Multum in parvo

People often ask me how I met Anne-​Marie, my wife since Septem­ber 2000. They are curi­ous because I am French and she is Aus­tralian. They would like to know who was vis­it­ing which coun­try when we met. In this rather lengthy blog entry, I hope to elu­cid­ate these ques­tions and enter­tain, sur­prise and move you. Our story is unique, as all true love stor­ies are.

Back­ground information

The truth is, I was liv­ing in France, and she was liv­ing in Aus­tralia. I had just returned from a 2-​year mis­sion in Eng­land for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​Day Saints, and I was still in the mind­set of a mis­sion­ary, try­ing to meet new people and inform them of what I believe to be true.

Mar­riage is the num­ber 1 pri­or­ity of returned mis­sion­ar­ies. Why? There are many reas­ons, but one of them is that we believe in the divine ori­gin and des­tiny of the human race, and that this des­tiny can only be achieved as fam­ily units, with a father and mother «sealed» for time and etern­ity, becom­ing one with each other and with God. This describes a pro­cess and an ulti­mate goal, not a state achieved all at once. You can find a very con­cise descrip­tion of our beliefs on mar­riage and fam­il­ies in the Pro­clam­a­tion to the world on the Fam­ily. There is also a wiki­pe­dia art­icle on the topic.

With this import­ant back­ground inform­a­tion, you are ready to learn how I met, pro­posed to and mar­ried Anne-​Marie.

First Meet­ing

I was liv­ing at my par­ents’ place in Plouz­ané, France since my return from Eng­land in Decem­ber 1999. The trans­ition from mis­sion­ary life to «nor­mal» life was dif­fi­cult. I had spent every day of my life for 2 entire years work­ing for the wel­fare of other people, without any mater­ial rewards for myself, and often with lim­ited suc­cess. This was tre­mend­ously ener­gising for me, I felt use­ful and I felt worth­while. Return­ing to nor­mal life, I had to start caring for my own mater­ial needs. I had to find a job, con­sider fur­ther­ing my edu­ca­tion, spend time with my fam­ily in ways which I had learned to avoid for 2 years (movies, music, com­puter games etc...), make friends with the hope of find­ing a young woman who could love me des­pite my faults and who would have the same beliefs, stand­ards and long-​term object­ives as I had...

It was rather over­whelm­ing. How­ever, on the 30^th of Janu­ary 2000, I was spend­ing some time on ICQ, chat­ting to some new friends I had made, intro­du­cing them to my beliefs, when Anne-​Marie popped up on my screen say­ing «Hi» (or some­thing along these lines...). She had found me by search­ing for someone with sim­ilar interests. I replied rather abruptly: «Fine, but what are you doing on my con­tact list?».

She said she was just look­ing for someone to chat with. We then went on to dis­cover things about each other, where we were from, what our interests were etc... Soon later we each dis­covered that the other was a mem­ber of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-​Day Saints. That def­in­itely gave us much more com­mon ground!

After this, day after day we would spend more time chat­ting. She was going through a tough time with her fam­ily, and was strug­gling with intense feel­ings of worth­less­ness. I had met many women dur­ing my mis­sion who felt awful about them­selves, mainly due to the way they were treated by men in their lives. I had learned to care deeply for them, and most import­antly, I had learned to listen. I really wanted to help Anne-​Marie to be hap­pier, and I believed that it was in my power to help her. I didn’t have any inten­tions of flirt­ing with her, it was entirely altruistic.

After about a week of rather intense dis­cus­sions, we had star­ted to send emails to each other because of the dif­fi­culty of find­ing each other online at the same time (there were either 6 or 7 hours time dif­fer­ence between France and Aus­tralia). I real­ised that my feel­ings for Anne-​Marie were becom­ing quite strong. Many of my thoughts through­out the day would revolve around her and how I could help her. I decided that I was begin­ning to love her with more than a broth­erly love, and that I needed to find out how she felt about me.

Our chats and let­ters became more per­sonal after that. We would share more intim­ate feel­ings with each other, while still remain­ing in a sort of brother-​sister type of rela­tion­ship. Through­out the second week I became more and more engrossed in this rela­tion­ship, and I thought about it all the time. I star­ted to won­der if events could work out between us in a way that we could even­tu­ally marry. I did not believe that there was only one per­son on earth who was destined to be my soul­mate, but I believed that our Heav­enly Father puts us in each other’s paths for good reas­ons, and that He can inspire us to cre­ate beau­ti­ful and ever­last­ing rela­tion­ships if we seek them.

Con­sequently, two short weeks after we had met, and after I had assured myself that she trus­ted and loved me, and after I had prayed to my Heav­enly Father and felt that He approved of my decision, I pro­posed to Anne-​Marie on ICQ. I knew that she was pre­par­ing to serve her own mis­sion for the Church, and I told her that I was will­ing to wait the neces­sary 18 months before her return. She accep­ted, and the cas­cade of emo­tions that had been build­ing up for the last 2 weeks reached a height which I had never felt before in my life. I was float­ing on air, with a strange feel­ing of un-​reality, as if what I was liv­ing was not com­pletely true, simply because it seemed to fantastic.

The part that shocks most people in this meet­ing story, is that by that time (Valentine’s day 2000), I had yet seen a single photo of Anne-​Marie. I didn’t know what she looked like. I had sent her pho­tos of me, but she had no means of scan­ning hers. Of course I was very eager to know any­thing new about her, but her phys­ical appear­ance was not what I was most eager to dis­cover. I just knew, without any doubt, that what I was doing was right. There is noth­ing more excit­ing, more exhil­ar­at­ing than to do some­thing com­pletely extraordin­ary, know­ing that it is the right thing to do.

In my next blog entry I will describe the decisions we made on that 14^th of Feb­ru­ary 2000, and the few very dif­fi­cult months that fol­lowed until we could finally meet in per­son in July.