Love Story - Part Tres

Before I jump in today I want to make a little disclaimer.
I am (what my loving mother would call) brutally honest.
Some people love that about me, while I'm sure others are not so thrilled with this trait.
I do want to be honest about all the details in this story because they are important.
And they are important because it is so obvious that God and only God could have brought Tim and I together in this unconventional way.
That is what I want my children and my children's children to see in this story.
God is always working and His plan always prevails.
Also, I don't ever want to paint a negative picture of my ex-boyfriend.
He was (and I assume still is) a wonderful guy.
He was respectful and faithful and loved Jesus.
God just didn't plan for us to be together - plain and simple.
That is my point in including him in this story.
Now, back to the story.
I walked around the corner to see who my mom was talking so sweetly to, and lo and behold it was Tim.
Um, he left me off like 8 hours earlier, and he was already back at my house.
Can we say eager beaver?

I walked him out to our back deck to talk while my mom was giving me signals behind his back to ask if I wanted to brush my teeth or hair first.
God Bless my mother, always worried about (or embarrassed by) her kin.
When we got to the deck he told me that he didn't have my phone number, so he had to come back to get it.
Oh isn't that sweet?
And a little overboard considering we worked together, and he could have gotten it there?
But being the smitten woman that I was, I gave it to him before bidding him goodbye to begin planning the evening birthday dinner with family and boyfriend on break.
The dinner was not pleasant, but it happened.  And we all lived through it.
After that I didn't see my boyfriend for two weeks.
I basically spent every day with Tim.
Valentine's Day fell within those two weeks, and both Tim and my on-break boyfriend sent me roses to my classroom.
To say the students in my classes were confused would be a major understatement.
"Uh, Miss Tragos (maiden name) why are two boys sending you flowers?"
"Miss Tragos, I thought you only had one boyfriend?"
"Why is Mr. Bettelli's name on one of the cards?"
Miss Tragos:  "None of your business guys.  Now who can diagram this extra long sentence?"
Honesty is always the best policy.
Unless you can redirect - then that works even better.  With toddlers and high schoolers alike.
I think I may have given my high school students a little too much credit in an earlier portion of the story because . . . 
We tried really, really hard to keep the budding relationship a secret.
It was obvious that we were friends because we would sit together at lunch, and when he walked by my classroom to peek in I would smile, instead of roll my eyes and sigh which was the norm a few short months before.
We had a sweet Biology teacher at the school at the time.
He was an older man (not sure his exact age, but he had little to no hair and what was there was white).
He was married.
Grown children.
He seemed to be pretty strict from what the students communicated to me.
I remember having a student around this time ask me if I could start hanging out with said Biology teacher because Mr. Bettelli had been so much nicer since I started hanging out with him.
#awkward
#sonotthesamething
Again, sometimes 14 year olds just aren't as quick on the uptake.

 
 After two weeks of some QT with Tim I knew.
I knew I had to officially break up with my boyfriend.
I knew Tim was it.
I don't necessarily think that is how it always works.
People can take time to know and that doesn't mean that it isn't right.
But for us two weeks was enough time.

The next and final portion of the story will be our engagement.
Which was only 2.5 months later.
And if you missed parts 1 & 2, you can catch up here and here.