Love Finds A Way: A Good Grit Reader Story

Words and photo by Paige Knudsen

Dan and I actually met in the early 90’s. We attended the same church and had many mutual friends. His curly haired roommate, Gregg asked me out. I said no for a while, then a year later he showed up a little more confident. Gregg & I dated, fell in love & got married.

I like to say Gregg & I lived a 50 year love story in five years. I graduated from nursing school a few months after we married. He was a school teacher and a coach, and I was a pediatric RN. We had two little girls in two years, and then I found I was pregnant with our third daughter the same week Gregg found a lump under his arm. That lump ended up being metastatic cancer. My Gregg passed away ten weeks after I gave birth. I was a 30 year old widow with three babies under the age of three. I knew no other widows, but was surrounded by friends & family.

A few years later, Dan & I began to date. Dan had been Gregg’s roommate and honestly lived with Gregg longer than I did. Are you following?

The night before he turned 40, after never telling another girl he loved her, much less having been married before, Dan proposed. We married a few months later, Easter weekend in a springtime garden here in Atlanta. He took a knee and vowed to be loyal to not only me, but to our little girls, whom he soon adopted. A few years later, we had our fourth daughter.

If you’d have seen Dan with all four of our girls, you’d never suspect anything other than he was their biological daddy. The lord knit all of our hearts together so seamlessly. Dan is the most kind, selfless, romantic & loyal man. He is my soulmate & I will love him forever.