The Same Page
My chick flick… the thing I’ve dreamed about my whole life… and it is finally happening…
So, my whole life people have told me “When you stop looking for it, it will happen.” WOW. I always knew in the back of my mind they were on to something but felt it was my duty to actively seek. For a little over 24 ½ years, not counting the years that I was too young to care, that’s what I did – searched for my one true love. That’s all I knew how to do. Of course I prayed that the Lord’s will be done, and knew that I needed to leave it totally to Him, and at moments in my life I thought I really did. Ha, I was just fooling myself. We all know that saying it, or even thinking it, doesn’t mean that we honestly and faithfully do it.
The first words of Michael Buble’s song “Haven’t Met You Yet” says ‘I'm not surprised, not everything lasts, I've broken my heart so many times, I stopped keeping track, Talk myself in, I talk myself out, I get all worked up, then I let myself down’, which basically describes my life up until August, 2010. I always seemed to break my own heart into a million pieces. No guy necessary. I actually remember hearing this song back in July 2010 and thinking “WOW, how does Buble know so much about my life?! This song was definitely written for me to hear.”
So, the summer of 2010 was busy, extremely busy. I don’t think there was one boring day between weddings, family reunion, and church meetings. I went to all my typical meetings and events, Singing School, Family Reunion, Camp Meeting, Primitive Association, and a few other ones thrown in there. Then, out of the ordinary – straight out of the blue - James, Heather, and I decided to go to the Oak Hill Annual Meeting second weekend in August. Other than to support our good friends Eric and Joyce, I’m not sure what exactly made us go, but we did.
When we got to Oak Hill, I said a few awkward hellos to some people I don’t know and went into the church to pick a bench where we could sit for service. Heather and I head toward the kitchen because it was almost time for supper and I see him. Walking toward me: a friendly face! He is no stranger – he’s someone I’ve known my whole life! In fact, our families have known each other before we even existed. It was so nice and comforting to see someone we knew in the sea of unknown people. He sat with us at dinner and during service and by the end of the night we agreed it was going to be a memorable evening. As we were saying goodbye I informed him that I could not come the next day but I wanted to hear how things were going. Lucky for me, because he asked for my phone number so he could text me the next day and keep me informed about how the services went.
The whole next day while he was at church and I was at home, he would periodically text me about the happenings that went on during services and in between. That evening, after a full day of “chatting”, I invited him to come to Littlevine on Sunday. When he decided to come to Littlevine, I got this little fluttery feeling in my stomach, and was beyond happy that he chose to come worship with us at Littlevine.
The next morning, we both get to Littlevine within minutes of each other. As I drove up and got out of my car he was getting out of his car, which happens to be the same car! Little did we know that this is just one of the things we have in common. Everyone at Littlevine was excited to have a visitor and “David Strayhorn” being the visitor was just an added bonus. Since we had been texting the day before I felt it was my duty to ask him to sit on our bench. He did sit with us but was sitting as far away as he could without falling into the aisle. I thought it rather cute, actually, but found myself wishing he would scoot a little closer. Crazy – yes, I know!
During lunch, he chatted with the men, which is normal. Usually at church the men eat together and the women eat together. Nearing the end of lunch, I realized that I was a little sad that I didn’t get to talk to my friend as much as I wanted. So, when I heard James invite him to go over to their house on his way home, I basically invited myself to tag along on my way back to Copperas Cove. Again, I did not know why I wanted to go out of my way to spend time with this guy, whom I’ve known my whole life and never had these feelings happen before, but I did. So, off to James’ and Heather’s we went. Our visit at James and Heather’s was nice, easy, pleasant, and natural. We taught David how to play 42, which he caught on really fast. Hours later, we all realized that the afternoon was slipping away and he would get back to Snyder very late, so James and Heather suggested that he stay overnight and head home in the morning. Now, while he was deciding, which really didn’t take that long for him to do, I was sitting there wishing he would choose to stay so I could see him more. Ha, looking back on his situation of having to choose to stay or head home and how quick he decided really surprises me, because I have since discovered that he can be rather indecisive. So, I’m glad he chose to stay. It gave me more time. To do what? I didn’t know, but I knew that I wanted him to.
So, after choosing to stay, he went outside and called his parents to inform them that he spontaneously decided to stay in Leander for the night and drive back in the morning. They told him he had to hug us and send their love. He came back in the door and the first thing he did was hug the three of us. It was so stinking cute and I definitely didn’t care because I always enjoyed hugging him. A while back, actually, I thought if there was an award for “Best Hugger” he would win. So, he was staying and I was relieved. We visited some more, then discussed going to dinner, so we called Mom and Dad and met them at Olive Garden. When they got out of the car, they realized there was one addition to our little group. Of course, they’ve known David’s family since before he was born, but his being there at that moment was a little unexpected. Ha – shocking! A pleasant shock, but a shock nonetheless – which, of course only last a moment – and the dinner at Olive Garden was great. Now, I don’t think it showed on the outside, but inside my head I was totally thinking about how crazy it would be if he wasn’t just a visitor in our family outings.
Over the three days of that weekend, I experienced a lot of strange thoughts. I didn’t think anything would ever come out of it and, actually, I wasn’t looking for anything to come out of it. I did know that I found myself thinking about David, at least in a ‘want to become good friends with this guy’ way. So, I thought it was wonderful that we had a good starting weekend for what was heading to be a great friendship.
That Sunday, after visiting some more at James’ and Heather’s house, I had to head back to Copperas Cove so I could work in my classroom the next day. Leaving was difficult, mainly because I don’t like to leave a good ‘party’ to go back to reality. Plus, the day was so good, it was sad for me to have to be the one to leave. But that’s life, so I went on my way, back to Copperas Cove. At that time, I had absolutely no clue that weekend was THE weekend that would change my life forever.
The next morning, I slept in and was going to go up to my school to try and get some things organized and put away for the school to start in a few weeks. Before my alarm was to go off, I received a text. I didn’t know who would text me on a Monday morning, so it really shocked me that the text was from David Strayhorn! Now, it shouldn’t have shocked me, because I did give him my number on Friday, and we texted all day Saturday, and we spent Sunday hanging out at James’ and Heather’s house, but it surprised me just the same. Before I read it, I must admit that my heart was beating faster from the excitement of David being the one who sent me that text that Monday morning. That happiness quickly vanished when I read the text. Knowing that I am close to the Winchester family, who also happens to be his family, he informed me that his cousin, Julie Winchester, gave birth to Baby Brian early that Monday morning and due to complications, Baby Brian was in ICU. The rest of the day, he updated me on how Brian was doing and the family. My heart was in dismay. Throughout that week, we talked a lot about church and the graciousness of our Lord in many different situations throughout our lives.
By the end of that week, I needed church more than I ever needed it before. Therefore, it was a wonderful blessing that the Rich Mountain Association was starting that very Thursday. During the week, about Wednesday, I had to make a difficult decision. Baby Brian had gone to be with the Lord on Tuesday, August 10, and his funeral was going to be on Saturday. Since the Winchester family is so dear to my heart, I felt I should be there for the funeral of this sweet child of God. On the other hand, my heart needed to be at church. Just a few days into talking with David, I already felt that I desired his input in my decision making. His thoughts already meant a lot to me. It ended up that I went to Rich Mountain and prayed the whole way and throughout the meeting that the Lord would send his blessings down to me and fill me up spiritually. At Rich Mountain, the blessings were “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think”. Since I was in Arkansas, David kept me updated on how things were going in Oklahoma. It’s amazing to me how my heart can be in several different places at one given time, because though I was in Arkansas that weekend, I felt I was in Oklahoma too. Part of that reason is because David was nice enough to me to text me throughout the weekend. Along with him telling me about the weekend happenings in Oklahoma, we would discuss the services at Rich Mountain. It was here that I began not only following along in my Bible, but writing down the minister’s text because I knew that David would ask me and I couldn’t let myself forget. I didn’t want to fail “the test”. (Ha) So, the weekend came and went. In such a short time, I had already become use to hearing from him and getting his thoughts on certain things pertaining to the church and our doctrine, and on the way home from Arkansas, James and I began discussing Canaan, so I texted David to get his thoughts on the subject of Canaan. James asked me who I was texting, and I admitted it was David. James then asked if we had been talking a lot. I kind of sluffed that question off to avoid the “brother lecture”, but in my mind I was exclaiming “YES - a lot actually!”
Well, as the weeks went on, our texting time increased beyond what I ever thought I would spend on texting. I quickly realized that I was going to exceed my text limit of 250 and was prepared for it. Or, so I thought! When I saw the bill that month, which was not even a full month of texting him, my texts were somewhere around 870 or so. Luckily, it wasn’t a full month and my bill was only $57 over the normal rate. After paying my phone bill that month, I went to Verizon Wireless the next day and signed up for unlimited text messages. Now, walking out of that store I thought to myself “WHY did I just increase my text messages… just because DAVID is texting me? This is strange…But better to have unlimited texts just in case we keep talking.” Ha, again I had absolutely no clue that we would have over three thousand text messages in one single month.
Eventually, our constant stream of text messages turned into phone calls every couple of days. At first, he called me when he wanted to tell me a story or something too long to text. As time went by, the phone calls became more frequent. I never thought that I, Katie Moseley, would spend hours talking on the phone. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a phone talker. So, when we started talking more and more on the phone, and several hours at a time, thoughts began running through my head about where this could possibly be going. And when I wasn’t texting or talking to David, mom and Heather were constantly asking me who in the world I could be spending so much time talking to. Part of me wanted to tell them but the other part of me knew it wasn’t the time, especially since I didn’t even know what was happening. So, for a while I kept it to myself, but soon I couldn’t keep ignoring their questions, so I broke down and told mom and Heather that I had been talking to David since August.
So, things moved forward, talking for hours a day, we become really great friends. The more I talked to David, the more I felt I needed to talk to him. He became the person I wanted to tell everything to. I wanted him to know the good and bad things that happened during my day and I wanted to know how his day went. I couldn’t have asked for the Lord to send me a better friend. He is my best friend. Except for my family, he is the one who knows me the best.
As our story continues to write itself, I look forward to all it has entailed for us. Our story is an unexpected blessing, and I trust it is the Lord that sent this wonderful man into my life. I do not know the full purpose that the Lord has for David and me, but knowing there is a purpose is a comforting thought. One thing I know for sure is our journey together will not be dull… whatsoever.
It’s so nice to know that we’re always on the same page, but the book hasn’t been written yet - - - What a blessing!
My chick flick… the thing I’ve dreamed about my whole life… and it is finally happening…
So, my whole life people have told me “When you stop looking for it, it will happen.” WOW. I always knew in the back of my mind they were on to something but felt it was my duty to actively seek. For a little over 24 ½ years, not counting the years that I was too young to care, that’s what I did – searched for my one true love. That’s all I knew how to do. Of course I prayed that the Lord’s will be done, and knew that I needed to leave it totally to Him, and at moments in my life I thought I really did. Ha, I was just fooling myself. We all know that saying it, or even thinking it, doesn’t mean that we honestly and faithfully do it.
The first words of Michael Buble’s song “Haven’t Met You Yet” says ‘I'm not surprised, not everything lasts, I've broken my heart so many times, I stopped keeping track, Talk myself in, I talk myself out, I get all worked up, then I let myself down’, which basically describes my life up until August, 2010. I always seemed to break my own heart into a million pieces. No guy necessary. I actually remember hearing this song back in July 2010 and thinking “WOW, how does Buble know so much about my life?! This song was definitely written for me to hear.”
So, the summer of 2010 was busy, extremely busy. I don’t think there was one boring day between weddings, family reunion, and church meetings. I went to all my typical meetings and events, Singing School, Family Reunion, Camp Meeting, Primitive Association, and a few other ones thrown in there. Then, out of the ordinary – straight out of the blue - James, Heather, and I decided to go to the Oak Hill Annual Meeting second weekend in August. Other than to support our good friends Eric and Joyce, I’m not sure what exactly made us go, but we did.
When we got to Oak Hill, I said a few awkward hellos to some people I don’t know and went into the church to pick a bench where we could sit for service. Heather and I head toward the kitchen because it was almost time for supper and I see him. Walking toward me: a friendly face! He is no stranger – he’s someone I’ve known my whole life! In fact, our families have known each other before we even existed. It was so nice and comforting to see someone we knew in the sea of unknown people. He sat with us at dinner and during service and by the end of the night we agreed it was going to be a memorable evening. As we were saying goodbye I informed him that I could not come the next day but I wanted to hear how things were going. Lucky for me, because he asked for my phone number so he could text me the next day and keep me informed about how the services went.
The whole next day while he was at church and I was at home, he would periodically text me about the happenings that went on during services and in between. That evening, after a full day of “chatting”, I invited him to come to Littlevine on Sunday. When he decided to come to Littlevine, I got this little fluttery feeling in my stomach, and was beyond happy that he chose to come worship with us at Littlevine.
The next morning, we both get to Littlevine within minutes of each other. As I drove up and got out of my car he was getting out of his car, which happens to be the same car! Little did we know that this is just one of the things we have in common. Everyone at Littlevine was excited to have a visitor and “David Strayhorn” being the visitor was just an added bonus. Since we had been texting the day before I felt it was my duty to ask him to sit on our bench. He did sit with us but was sitting as far away as he could without falling into the aisle. I thought it rather cute, actually, but found myself wishing he would scoot a little closer. Crazy – yes, I know!
During lunch, he chatted with the men, which is normal. Usually at church the men eat together and the women eat together. Nearing the end of lunch, I realized that I was a little sad that I didn’t get to talk to my friend as much as I wanted. So, when I heard James invite him to go over to their house on his way home, I basically invited myself to tag along on my way back to Copperas Cove. Again, I did not know why I wanted to go out of my way to spend time with this guy, whom I’ve known my whole life and never had these feelings happen before, but I did. So, off to James’ and Heather’s we went. Our visit at James and Heather’s was nice, easy, pleasant, and natural. We taught David how to play 42, which he caught on really fast. Hours later, we all realized that the afternoon was slipping away and he would get back to Snyder very late, so James and Heather suggested that he stay overnight and head home in the morning. Now, while he was deciding, which really didn’t take that long for him to do, I was sitting there wishing he would choose to stay so I could see him more. Ha, looking back on his situation of having to choose to stay or head home and how quick he decided really surprises me, because I have since discovered that he can be rather indecisive. So, I’m glad he chose to stay. It gave me more time. To do what? I didn’t know, but I knew that I wanted him to.
So, after choosing to stay, he went outside and called his parents to inform them that he spontaneously decided to stay in Leander for the night and drive back in the morning. They told him he had to hug us and send their love. He came back in the door and the first thing he did was hug the three of us. It was so stinking cute and I definitely didn’t care because I always enjoyed hugging him. A while back, actually, I thought if there was an award for “Best Hugger” he would win. So, he was staying and I was relieved. We visited some more, then discussed going to dinner, so we called Mom and Dad and met them at Olive Garden. When they got out of the car, they realized there was one addition to our little group. Of course, they’ve known David’s family since before he was born, but his being there at that moment was a little unexpected. Ha – shocking! A pleasant shock, but a shock nonetheless – which, of course only last a moment – and the dinner at Olive Garden was great. Now, I don’t think it showed on the outside, but inside my head I was totally thinking about how crazy it would be if he wasn’t just a visitor in our family outings.
Over the three days of that weekend, I experienced a lot of strange thoughts. I didn’t think anything would ever come out of it and, actually, I wasn’t looking for anything to come out of it. I did know that I found myself thinking about David, at least in a ‘want to become good friends with this guy’ way. So, I thought it was wonderful that we had a good starting weekend for what was heading to be a great friendship.
That Sunday, after visiting some more at James’ and Heather’s house, I had to head back to Copperas Cove so I could work in my classroom the next day. Leaving was difficult, mainly because I don’t like to leave a good ‘party’ to go back to reality. Plus, the day was so good, it was sad for me to have to be the one to leave. But that’s life, so I went on my way, back to Copperas Cove. At that time, I had absolutely no clue that weekend was THE weekend that would change my life forever.
The next morning, I slept in and was going to go up to my school to try and get some things organized and put away for the school to start in a few weeks. Before my alarm was to go off, I received a text. I didn’t know who would text me on a Monday morning, so it really shocked me that the text was from David Strayhorn! Now, it shouldn’t have shocked me, because I did give him my number on Friday, and we texted all day Saturday, and we spent Sunday hanging out at James’ and Heather’s house, but it surprised me just the same. Before I read it, I must admit that my heart was beating faster from the excitement of David being the one who sent me that text that Monday morning. That happiness quickly vanished when I read the text. Knowing that I am close to the Winchester family, who also happens to be his family, he informed me that his cousin, Julie Winchester, gave birth to Baby Brian early that Monday morning and due to complications, Baby Brian was in ICU. The rest of the day, he updated me on how Brian was doing and the family. My heart was in dismay. Throughout that week, we talked a lot about church and the graciousness of our Lord in many different situations throughout our lives.
By the end of that week, I needed church more than I ever needed it before. Therefore, it was a wonderful blessing that the Rich Mountain Association was starting that very Thursday. During the week, about Wednesday, I had to make a difficult decision. Baby Brian had gone to be with the Lord on Tuesday, August 10, and his funeral was going to be on Saturday. Since the Winchester family is so dear to my heart, I felt I should be there for the funeral of this sweet child of God. On the other hand, my heart needed to be at church. Just a few days into talking with David, I already felt that I desired his input in my decision making. His thoughts already meant a lot to me. It ended up that I went to Rich Mountain and prayed the whole way and throughout the meeting that the Lord would send his blessings down to me and fill me up spiritually. At Rich Mountain, the blessings were “exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think”. Since I was in Arkansas, David kept me updated on how things were going in Oklahoma. It’s amazing to me how my heart can be in several different places at one given time, because though I was in Arkansas that weekend, I felt I was in Oklahoma too. Part of that reason is because David was nice enough to me to text me throughout the weekend. Along with him telling me about the weekend happenings in Oklahoma, we would discuss the services at Rich Mountain. It was here that I began not only following along in my Bible, but writing down the minister’s text because I knew that David would ask me and I couldn’t let myself forget. I didn’t want to fail “the test”. (Ha) So, the weekend came and went. In such a short time, I had already become use to hearing from him and getting his thoughts on certain things pertaining to the church and our doctrine, and on the way home from Arkansas, James and I began discussing Canaan, so I texted David to get his thoughts on the subject of Canaan. James asked me who I was texting, and I admitted it was David. James then asked if we had been talking a lot. I kind of sluffed that question off to avoid the “brother lecture”, but in my mind I was exclaiming “YES - a lot actually!”
Well, as the weeks went on, our texting time increased beyond what I ever thought I would spend on texting. I quickly realized that I was going to exceed my text limit of 250 and was prepared for it. Or, so I thought! When I saw the bill that month, which was not even a full month of texting him, my texts were somewhere around 870 or so. Luckily, it wasn’t a full month and my bill was only $57 over the normal rate. After paying my phone bill that month, I went to Verizon Wireless the next day and signed up for unlimited text messages. Now, walking out of that store I thought to myself “WHY did I just increase my text messages… just because DAVID is texting me? This is strange…But better to have unlimited texts just in case we keep talking.” Ha, again I had absolutely no clue that we would have over three thousand text messages in one single month.
Eventually, our constant stream of text messages turned into phone calls every couple of days. At first, he called me when he wanted to tell me a story or something too long to text. As time went by, the phone calls became more frequent. I never thought that I, Katie Moseley, would spend hours talking on the phone. Anyone who knows me knows I am not a phone talker. So, when we started talking more and more on the phone, and several hours at a time, thoughts began running through my head about where this could possibly be going. And when I wasn’t texting or talking to David, mom and Heather were constantly asking me who in the world I could be spending so much time talking to. Part of me wanted to tell them but the other part of me knew it wasn’t the time, especially since I didn’t even know what was happening. So, for a while I kept it to myself, but soon I couldn’t keep ignoring their questions, so I broke down and told mom and Heather that I had been talking to David since August.
So, things moved forward, talking for hours a day, we become really great friends. The more I talked to David, the more I felt I needed to talk to him. He became the person I wanted to tell everything to. I wanted him to know the good and bad things that happened during my day and I wanted to know how his day went. I couldn’t have asked for the Lord to send me a better friend. He is my best friend. Except for my family, he is the one who knows me the best.
As our story continues to write itself, I look forward to all it has entailed for us. Our story is an unexpected blessing, and I trust it is the Lord that sent this wonderful man into my life. I do not know the full purpose that the Lord has for David and me, but knowing there is a purpose is a comforting thought. One thing I know for sure is our journey together will not be dull… whatsoever.
It’s so nice to know that we’re always on the same page, but the book hasn’t been written yet - - - What a blessing!
