Editor’s Note: This is the the introduction of Fiercely Loved: Confessions of an AIDS Widow

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I have a confession to make–no Lifetime movie-of-the-week would be complete without a juicy confession. Ready for it? I am an incurable romantic. Perhaps not in a conventional sense, but I am anything but conventional! There is a reason I was voted “most unique” by my high school senior class. While most girls my age were drooling over pop stars Prince and Michael Jackson, or T.V. stars like Family’s Ties‘ Michael J. Fox or Magnum P.I.’s Tom Selleck, my first adolescent crushes were decidedly on the ”White and Nerdy” side: Star Trek‘s Mr. Spock and Captain Picard! While other girls dreamed of being swept away in the General Lee, I dreamt of being swept away in The Doctor’s TARDIS. Oh, I liked the show The Dukes of Hazzard, but I would have preferred to wrap my hands around the steering wheel of the General Lee, than Bo or Luke Duke. Did I mention I was a big fan of the original Transformers and G.I. Joe? However, being unique did not equal popularity for me as a teenager (does it for anybody?). I had few friends, rarely dated and barely dreamed I would have a great romance because in my heart I saw myself as an ugly duckling. I thought I was too tomboyish for a guy to take me seriously. I mean, what guy would be into a girl who loved Transformers!?!

But then I met Tim, my thoroughly unconventional Prince Charming who saw me as the swan I didn’t know I was. Here was a man who loved Star Trek, Doctor Who, and other kinds of science fiction as much as I did. What many of my peers saw as weird, he saw as beautiful and lovable. Instead of an apparent turn off, my intelligence and curiosity excited him. In Tim I found a man who thoroughly accepted me not only as a woman, but also as a person, an equal, and he quickly became my best friend, brother, boyfriend and later, husband, all wrapped up in one. He awoke my sleeping heart to the joy of fiercely loving someone and being fiercely loved in return.

But in every great fairy tale love story there is a great villain, and ours was no different. But an unconventional love story like ours couldn’t have a conventional adversary like Cinderella’s wicked stepmother. Our foe was quite small. Microscopic, in fact. However, it was just as deadly and murderous as Simba’s Uncle Scar – a virus known as HIV. Of course, no bad guy is complete without some evil henchmen and few can equal HIV’s malicious lieutenants: ignorance, fear and hate, which usually manifested in the form of rejection. However, Tim and I were not alone in the battles we faced. Just like the sons of Adam and daughters of Eve in The Lion and the Witch and the Wardrobe had Aslan the Lion as their ally, we had Jesus, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, by our side, each and every step of the way. He placed us in a wonderful church community that accepted Tim without question, including how Tim contracted HIV in the first place. In addition, Jesus surrounded us with family and friends who loved us through his illness and stood with me after Tim went to Heaven in 1995. And even though HIV may have put my Tim to sleep, I know death won’t have the last laugh and like Sleeping Beauty, Tim will be awakened by the Fierce Love of God Himself that created him. In the meantime, the same Fierce Love that brought Tim into my life continues to sustain and comfort me until He reunites me with Tim in a place “where no shadows fall.”