The weight of Trust: Part 2

I met James Martin while home (San Jose, CA) visiting for my sister's missionary farewell. I lived in Provo, UT, at the time and was attending hair school. While I was home, my sister wanted me to go with her to the Young Adult Ward, so I obliged. My friend Andrew came up to me and said I had to meet this guy from Florida. “He played football at Vanderbilt University and is currently a 49er football player.” I brushed off my friend and thought nothing of it. Later that week, I attended the Young Adult dance with my friend Jessica. We met the infamous 49er, and needless to say… we were both unimpressed. He was so arrogant and only wanted to talk about himself and how cool and successful he was. I went back to Provo and didn’t give him a second thought.

A couple of months later, as I was finishing up hair school, I found a lump in my breast and quickly settled my affairs in UT to prepare for surgery back in California to have the lump removed. When I moved home, I began attending the Young Adult Ward. In the short few months since my last visit, there were only a handful of friends remaining in the ward as others had moved away. However, amongst these friends was the 49er, James. As I settled into life back in California, the new addition to our friend group meant I spent more and more time with James. Eventually, I decided he wasn’t so bad after all.

We started dating in May of 2002, and it was immediately clear that this relationship was moving with the intention of marriage. Everything happened fast—faster than I had any real experience with. I was heavily pursued. James was grand in his gestures, confident, and very convincing. I was swept off my feet.

At the time, he was in a lucrative career and had the money to impress me. He knew exactly how to use it. Baseball games in San Francisco, flowers delivered just because, fancy restaurants, spontaneous lunch dates—things that felt glamorous and grown-up to a girl who had never been courted like that before. I had never experienced that level of attention, and I was impressionable. Looking back, I can see how intoxicating it all was.

There were moments early on that gave me pause. Conversations about men’s and women’s roles in marriage that didn’t sit right with me. Statements that felt rigid, outdated, or dismissive. But I brushed them aside. I told myself he was joking. Or worse, I convinced myself that I could change that part of him. I cringe now at how easily I minimized my own discomfort. But at the time, I was in love—or at least in love with the version of the future I was being shown.

As we grew more serious, marriage became a constant topic of conversation. Plans were discussed openly and often. We were set to travel to Florida in July to meet his family. He had already left for Florida on a business trip, and I was scheduled to fly out a few days later. The night before my flight, he spoke with my parents and told them he had changed his plan. Instead of proposing in Santa Cruz with my family, like he had planned, he said he wanted to propose in Florida with his family present. Since we would eventually live in California near my family, he felt it was important for his family to be part of that moment.
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At the time, it sounded thoughtful. Reasonable. Even considerate. However, I'm pretty sure my parents started to see it for what it was—the first real lesson in how easily plans could be rewritten, decisions reframed, and moments redirected, all while being presented as acts of love.