The Untold Story of Steve McQueen

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people, coming to you from where the West begins in Fort Worth, Texas. Up next, a story from a regular contributor of ours. When I met a few years ago at a class I taught on storytelling at Hillsdale College, Shiloh Carosa McCall. Here she is to share the story of how she fell in love with her husband, among other things. Take it away, Shilah.

00:00:46
Speaker 2: Do you ever look at someone else’s life story and think, “Wow, what an exciting, adventurous life!” I wish mine had that much dramatic value. Maybe most people don’t think that way, but writers often do. And I’m a writer, so naturally I wanted my love story to be as epic as possible. The thing is, it didn’t start out epic. It started out on eHarmony. And the other thing is, epic usually involves some level of uncomfortable. I think I knew that early on. As Austin and I started talking, he’d reached out first. I saw he was an Air Force officer, so he couldn’t be that dangerous. Our conversations floating smoothly; we had good chemistry; our beliefs lined up. We even called each other’s mentors to get the background check before flying out to visit. Everything checked out, but it was almost too easy, too smooth. Where would the real test come? See, I’d learned from previous relationships that until you go through something hard together, a guy could be gaslighting you into thinking he’s someone he isn’t. But pretending gets hard when life gets hard. That’s why, four months into our long-distance relationship, I distinctly said to my mom, “I don’t think I could ever be sure of a man unless he walked through something really hard with me.” Well, God heard that. And then the pain started: first, a gnawing in my right thigh; then burning that came and went; then burning that never left; then muscle spasms that started any time I moved my leg the wrong way. By the end of May, I was on crutches, unable to walk, and unable to even sit or lie peacefully because of debilitating, seizing hip and leg pain. Unlike anything I had ever experienced. The diagnosis process itself was months long, and for some time I was even on the watch for debilitating bone disease, cancer, and multiple sclerosis. An MRI eventually revealed a labral tear, an injury common in runners, but one that surgeons hesitate to operate on because they want you to do every imaginable therapy first. The wait list to even see a surgeon was over two months, so my whole summer was effectively canceled, and so were my plans of being a fun, spunky, adventurous girlfriend. I could no longer travel to visit Austin, so he came to me. He washed my feet because I couldn’t. He put my shoes on because I couldn’t. He handed me my crutches every time I tried to get up. He wheeled me around the neighborhood in my wheelchair so I could see nature and the neighbors I’d grown up with. He helped me in and out of cars, of couches. He carried me out of Lake Michigan when I couldn’t stand in the waves. He paused movies so I could just cry. When the pain got so intense, I couldn’t focus on the film. I still hadn’t healed by the time he proposed. By this time, I had lost over ten pounds for muscle atrophy and depression; my clothes barely fit. Finding a wedding dress that hid the boniness in my chest and arms was a real challenge. Lots of brides planned to lose weight before their big day, but my weight loss wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t wanted. We knew Austin was going to deploy to the Middle East in four months, and if we got married beforehand, I might not be healed. We both knew I needed the surgery if I was ever going to have a normal life again, but neither of us knew at the time he proposed how long that would take and what my new normal would even look like. He still wanted to marry me at my most unlovable and my most vulnerable, at my least physically capable, in a state of depression—and he loved me. Little did we know that a fifty-person-long wait list would open up just in time for me to get that surgery, just in time for my insurance to cover it, and just in time for me to heal enough to walk down that aisle. Yes, that all happened, and it was, in the surgeon’s own words, a miracle. But Austin didn’t count on it. He didn’t care if I used crutches to get down that aisle. We were going to get married before he deployed. I hated the journey I’d been on over the past year. I hated that I couldn’t exercise. I hated that I’d slipped into depression. I hated that I couldn’t be fun and helpful for the man I loved. I hated that my biggest concern on my wedding day would be: “Can I get through this day without excruciating pain?” But here’s what I love: the man who walked through it with me, and the God who gave him to me. But most of all, the picture this gave me of Jesus’s love. See, as a Christian, I was used to hearing how Jesus came for me at my most unlovable and my most helpless. But I hadn’t seen that play out in a human relationship. Ergo, I couldn’t fully appreciate that reality. I do now. Austin had no guarantee of what a life with me would look like, but his loyalty, no matter what came, proved he was the kind of man I could trust—the kind of man you keep when you find him. Was it epic, the journey I took to realize this? Probably not, but you be the judge.

00:07:08
Speaker 1: And a special thanks to Shiloh Carosa McCall for telling her love story, an unepic and beautiful one, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here again, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Every story we are here is uploaded there daily, and your support goes a long way to keeping the great stories you love from this show coming again. Please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast wherever you get your podcasts.