Love at first sight?

Was it love at first sight you ask? Well, no not quite, but beautifully in some ways, yes. Life is full of both ands, isn’t it?

By now most of you know parts of our story, and of course it’s hard to share everything of those early days, but in brief, here goes.

It was October 2017, I was performing a residency at an Irish pub and restaurant in Nashville called McNamara’s. At this stage I’d been living, writing and performing in Nashville for over 7 years.

Caitriona, still living in Ireland, was visiting Nashville with her Mum and Dad on a songwriting trip. After a busy day of cowrites Caitriona’s Dad decided he wanted Irish food (no joke, if this man doesn’t have potatoes on his plate, it’s not a proper meal!), so they all made their way to McNamara’s Irish pub and restaurant (Caitriona reluctantly, as she was tired from the full day of cowrites). It turned out they happened to know the fiddle player on stage that night, Jessica, and at the break she introduced us all.

Put that many Irish people together and it doesn’t take long for a bit of banter and craic to kick off. After plenty of chit chat, during that very long extended break, I eventually had to hop back on stage. Caitriona’s Dad in passing suggested she and I get together to write sometime but as they were all about to return to Ireland it would have to be the next year, of course I wholeheartedly agreed.

Full of curiosity I asked if Caitriona would like to get up and sing a song, her Mum and Dad without hesitation said yes for her. This is where the ‘both and’ comes in play, although neither of us would say it to each other until much further down the road, in hindsight we both recognized something special was in the air that night, we just didn’t know what, yet. It was complicated.

Mostly because at this time I was actually in a relationship with someone else and adding on top of that a few thousand miles of distance between us, neither of us were looking for anything other than a possible cowrite, and in a town like Nashville possible cowrites happen every day and never come to fruition, it’s sadly just something people say, '‘we should get together and write sometime.”

God is so good though, some months later we both admitted to eachother that neither of us forgot that night, we both had an overwhelming, strong, warm, comforting sense of ‘Home’ about each other, the Holy Spirit was quietly at work, planting seeds. Home.

5 months passed with little to no contact but we did get a cowrite on the books, March 19th 2018, after a busy week of shows for both of us in Nashville. St Patricks Day/Week Celebrations in America are a good time to be Irish Singers, you’re in demand!

Ironically the first song we wrote was called ‘Time Has Run Out,’ a break up song idea that Caitriona, unaware, brought to the table that day, I in fact had just gone through a break up.

It was evening when the song was finished that day so I offered to cook Caitriona dinner, (Caitriona would tell me later that food is her love language, I guess I did ok!) she still remembers that meal, oven baked salmon with garlic roasted brussel sprouts and roasted honey glazed carrots.

It was a short music city trip for Caitriona this time, but memorable,  when returning to Ireland we stayed in touch. Slowly but surely a friendship deepened and many a long text message exchanged via WhatsApp, and then in time frequent FaceTime calls. Looking back it was a beautiful time of getting to know each other, also as songwriters we shared songs that we had written past and present, both secretly having favorites but not brave enough yet to tell the other. It was beautiful, pure and innocent, it was blessed.

June 9th 2018 (My Birthday) in Caitriona’s family kitchen in County Down, late at night after a gig, together dancing to an Ed Sheeran song playing on my phone in my back pocket, we shared our first nervous kiss. It was perfect! Happiest Birthday Ever!!!

That night we officially started dating and quickly we were imagining a future together, the trouble was we still lived thousands of miles apart, someone had to make a move, but who?

I was happy living my dream life in Nashville as a singer songwriter and Caitriona had no intentions to leave Ireland, God had a lot of work to do in our hearts, there was much to discern and pray about, tears and fears kicked in plenty during those days but we both agreed that if it was truly meant to be God would take care of the details, we just had to surrender and say ‘yes’ to His will. We still live our lives by this.

He guided us both slow and sure, step by step.

It’s funny looking back, now knowing what we know, everything would be ok, but the truth is we didn’t know back then we just trusted that God was in the details. We had to give our daily yes.

God did work out all the details, of course with some bumps in the road, and very quickly marriage was being talked about, but a lot had to happen before then, and still the Atlantic Ocean was between us…….but He is faithful, and He makes our crooked paths straight.

With love,

Colm & Caitriona

KIRWAN the band