Blending Beautifully
By Melissa Meinzer
Every mother thinks her daughter is beautiful, so Master Sergeant Jarrod Thomas took the elderly lady’s words with a grain of salt. But it turns out she wasn’t exaggerating one bit.
MSgt. Thomas, a 42-year-old single father of two, had just moved to the area and joined a church. Afterwards, a woman came up to him and told him he ought to meet her beautiful daughter. So at church the next week, he kept his eyes peeled for her.
“I finally saw her and was like, YES!’” MSgt. Thomas says of Tina. “I introduced myself during the meet and greet. I said ‘Your mother told me to tell you hi.’ We’ve been on a date ever since.”
Tina, 41, had two older boys herself, which broke the ice right away, MSgt. Thomas says. That and their shared faith—and the fact that her mother already had vouched for him—smoothed the way beautifully.
But she wasn’t in the hunt for a husband.
“When we met, she was planning on spending the rest of her life alone. She was thinking of buying a cat,” he says. She told him, “You were just going to be my best friend and that was it but something changed along the way.”
And change is good. After a few months of dating, they got married, first in a small church ceremony and then the day before Valentine’s Day, with all the military trimmings.
"It means a lot to me because I’ve been part of the military for so long,” he says. “To share that with a civilian, to let her know this is also what we do, it’s not just about shooting and fighting—we have a tradition of honor that celebrates the union of two people.”
They celebrated their blended family with a sand ceremony, with the kids reading Bible verses together and pouring sand into a vase.
“Her boys are a 14 and 15. It was just those three for the longest. It was a little bit edgy to overcome—instead of gaining a stepdad or stepbrother and sister, they thought they were losing Mom. I assured them that I wasn’t here to take anything away, but to add,” he says. “If there’s enough love, they’re in the family already.”