How We Met

I decided to participate with Kelly's meme today in honor of Valentine's Day. I am to share how God brought my husband and I together. It was God and only God....here's my tale:

My Man and I were born in different states, then traded states and ended up in the same state although we lived almost 3 hours apart from each other at the time we met. About four months before we met, I had decided at the grand old age of 15 that I was done with guys and was not getting married. The same month My Man got saved--completely changed from the inside out. God was setting the stage.

We met at a youth evangelistic weekend held at his church. I had been to several before, but this was his first since he had just come to the Lord. He was 20 and beginning to think of marriage, and he prayed before he came the first night that if it was the Lord's will, He would show him the girl he was to marry that weekend. Completely unaware of this, I rode along with a friend whose car collided with a deer on the way to pick me up. We were the last ones there and very late because of the accident. According to my husband, he had already decided that God was not going to answer his prayer that weekend until I walked in. Since I had already decided I wasn't getting married, I perused the new guy simply with curiosity. My immediate assumption was "Very cute, much too old, looks too shy for me, but it doesn't matter anyway." At least those were my subconscious thoughts.

It turned out that he and his sister lived the closest to me, so on future youth weekends (we went to a different church each time), our leader arranged for me to ride along with them. (Thanks, Tonya! I owe you a big one.) We gradually got to know one another. I had big plans and told him all about how I was going to college to be a music teacher. I don't think I actually told him I planned to be single, but it was very obvious that marriage wasn't in my near future. After all, I was only 16!

After a series of events that only the Lord could have orchestrated, we ended up dating 7 months later. Exactly a year after the day of our first meeting, our church was having special services and I was on the platform playing the piano prelude. To my great surprise, my boyfriend walked in and right up onto the platform! He greeted me (no, not with a kiss!), and we enjoyed the service together. After church, he took me out to dinner. I had this sort of sixth sense of what was going to happen, and I was a nervous wreck. I ate my whole meal in tiny little bites because who wants to be proposed to with their mouth full of food? Nothing out of the ordinary happened during our meal, but afterward he asked, "Do you want to go to the park?" Now it was still cold in mid-March and it was already dark. Just the perfect time for a stroll, right? But of course I agreed that it would be a wonderful thing to do!

We went to a lake that is right in the center of town. It's a beautiful lake which usually has a couple of swans gliding along in it. They weren't there that night...they go somewhere else when ice is on the pond. We sat down for just a few minutes talking, then my wonderful guy dropped to one knee in true traditional style and asked me to spend the rest of his life with him. Some girls squeal and jump up and down, but I just felt tears come to my eyes. It was such a special, sweet time. Of course I said yes. I don't wear jewelry, so he presented me with a beautiful watch with hearts all along the band. As we got back into the car, he gave me a single red rose--a tradition I'll have to tell you about in another post.

We got back to my parents' house and the visiting evangelist (remember my dad is a pastor) stopped mid-sentence in his conversation with my father and said, "I've got to get to bed." I guess we had "the look" or something! After he hurried off to his room, my husband officially asked my parents for their blessing, and they were ready. They gave us each a beautiful letter they had had prepared for some time letting us know that they were letting me go since they believed our union was in the center of God's will.

Each person's story is unique, so I am not saying this is the way it should work for everyone or even most people, but it was truly God's will for the two of us to marry 3 weeks (to the day) after my high school graduation. I gave up my plans to be a college music teacher and single because those were my plans not God's. It has been almost 10 years since we spoke our vows to one another, and we love each other more deeply than I ever thought possible. God is good! I'm so glad He wrote our love story.