How I Met Your Father

This week was the series finale of How I Met Your Mother. I did not watch this show until this past summer when we finally got Netflix and I mostly stayed home with a newborn. It did not take long for me to fall in love with this show. Why I never watched it prior to that, I have no idea. It is hilarious and sweet and reminded me a lot of FRIENDS except that it is told in flashbacks which is pretty cool.

My husband and I watched it after the baby went to bed and I am still on the fence a bit about the ending. It seemed slightly forced with all that crammed into one show and then the death of the Mother who I felt like I barely got to know irritated me...but when Ted held up that blue French horn, I felt it was a great way to close it out.

This got me thinking about our story...Cory and I do not have any blue French horns or yellow umbrellas, but our story is a pretty damn good one. (At least to me) When you ask a couple how they met you usually hear "In college" or "at a bar" or "through a friend". Not so with us.

We usually give people the short version:
"How did you meet?"
"Online"
Then we glance at each other and smile because we both know that there is so much more to it than that.

I won't go into the whole story, but what I can tell you is that I am a lot like Ted. I always believed I would meet the perfect man and I would know it when I did. When I got married the first time, I thought it was right because we were friends first, best friends, but there was always something lacking. I wouldn't admit it back then but I found it hard to believe that the search was over on our wedding day back in 2006. I can tell you this: VERY few people meet their soul mate at 19 years old. I didn't know who I was as a person back then. I had muddled through life doing what I was told, daydreaming and making art. I stumbled into a relationship, it worked for awhile, and then it stopped working. By the time I was 25 years old I was starting over completely from scratch, the only saving graces in my life being my steady job, my parents, and a person I had met and gotten to know through an online game.

If you had told me that I would have met my soul mate through an online game, I would never have believed you.

But I did.

You know that saying,  "when you meet the one you'll know"? Being a dreamer, I always believed that. I can tell you I know for certain that it is true-when you meet them, you will know.

On a very cold winter day, from the first moment I laid eyes on him, I knew.

We talk about this moment often and it is very special to both of us. On the day we met in person for the first time, we got out of our cars and looked at each other. He smiled, said my name and raised his arms to hug me. What happened next I could not have planned in a million years: the rest of the world became a blur, like the bokeh effect in photography, this man came into extremely sharp focus, everything around him a blur. A smile spread across my face, the biggest smile I had had in over a year, and I took off at run. When I got close enough, I jumped...and he caught me and spun in a circle, just like a movie.

Both of us mentioned this in our wedding vows four years later.

As Ted said in the finale-"At times it was a long, difficult road. But I'm glad it was long and difficult because if I hadn't gone through hell to get there the lesson might not have been as clear."

I can tell you that Cory and I understand those words better than most people. We've lived them. Yes it was a long and difficult road, but in the end, it lead me to him, and that is all that matters.