As one of my Xanga friends has suggested that I post our story on here, I decided to follow through with her advice.  Most everyone knows this stroy by now, but for those of you who don't I hope you enjoy!

Once upon a time, a girl sent a request for pen pals to Countryside Magazine.  She wanted to get in contact with other girls who shared her interests and beliefs, and she wanted to hear from people all around the country.  But what she did not want was to write to a guy.  The first letter she got was from a young girl named Chris Smith in Colorado. Chris was 17, and had a lot of animals and her own dog and was really into guns and politics and blonde jokes.  But by the second or third letter, she realized there was no way Chris Smith was a girl.  Slightly frantic and highly offended, she found the copy of Countryside and realized with dismay that the editors had left out the sentence requesting only girls to reply.  She wanted to stop writing, but her mother told her that would be rude, and the correspondence continued.

            That young girl was me, at the time Sarah Kocher.  I found Chris's humor fun, and I was kind of glad Mother made me continue writing.  We wrote about a lot of stuff, from our dogs to guns to property rights. We traded stories about our family, and eventually we began e-mailing each other.

            I was home schooled, from a family of ten, and really into animals.  He was home schooled, one of five, and he had a lot of animals.  Yet his love for FarCry and his crazy humor finally enabled him and my brother Judah to begin talking.  Gradually our correspondence dwindled.

            In the fall of 2004 we had just began e-mailing each other again when I went down to my Aunt's house in West Virginia, and began using my cousin's IM to talk to Chris.  For a week or more, we spent a few hours each day talking on the computer. My cousins had decided this guy was perfect for me and sent him pictures. So one November evening, he got on the Internet, found my phone number, and called.

            It was Sunday when he called, and the whole family was gathered around the table.  Mother answered the phone, and her smile was so telling that most of us knew right away it had to be a guy calling for me.  We talked for a little while, or at least stayed on the phone with each other until Daddy called me back to finish my supper. Thankfully I had a cell phone that was free on Sundays, and I told him I would call him again later.

            And call him I did.  We didn't really talk because neither one of us had anything to say, but neither one of us wanted to hang up either.  We mostly traded jokes and stories about our animals. 

The next time I heard from him was on a Friday night, when I was babysitting overnight. This was an ideal situation, and I talked until almost 2:00 in the morning.  By that time we were much more at ease with each other, and it wasn’t long before we were talking to each other every night.  I would call him after 9:00, as my cell phone had free nights.

            We talked about everything: politics, guns, and our plans for the future.  Religion was a favorite topic, as were crazy tidbits of info we would pick up throughout the day.  And gradually our talk got more serious and close: things that we had been learning about, things God was impressing upon us, reasons for life, purposes here. We covered it all.       

I wasn’t extremely worried when my parents got the phone bill for that month, as all of our talking was done on free nights.  But it still didn’t take long for Daddy to notice the large number of minutes on my phone, and the thundering “Sarah Elisabeth!” could be heard through the house.  “7000 minutes in one month!”  I was told that if the minutes weren’t lower next month I would be severely limited in the amount of time I was allowed to talk to Chris.

Still, I was having a great time. Finally, there was some one in my life who I would never, ever have to worry about seeing, because he was a guy and he lived on the other side of the country and I had never traveled further than Tennessee in my whole life.  So I could tell him things that I wouldn’t tell anyone else because he was “safe”  He was one of the best friends ever, but it did worry me that I quickly lost my ability to hide things from him.  If something was bothering me he always knew and was like a bloodhound until he figured out what was wrong. (He’s still that way.)

            And then one day, he was kind of upset, but he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong.  I kept pestering, and finally he told me he was lost and had no clue what to do, because he was falling for his best friend and she lived on the other side of the country.

            Needless to say, I was shocked.  For a few minutes I did not say a word, and then I said, or more like wailed, “It’s not my fault!!!!!  I promise it isn’t.”  And then I tried to forget about it.  Not the most encouraging reaction for Chris.  But it was only a few nights later when our hour ran out and I needed to go.  He kept coming up with the most insane stuff to keep me on the line, and was acting really weird.  Then right at the last minute he blurted out “love ya’ bye” and hung up.  Once again, I was shocked.  How in the world could he love me?  He had never even met me; I had no idea what he looked like.  It was really kind of funny, I told myself as I sat there and shook my head in amusement. “He is so crazy.  I just love that kid.”

            WHAT DID I JUST SAY?  I think I said it out loud, I’m not sure. But it was a real moment of revelation for me. I know I did a lot of praying that night.  The next day I talked to Mother, and told her I thought we were moving beyond friendship. We started praying together every night, as Chris said he wanted us to look to God from the beginning.  As we grew closer, he would send me boxes with chocolates and little things like a laser pointer (which I had wanted for a long, long time.)   But aside from his faith, the trait that most endeared him too me was his deep love and respect for his Mother.

            In June of 2005 he came out East.  It was weird , meeting someone who you already loved but were seeing for the first time in your life.  If he had been anything less than he had seemed on the phone, I would have reconsidered, but he was so much more.  He got along great with my family, and my parents really came to like him in a very short amount of time.  By the end of ten days together, it was decided that I would fly back with him to Colorado so that I could meet his family.  The day before we left, we talked to Mommy and Daddy about getting married.  They told us to hold off until September before we were officially engaged, but they didn’t have a problem with it and we could be married in May.

            I had fun at the Smith house, going to work with him, helping his Mom, playing with the animals, and I really, really cried on my way home.  Chris was so good for me, he made me focus on God as I never had before, and just being close to him made me want to be closer to God, to love God more. 

            I hadn’t been home for a week before he called me up and told me that his Mother, who had left on a road trip a few days before I came home, wasn’t coming back..  Needless to say, he was a mess.  That night I asked mother if I could marry him earlier than planned. As upset and hurt as he was, I didn’t think I could survive a winter with him on the other side of the country. She said to give his Mom a few weeks to come home, and if she didn’t then she would talk to Daddy about it.

            It was almost at the end of August before Daddy gave his decision, and he agreed to let us get married on October 8^th.  The plans didn’t take long; I’d known what kind of a wedding I wanted since I was little, and everything fell into place so well.  He mailed the ring out to me, and then came out a week before the wedding to help settle last minute plans.  God worked everything out, from the food, which was supplied by friends, to the dress, which I found on a clearance sale.  We realized later that the wedding date, October 8^th of 2005, was exactly 2 years from the postmark on the first letter he sent me: October 8^th, 2003.

            So I’m in Colorado now, and I’m so thankful Daddy and Mommy let me get married early.  Winters here can be lonely, but with the two of us it’s great because we can just talk and get to know all the little things about each other we never fully knew. I not only have a husband now, but by the end of July I ought to be a mother. So now I want to thank Countryside for the wonderful part they played in bringing my real life miracle to pass.