Let me just start by saying that this post isn’t about Stephen, whom I love. The idea of a “soul mate” was never in my vocabulary as we dated & married.
It was actually a few months after we were married, when I started working at The Spero Project. I was working with Brad & Kim Bandy, who had just recently started a non-profit in Oklahoma City. They were working with resettled refugees, as well as other amazing social justice ventures, and I interviewed with them for a administrative role. I was told it would be ten hours a week.
We were pretty poor at the time, and this wasn’t ideal. However, it seemed like a great fit & a great opportunity, so I took it. I worked daily with Kim, who just told me what to do as she thought of it.
About two weeks in, she said this was turning out to be bigger than she imagined; could I work twenty hours a week?
…Fastforward two weeks after that, and I was full-time. I was sort of in administration, and I was sort of just Kim’s sidekick to do whatever she needed.
And just a few weeks after that, Brad declared us soul mates.
We got along great. We brainstormed beautifully; we could finish sentences and read each others ideas. I can honestly say it has never been so easy to communicate with anyone else I’ve met.
I can also say that we are oddly similar. We started to discover all the ways we just think the same, and to be honest, it made our work even easier. You can be really efficient with your time if you don’t have to finish sentences.
It was a good year.
And then we moved to the Thai-Burma border, and I discovered what it’s like to work with people who aren’t your soul mates.
We still come back to visit their little family of four when we can, and we’re here this week participating in Marked, one of Spero’s most amazing events. Due to the snow and ice that has repeatedly hit us throughout our time in the States, we were able to participate in the Collective before Marked, but the actual event was postponed.
That left us bundled up in the living room last night with half of the Spero staff playing Loaded Questions over soup.
Stephen’s pulled question was: What is your biggest phobia or fear?
I wrote down belly buttons first, but marked that off, because of course he would know it was me. He knows me well enough to know this fear, and its not exactly a commonplace phobia. I decided on unfinished books, which also can haunt me for years.
The person next to him was reading the answers out loud, and amidst the dogs, heights, and even unfinished books–he read out belly buttons.
What?!
Of course Stephen gave me that one, thinking no one else in the world has that fear, let alone this room of seven people.
And this, after working with my soul mate for a year and knowing probably way too much about our similarities, was the first time we learned we have the same phobia. And that neither of us have ever met someone with the same phobia. {But it does exist, mind you: omphalophobia.}
Because I’m telling you, we are weirdly similar.
And I’m just going to leave it at that, while I sit here with my mind blown.
She was the best person to work for, and there are so many days I wish that Spero would go international or we would go local. For now, we’re still friends, we’ll call ourselves soul mates, and Stephen & I are both really hoping we can work with Brad & Kim in some capacity again someday!
