Goeke Story - "Feel Sorry for THAT Girl!" | Kara

On Friday we thought we'd tell our stories - just like, get to know us better.  ...  Yeah - blogs sometimes feel like self-aggrandizement. Oh well.

Josh and I both attended Missouri State University (it was Southwest Missouri State University at the time, but then I spent a semester as a legislative intern with my State Senator and got the name changed - you are welcome, Missouri State!). We also both lived in Scholars House - a smaller-than-most residence hall that you had to keep a certain GPA to get in and stay in. We barely met as freshman.  In fact, the first first time we spoke to each other, Josh was talking to this other guy at Campus Crusade for Christ, and I piped in, "I love Waterdeep!" Josh completely ignore me. Completely. Like I didn't exist. It was awful being a freshman. :( In Josh's defense - he doesn't remember this at all. Plus - Bolt helps me get revenge every time he wakes up at 3am when Mommy has to work the next day so Daddy has to get up! Bwaahahahah!

The real story starts when we were sophomores, and it starts with Josh walking into my suite and asking for a back rub.  No joke. Doesn't that sound so sleazy???

But, I'd given a backrub to my former suitemate, Becky Fredman - and she recommended me to Josh, who definitely did wander in while I was sitting around with my suitemates (doors open - best way to make new friends, and find a husband!) and said, "Are you Kara? Becky said you give really good back rubs? I'm Josh Goeke." My first though, quite literally was: "Goeke? What a dumb last name. Don't know who this guy is going to marry, but I sure feel sorry for THAT girl!"

And thus, it began. Actually - that's not really when it began. First Josh dated someone else, then I kinda dated someone else to get back at Josh, THEN when we were juniors, we actually started dating. "Dating" may be a strong word to use here.  On the second or third date, Josh says to me: "So - I'm not going to kiss you unless we get married." I'd never been told something like this before. You must understand, dear readers, I was a very kissable girl - maybe I can find some pictures of my young, beautiful self and include them sometime. I mean, I had a fan club (sure - half of it was comprised of drooling nerds, but half of it were totally respectable catches, and they all loved me!)! Not going to kiss me indeed.... didn't he know how lucky he was that I was dating him?

Well anyway, so we didn't kiss each other until our wedding day (before you get really impressed with our chastity, we'd both kissed other people before we started dating, so it wasn't like, first first kiss on the wedding day - just first kiss together). We also didn't say, "I love you" until we got engaged (really I wanted to be even, so I claimed that a lot of guys manipulated girls by saying "I love you" when they didn't mean it - so that was my rule; in retrospect, girls, this is GENIUS b/c it means you are desperately hoping he's about to say he loves you - and if he DOES say it, it's proof he doesn't, b/c you asked him not to say it, and if he can't handle that request, do you really want to keep dating him????). All this meant that instead we said, "I like you a lot" a lot. I had it engraved on the inside of Josh's wedding ring, to remember always how loving another person sometimes means you hold back b/c you care more about protecting their heart than you do about expressing your own.

We also worked hard to keep our lives kind of separate. I knew couples in college who would eat three meals a day together, and if they weren't in class or asleep, they were together. I'm not trying to judge those couples - but we both felt like conducting one's relationship that way lead to problems (like, when you break up, you have to refigure out how you spend every waking moment - devastating!). So we  x4rttried to go on dates sometimes, we didn't sit together at Chi Alpha stuff (weekly campus ministry); Josh refused to purchase an over-priced meal-plan, so we didn't eat together all too often. Later, I was talking to a friend who was telling me how weird our relationship seemed - I guess a bunch of people never knew if we were still dating, b/c we "never acted like it!"

But we had bigger fish to fry. For one thing - at Chi Alpha, we were both leaders. I led a small group, and I wanted to be available to sit with my girls and pay attention to them - lots of them were freshman and being a freshman sucks (see above). And we wanted to be good examples to the people following us.

The next year, I spent a semester at the University of Northern Colorado. The plan at the time was to establish residency and apply to law school in Colorado, but I felt like God spoke clearly to me that law school wasn't the thing for me. I wasn't out there for very long before I came home to a dorm room filled with flower petals and candles (totally against the rules!) and Josh (surprise) who I thought was 500 miles away. He washed my feet and he had a pretty ring for me and finally FINALLY told me he loved me and asked me to marry him.  I love the surprise proposal. No offense to planners - but I was surprised and I loved it. I said yes. He kissed me on the cheek. It was hot!

We got married in May of 2005 and started dreaming about church planting and taking steps to make that a reality (going through Vineyard Leadership Institute, learning how to preach, learning how to deal with each other - that one took a while, since we married each other to torture each other*).

I don't suppose ours is the most dramatic or surprising love story, but it's ours, which is more than enough.

And now, every time someone asks my name, I have to say "Goeke, it looks like GO-eh-kee, that's g-O-e-k-e. ... Yeah - when I met my husband the first time, I though - dumb last name. Feel sorry for THAT girl. ... Turns out that girl is me." ... Though I don't feel sorry for her at all. She knew what she was getting into. ;)



*Best marriage advice ever: When you are mad at your spouse over anything - let's say she didn't pre-soak the dishes, here's what you do: follow your emotions back to their logical conclusion. It goes like this, "Suzy! You didn't presoak the dishes! Now this glob of ketchup has become a petrified ketchup fossil and is chemically bonded to the plate!!! I'll NEVER get this ketchup off! I KNOW you did this on purpose! I know it! I know that THIS HAS BEEN YOUR PLAN ALL ALONG, HASN'T IT???? We met in college - I thought our eyes just met magically across the room, but really, you had already researched my personal history and you decided that you HATED me and so you hatched this evil plot in which you would trick me into falling in love with you and marrying you and then you'd wait - your own sleeper cell of one - and today is the day you enact your plot to ruin my life by leaving the dishes un-pre-soaked so my day would suck! You're loving every minute of this! You married me to torture me! You planned this all out! What's next? Are you going to put the wet laundry into the drier and then NOT TURN IT ON!?!?!?!"
By this time, hopefully you are both laughing (it's hard to get through all that with a straight face), and the one who is over-reacting can apologize for the over-reaction and the other one can apologize for the non-pre-soaking offense, and you can giggle and get over it.  We're black belts at this - and can go from pre-fight to an off-hand "you know I married you to torture you" comment, and then we're fine. Josh married me to torture me. I married him to torture him. Best way to diffuse a fight, ever. And we would know. We're experts!