone he would pray with me, remind me to trust, and talk me to sleep with stories, constantly allaying my fears and reminding me God was in control.
I do not know why he was so patient with me, but he was my rock then, and has been my rock since.
He was in bible school for two more months, and only had one weekend free a month. The first month, we made plans for him to come see me, and I hardly slept the night before because I was so nervous.
It was a Sunday, and the first thing we did was go to mass together. Sitting beside him, my arm just touching his, I fell in love with his breathing - slow, steady, sure, it made me feel so comforted.
That visit went better than I could have expected. At the end of the day, I remember talking to him as he washed the dishes (it took probably two hours, something he is still painfully slow at) and realizing how similarly we thought about everything. This was the part of our relationship that was inexplicable from the start, we just got each other.
The Pictionary Test
This was the ultimate test of our relationship for my family.
My older sister had dated a boy for years, and it was always painful to watch them play Pictionary together because they just did not get each other. When she started dating the man she would later marry, our family joked we would not know if he was right for her when they played Pictionary together, and sure enough, they had been a good team.
For Tharin and I, it was like we shared a brain.
A week later, Tharin and I met for supper at my parent's house, the three of them went off to talk, and he was given permission to date me. That night, we had a very long talk about some of the things we felt we needed to share with each other before we took our relationship further, and then we made it official.
Three years into our marriage, I am so grateful that Tharin and I got married when we did, that he gets to be the guy I am a team with. He is such a good man, as I talked about in my previous post, and I finally understand why God was so forceful with me when it felt like the timing was wrong.
He knew, so much more than I ever could, that the best was yet to come.
There we have it, the first part of my story with Tharin.
To read more about our marriage, check out this post on What I think about Getting Married Young | this post for Five of the Reasons I Love my Husband.
And if you are interested in following along in our daily adventures, follow us on Instagram where I post daily.
God bless,
Olivia Fischer
THIS IS SO CUTE. You guys are an inspiration :)
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