Our first date

6 years ago today, my husband and I had our first date.

Well, actually, this is a debatable story in our home.

You see, it wasn't a cut and dry meeting.

I moved back to MI near the end of August, 2001. I moved back to work at Youth For Christ, and to try to get my life in some kind of order.

My friends, who went through Campus Life (the high school ministry of YFC) with me, teased me about how I would find my husband while working there. At the time, I was trying to be prayerfully obedient to God, and was trying to be open to a relationship with a guy I'd known since high school. I couldn't see myself being married to this guy (Aaron), but he kept telling me he was sure we were supposed to be together, so I thought I should at least be open to God's leading.

Anyway, I assured my friends that there wasn't anyone else working for YFC that I would ever be interested in. Most of the guys were married, or guys I knew from high school with, and couldn't think of that way. Then there was the older guy (Andy), who was really funny, but definitely too old for me. (He is 9 years older.)

As the days went by, I became more confident that my feelings for Aaron would never develop into anything more than friendship. We even had a conversation that made it clear that friendship was all that was in the future for us. At the end of the conversation, Aaron said "maybe you should go for Andy...he's single. Oh wait...you're not his type." (That is the wrong thing to say to a girl who likes a challenge!)

As I spent more time with the people I worked with (in this setting, you spend a lot of time together- going on trips, having retreats and conferences, setting up banquets, preparing for big events), I began to really enjoy being around Andy. He always had something clever to say, and I noticed that I was always smiling when he was around. He seemed to bring out the best in me.

I was really trying to be obedient to God at the time, and really felt that God was telling me to wait on Him. Every other relationship I'd had was the result of my efforts. If a guy was interested in me, then I wasn't interested. I wanted the challenge of getting a guy to be interested in me. And I felt that God was clearly telling me that He would bring the right guy to me at the right time, and that I needed to stay out of it. I can't tell you how hard this was.

Since I didn't know many people other than who I was working with, I spent a lot of my free time with them as well. And I found myself falling for Andy in a big way. It didn't make any sense to me, since he was totally not my type, and so much older. But as I got to know him, I couldn't help but admire him, and love the man that he was/is.

Every time I spent a good amount of time with Andy, I would leave feeling broken. I remember calling my best friend up and crying after spending time with him, because I had these intense feelings, and couldn't do anything about them. I knew that I could see myself marrying this man, and wasn't sure what to do with that. I was falling in love with someone who seemed to just see me as a good friend.

By the beginning of October, we had some pretty fun flirting going on. People teased us about how we would laugh at each other's jokes, and about how we would both just light up when the other person was around.

After two long phone conversations (my roommate watched his cat while he went to a retreat, so he had to call and find out when he could pick her up, and the other time, he wanted to run something by me that he had thought of), he started trying to find excuses to spend time with me. It seems like he took the YFC buses in to get work done quite a lot during those weeks, and always needed someone to give him a ride.

Finally, on Halloween, he instant messaged me from a computer 2 down from where I was sitting. He said "The Avalanche are debuting their new sweater tonight, if you want to come watch." Now, I was riding the wave of the recent Stanley Cup win, and thought myself to be a hockey fan...and somehow I conveyed that to him. He was inviting me to come watch my team play his team, and I could check out the new uniform at the same time.

So, I did. We watched the hockey game, we talked, and we went to Taco Bell. We danced around the elephant in the room, and then finally something I said caused him to respond with "and that's why I don't date people I work with." My heart fell into my stomach, and he just started laughing. He said "just kidding", and moved a little closer to me on the couch.

We hugged when I left that night, and I didn't stop smiling for weeks.

We had our first official 'date' a few days later. He packed a picnic, and took me to Holland, MI. We spent the day on the beach, and watched the sunset while sitting on a pier. He kissed me for the first time that night, in a field near his apartment. (He wanted it to be at 'just the right' place.)

I like to tease him that he took me to Taco Bell for our first date. He prefers to think of our first date being in Holland. It makes him much more gentlemanly.

He proposed to me on the morning of New Years Eve, and we were married in August of 2002. Almost a year after we first met.

He is my miracle. My day to day reminder of how faithful God is, and how much He wants to give us good things. God worked our relationship out in the exact way that it needed to be worked out so that it would happen. Andy pursued me, but I fell in love with him first. It was a challenge to me, to wait on God, but I was able to be pursued by the man that I loved.

And it all started 6 years ago today.

Don't you just love hockey?