Dyanna's Story

Dyanna and Mark

Inside the spacious room with its high ceilings and smooth, polished floor, Dyanna looked on as a group of dancers was gliding along, concentrating on their new fancy footwork.  She glanced at herself in the mirrors that lined one wall in the dance studio and tucked her hair behind her ears.  Waiting her turn to spin across the floor with her partner, Dyanna smiled from pure joy as someone who was free, confident, and fully alive.

Dyanna grew up in a Christian home.  Her parents raised her and her sisters to know the Lord.  In her late 20s, Dyanna enjoyed every aspect of her life – ballroom dancing, loyal friends, and a great job.  She was completely content with being single and was not at all interested in marriage.  She had seen a lot of failed marriages and even knew spouses who stayed together but who weren’t happy. 

When she was younger, her mother taught her about purity.  Dyanna read the book Kissed the Girls and Made them Cry and chose to abide by it.  Her older sister, on the other hand, did not, and Dyanna saw how that brought her many hardships and a failed marriage.  Dyanna didn’t date and regarded it as practicing for divorce because of the way you can just move on to the next person if one relationship doesn’t work out.

Dyanna is a part of the production department where she works, the same place that Mark works.  The two of them did not have a lot of interaction for the first nine years.  He had started working there long before she had and was a part of the small group that took Dyanna out to lunch on her first day.  They’d see each other at the water cooler or at the department events that they would attend, but that was it.  They didn’t work together; they just worked in the same building.

Then one week, one of the producers had to be gone and left Dyanna to finish his projects.  Mark was the editor for those projects, so they spent tireless hours together, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., for the entire week.   That was the first time they had really talked and gotten to know each other.  Mark was comfortable to talk to.  Dyanna didn’t think a thing of it at the time.  Soon afterwards their interaction changed because she then became an associate producer and was forced to work with him.   They didn’t just have casual meetings at the water cooler any longer.  Occasionally they would have lunch together.  They had dinner together a couple of times.  They were becoming close friends. 

Mark was a very private person.  Dyanna didn’t know if he was married.  She didn’t know if he was divorced.  She didn’t know if he had any children.  She literally knew nothing about his personal life even though they talked and were friends.  That was just something they didn’t discuss.

It was a solid two years later when they officially started dating.  Mark started doing things for Dyanna, which fulfilled her love language of Acts of Service.  There was an unexpected snowstorm once, and he had texted her, “Let me know when you get home so I know you’re safe.”  That got her attention.  She did not see marriage as a necessity for her, but getting to know Mark, her heart started to soften to where she would think, “Well, if I were to get married, I would want to marry someone like him.” 

Dyanna eventually found out that Mark was divorced and had two children.  She went to one of his softball games and saw the interaction he had with a certain woman and discovered that he was also dating her.  Because Dyanna had been so cautious with her life and with her relationships, she told him through tears, “I’m not going to be part of this.  You know where to find me if something changes.” 

Eventually something did change.  During that 4-5 month waiting period, however, it was one of the most difficult times for Dyanna.  Her older sister had gotten married and divorced and was already in another relationship.  “God, this isn’t fair,” Dyanna pleaded.  “It’s not right for her to have been married, failed that marriage, and be getting married again, and I have nothing.”  There were a lot of tears.  There was a lot of closing her office door at work and sitting on the floor crying.  She even thought if it didn’t work out with Mark that one of them would have to quit because they couldn’t be working in the same building with this going on.  But despite the hurt feelings, she somehow knew she and Mark were supposed to be together. 

People told her that they had been praying that it would not work out between them.  She had kept herself pure, and he was someone who had been married, divorced, and dating again.  “Is that what you really want?” they’d ask her.  “Save yourself for someone who has also remained pure,” they would say.

Dyanna was open to hearing from people who loved her, and at that time she was considering all the options.  But once she heard from God, she wasn’t so much interested in the other options.  She knew what God was telling her in her heart to do.  She waited, and Mark ended the other relationship.  It was April when Dyanna and Mark became exclusive. He proposed the following March.  They were married in August of that same year.

Fully expecting that he was the one, she knew the time was getting close, especially when her father, during a ski trip the previous November, was already introducing Mark to everyone he met as his future son-in-law.  Mark had already talked to Dyanna’s parents about marrying their daughter.  He already knew the type of ring she wanted, so when he got down on one knee and proposed, Dyanna did not hesitate with her response.

They agreed to set physical boundaries in their relationship.  They were not going to have sex before marriage.  They were not even going to French kiss or be alone together in his apartment. 

Dyanna did not have to experience intimacy with any man before her husband because from a young age, she received all she needed from God.  He knows how to perfectly pair up husband and wife no matter what past they came from or how clumsy their dance steps may have been.  While Mark may be by her side as her dance partner from now on, God had been dancing with her in her heart all of her life.