Tim Garner:  

en. My temper was short and I began to drink for a while. I must admit as a Christian and one who finds this embarrassing to admit, I could not wait to get home from work and get a drink. I wanted to stop the hurt just for a little while. God is faithful even when we are not. While I stopped praying and started getting drunk, I became hungry for human companionship. I began looking for a pen pal, I did not want a relationship, I was too much of a mess to look for that. No, what I needed was to talk to people in a safe environment. I found a website for electronic pen pals and kind of posted my profile. The responses were incredible, mostly from women, and mostly giving me advice on how to raise my daughters. There were a couple of proposals that I quickly discounted. Surprisingly enough very few men contacted me. Then one day a woman from Montreal sent me a note, she also wanted to advise me on how to be a single parent for three daughters. Her note stood out from the others because she has a way of mixing French and English together on the same note, I call it Frenglish. Her notes intrigued me because each one had to be carefully decoded to understand what she was writing. We began to write to each other frequently and I found out that I could help her as much as she could help me. Eventually the website allowed me ask her for her email account and her phone number. Up to this point we only communicated through the website. Eventually I went to visit her in Montreal on a very cold, and windy Montreal weekend. I have been visiting this marvelous lady on a monthly basis since then. This past valentines day, I gave her an engagement ring which she accepted. Only a few days ago, I got word back from the "...immigration service" that our fiance visa application had been accepted. Now we must set a date to get married.".