From the Mountains to the Sea

I’ve written of him before. The man who fell from heaven, as it were. The man with the beard, with ripped and torn jeans and wind-wild hair. The man with eyes as blue and as beautiful as the sea. 

I felt his coming into my life before he actually did. I don’t know how I felt it but I did. As the days went on, the feeling got stronger. The Italian Leo. The one who’s eyes I had seen in my mind as a little girl. 

March 9, 2017. I always ran on the beach of Assateague State Park in the morning. The morning was mine. Not a soul usually except the birds and the wild ponies. Just me - wind in my hair, music in my earbuds - and the ocean. But that day - March 9 - I decided and said clearly in my mind: “Today I will run at 3:00.” And so, God heard it, too. 

I felt it again. His closeness. Who was this person? I knew it was a man that was coming, and that he was significant. I didn’t think he would be more than a friend. I wasn’t expecting anything more as the timing - to me - wasn’t quite right. 

The beach was fuller that day. People. It was warm, so warm I had worn short sleeves. Music played in my ears as I started my run. Passing people on the beach as I headed toward “G”. One by one I passed them, until I saw him. “I’m only human...” sang the song in my ears. 

Ripped and torn jeans. Long beard. Long wind-wild hair. And sunglasses - sunglasses I would later find would hide eyes as blue as the sea. Maybe... I would be open to everyone God had in my path. “Hi,” I said as I ran past him. He greeted me the same with a slight smile. 

I got to my end point and turned around to run back. I approached his back and felt anxiety creep up in me. Still, I would speak, I thought. As I passed him, I said, “It’s a great day, isn’t it?” He smiled again that half smile. “Yeah,” he nodded. 

I ran to my car and decided. If I killed time, maybe he would come up to me. Was this the person I was supposed to meet? I didn’t know but I grabbed my phone from my car and went back to the beach. I took a picture of the water (the one above), and of myself as I saw him start to walk to me. 

“Hi,” he said as he approached me and stuck out his hand. “I’m Jason.” Within 5 minutes of meeting I had learned he was playing hooky from work, and he had learned that I was going through a divorce, had two children, and most likely would be moving back to Virginia. If ever there was a time for him to walk back to his car, it was then. How all of that came out within that short time I will never know.  But what he said instead I will never forget. “Can I walk with you?” It wasn’t his asking me to walk with him, but his asking to walk with me. Somehow that stuck out to me. To walk with me. On my journey. On the path I was already on. Now two years later, those words still echo in me. Because it was what this gentle-hearted man ended up doing. Walking with a girl who ended up having to walk through fire, turning his own life upside down so that he could be with her. 

We walked and talked for two hours on the beach that day. We were of the few left on the beach’s edge. As we headed back, we startled as we felt a sharp change in the air. As if the wind switched channels, cold air rushed in off the water. We both felt it immediately, and remarked how we had never felt anything like that before. 

And that was a fitting statement for what was to come. 

Miracles. I cannot count them all. From the ease of how we were together to the lightening shows all around us on June 23, 2017, to many more. I have written many of them down. I hope I have the chance to share our love story - I am still amazed by it. And I amazingly saw much of it in my mind before it happened. Even to this very day. 

Today I marry him, the man I met two years ago to the day. We are not by the water now, although I hope we will be again. But for now, instead, we are on a mountain. And today we will marry in our little cabin in the woods. 

And as he wrote to me on Valentine’s Day, I echo back to him. “From the mountains to the sea - I love you.”