A gun, a love affair

When I write a story, something usually ends up on the cutting room floor.

In Tuesday's installment of "The War Widow" series, I'll tell you about how Elizabeth and Brian Woods fell in love and married.

In today's blog, I want to tell you what happened on the first day they met. I think it will help you get to know Elizabeth better. She's the type of person who is secure enough in her beliefs that she's open to understanding and accepting opposing beliefs.

"I admire her for that," said her sister, Jennifer Burns of Marvin, who works in global human resources at Bank of America. "If someone doesn't agree with her, she respects their opinion and tries to understand where they're coming from. More importantly than that, if it's something she's never thought about before, she thinks about it and decides if this would affect her beliefs."

So, this is what happened that first day: Brian brought a gun into Elizabeth's apartment in Asheville.

Elizabeth had never before seen a gun up close, much less in her home. She was shocked.

Why, she demanded, did you bring that here?

It's a dangerous world, she remembers Brian saying. You never know when you might need it.

Guns had always been a part of Brian's life. His father was a gunsmith. Brian was a skilled marksman and considered a gun an amazing piece of technology.

On the second day he and Elizabeth spent together, Brian took the gun apart and showed her how the different pieces worked. After he reassembled it, he placed the gun in her hand. It felt heavier than Elizabeth expected. Cold.

She thrust it back at him.

"We opened each other's minds to different ways of looking at life," Elizabeth told me. "We had lots of interesting discussions…. I was in love, no matter what his job was."

No matter what.