Our Story

Last night Dave met up with an old buddy from high school.  Sadly, his friend is going through an extremely difficult time in his life right now. We were getting ready to go to bed and Dave was sharing a bit of their conversation with me. At one point he said that his friend expressed, “Dave, I have no idea what love is. I want what you and Corinna have.” Referring in part to the way we ended up getting married, Dave asked, “Well, what is it you saw when that happened?” His friend replied with,“ I saw two people really in love who just happened to get pregnant, and then got married.”  It sounds nice, but it is very far from the truth of what actually took place 7 years ago. This is also not the first time I have heard of someone viewing our situation in a romanticized light. Dave took a few minutes to explain to his friend that that is not quite what happened, and shared some of our story with him, to much of his surprise. In the end however, it was an encouragement to him and he could resonate with the battle Dave had experienced during that time. I immediately thought of the verse, “And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love Him.” (Romans 8:28) We chose sin, but despite our decisions to disobey God, in the end He still had a purpose for our story. I believe it can be used to encourage others who may have or who currently are experiencing similar situations. Struck last night with the reality that many are completely unaware of our situation, I felt it was time to share some of the unknown details of the time God so graciously brought us through.

We had a very, and I mean VERY, rocky dating relationship. Without getting too long winded, we were both uprooted from the places we had grown up in and transferred to a brand new town and a brand new school, he in his junior year of high school, me in my senior year. Neither of us was too happy about the move, both of us desperately wanted to go back home and be with the friends we had left. By God’s grace, Dave and I met in September of our first year at LCA, and it was an immediate connection. He “asked me out” a month later, on October 4^{th 2003}, and the first month was perfect. We were so “in love” we were already joking about our future marriage and kids together. However, two key factors made our relationship extremely rocky: the first was the girl he left behind in Pennsylvania, and the second was our raging teenage hormones. I think I was dumped for his ex-girlfriend about 50 different times. He had had very little communication with this girl since he’d moved, but he just could not shake his feelings for her, feelings which he later admitted were fanaticized and pure infatuation. However, at the time, he truly thought he loved her. That is a whole story in itself, but we will simply leave it at the fact that I battled for his love with a girl that was several hundred miles away and completely out of the picture. It was infuriating to say the least. We would break up every couple of weeks either over that, or over the fact that we were completely powerless when it came to our physical relationship. I however, was so in love with this boy that I knew I was going to spend the rest of my life with him, and I knew marriage would solve our problem one day. He however, was not so sure of his feelings for me. He spent two and a half years telling me one week he was in love with me and couldn’t live without me, and the next week he would say he only cared for me as a friend and didn’t see us ending up together. To say both our hearts were a wreck for that time in our lives is a dramatic understatement. We tried moving on time and time again, dating other people, avoiding phone calls, etc. But we just couldn’t stay away from each other, something kept pulling us back together.

The night of June 7^th, 2006, we took our physical relationship to the next level and made the stupid decision to finally sleep together. This was our first time actually having sex…how we waited that long could only be explained by pure fear of getting pregnant, (which proved to be a valid fear after all).

The next day we met up and had a huge fight. Now, you have to understand that when Dave was upset or scared, he used to get pretty mean.  I heard things that day like, “I wish I had never met you.” “I wish you had never moved here.” “I never loved you.” Etc. etc. etc… He told me he never wanted to see me again, and even went as far as to say he was going to move to Peru just to get away from me. (In his defense, he was just heartbroken that he had disobeyed the Lord and he was scared of the consequences). I got out of that car, went home, packed up my stuff and attempted to leave. Where, I had no idea, so I headed to PA where my best friend was. I made it about half way and realized there was no way I could deal with all that was going on without my mom. She was, and is still, my best friend. So I turned around, and waited out what had to be the longest two weeks of my life, wondering if I was pregnant because of our stupidity. The day I took the tests just so happened to be Father’s Day, how funny is that? J Dave was working at Golden Corral at the time as an assistant manager. I woke up at about 6 in the morning and took the tests. Immediate positive results. I was in complete shock. First and only time having sex, and I get pregnant. Are you kidding me? I know people who have been having sex for years and never got pregnant, what the heck happened here?!We would later discover it was God that happened.

I called Dave at work and told him the news, and to my surprise, he was actually kind of excited. I know…he went from telling me he wanted nothing to do with me to being ok with the fact that he was now going to be a father. (We used to accuse Dave of being bipolar… he may be, only God knows LOL.) We then had to tell the families…not easy and not the best memory in my life. Then came the decision of what to do next. He said we needed to get married, but he was also still convinced he didn’t love me, just what every girl dreams of, right? A man to marry her out of duty, not love, while still convinced he loved a girl 300 miles away. So what did I do? Well I married him. This can also only be explained by the power of God, because I am probably the most spiteful individual I know and in any other situation I would have stuck it to him…heck, I am surprised I even told him about the pregnancy to be honest, I was that spiteful back then. (still working on that even to this day :P) So a month later, on July 6, 2006, we got married at the Justice of Peace.

I woke up on my wedding day, and wouldn’t ya know , I experienced my first bout of morning sickness. IT. WAS. AWFUL.  I felt sick the whole time I was getting ready, the whole “ceremony”, and yes, even our first night together. Not what every girl dreams of at all.

The first year of our marriage was both smoother than we expected, but also very tough in many ways. He was working 7 to 9 days straight with no break, many nights until 12 or 1 in the morning. I was waiting tables, through morning sickness and my swelling stomach, and we were slowly trying to figure  out this marriage thing. Thankfully, we had spent almost 3 years fighting so the butting heads thing and “rubbing” had already taken place.  What we now needed to learn was HOW to fight. This took several years to master. When he used to walk away, I would pull his shirt and yell at him to come back and work it out. Not the best solution for his personality. He needed time to cool off, think things over, and regroup. He would become very cynical and cruel when he was angry and say things he didn’t really mean, also not good for MY personality. When he got mean, I got spiteful. We fought ugly to say the least. I didn’t like to be confronted and I especially didn’t like to be told what to do. My slogan at the time should have been the whole, “I am woman, hear me roar!” We went through some scary times, with many broken doors with holes punched through them, broken household items, and a whole heck of a lot of yelling. I have since learned the beauty of submission…still mastering it, but God has brought me a LONG way. He has since learned how to control his anger in the moment, and I have learned to let him walk away before confronting the issue. I have also learned to keep my mouth shut and lay my spitefulness at the cross…. It is an ugly habit and a tough one to break, but it makes a world of difference in your relationship! He has spent the last 7 years trying to make up for the 3 hellish years we dated. He can say without a shadow of a doubt he loves me unconditionally now, more than ever. He can say without any hesitation that he did in fact love me then, he just didn’t know what love was. We regret our decisions to this day, though through them God brought us our beautiful baby girl and we were forced to get married, which ended up being the best thing that could have happened to us. I never got my wedding day. I never had my mom help me get ready, my dad walk me down the aisle or dance with me to Butterfly Kisses like I had always planned. I never got to walk towards the glowing man of my dreams as we made the decision to spend the rest of our lives together. I missed out on all the fun of planning my dream wedding, on having all our family and friends come together to celebrate our future together. (Our families were less than thrilled on our wedding day to say the least. ) The worst part of it was I married the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but at the time, he swore he was not in love with me. No woman wants to go into her marriage that way. It’s a heartbreaking thing to look back on, even though we have since come a very long way. We have had people ask us so many times questions like, “where’d you get married?” “Where was your honeymoon?” “How did Dave propose?” Always so awkward to answer, let me tell you! ;) I have had to deal with those puzzled looks when we get questions like, “What were the happiest days of your life?” and so many answer “My wedding day!” as one of their top 3 picks. Never once has that been an answer, or even in the top 5, and most are often caught off guard by this. (But now you know why! :) ) The best is when I get the random questions about how we ended up getting married, and some are pretty bold with it. I remember sitting in Macado’s one day, about a month or two after we got married and I had a student from LCA lean over from her table and say, “So when are you due?”  When you live in a small town, and go to a Christian school, there are no secrets, I quickly learned this. I recently had a woman I barely know say amidst a conversation about honeymoons, “so where was your honeymoon?” I replied that we didn’t have one, and she said, “OH that’s right, you were expecting someone weren’t you!” Can we say, AWKWARD!( I also have gotten a lot of criticism and hurtful comments based on my past decisions, even as far as people questioning the authenticity of my faith. Both ends of the spectrum have been tough to deal with over the years.)

Most of you know the details that have made our journey even tougher…the financial difficulties we have always faced because we didn’t finish our degrees before becoming parents, trying to finish those degrees WHILE being parents, the job transitions, etc.etc…Despite all this, I am very thankful in many ways that things happened as they did. They forced me to be humble. It reminded me that we are broken and rebellious, but that God loves us anyways. He, in His incredible mercy, allowed good to come out of our disobedience, though we deserved none of it. Only a loving Father would allow that. The relationship Dave and I have now is, and continues to grow to be, such an amazing bond built on love, sacrifice and selflessness. We are learning more every day what it means to “submit to one another in love”. (Ephesians 5:21) IT took a long time for me to let go of the hurt I had experienced early on and to truly forgive him. Many times I cruelly used the past against him in the present, when he had already sought my forgiveness. I can say without a doubt now that I have forgiven him, and he has forgiven me, and we are above all forgive by our Creator. We experienced a lot of unnecessary hurt, anger, and pain because of our choice to live outside of God’s will, and though He brought us through it, it was not what some believe to have been an easy journey. And it will continue to be difficult.


I do have to say, that though I did not get my proposal in the beginning, it did come eventually. Last year, my sweet husband planned a weekend get-away for us.  On the first night, upon returning to our hotel, he had me wait in the car while he went up to “prepare something”.  When he called me up, I walked in to a room full of candles and rose petals. He got on his knees, read me the most incredible letter I will ever read, and pulled out a diamond engagement ring that he had privately saved up for for over a year. (money which I recently found out his friends had told him to spend on a gun instead… thanks guys! Lol) He then asked me to be his wife. Of course I had no choice, I already was and we had four kids together… juuuust kidding. :) It was one of the most beautiful moments in my life, and am so blessed to be his wife. So this is the true story of how we came to be married. Not the smooth, Hollywood transition so many thought. It came with many tears, lots of pain, and whole heck of a lot of Divine healing. But we are here, we are blessed, and we are more in love than ever. God. Is. Good.