Our Love Story: Our First Date

(This is the story of how my husband and I met and fell in love. If you are just now jumping in, you can catch up on last week's post or start back at the beginning.)

At this point, we were back in town after spending a week chaperoning a youth group trip where we got to spend more time together and get to know each other better (the good and the bad).

Even though there'd been plenty of things that should have turned my husband off, there was still something in him that kept him interested in me, despite all my flubs and goofs. He decided to talk to the youth pastor at our church (who knew both of us quite well by this point) and tell him about his interest in me.

I'd already told the pastor about my desire for a godly husband and that it was something I was actively praying about, so he urged him to go on and ask me out. They decided to make it a group date along with the pastor and his wife.

(Of course, with the two of us, nothing is ever quite that easy!)

My husband called that night, around 9pm, but I didn’t see the missed call until after 10pm and my mom always taught me that after 9pm, it's not polite to call someone you don't know well. The voice message was brief and didn't really give any details, so even though my curiosity was running wild, I decided to do "the right thing" and wait until the next day to return the call.

(Due to the delay, my husband became even more convinced nothing was going to happen.)

But, as I was leaving work the following afternoon, I called him back. He told me he was calling to see if I wanted to “hang out” with him and the youth pastor and his wife that coming weekend. It sounded like a double date, but it also sounded just like, well, “hanging out.” I agreed but I hung up the phone still unsure what was going on here.

Fortunately for the sake of my curiosity, there was a planning meeting later that night at the youth pastor’s house. My husband wasn't at the meeting, so after everyone else left, I asked the pastor what was going on. “Is it a date or what?”

He laughed and laughed, because it was too obvious that I was totally interested in this guy. To my relief, he told me that it was indeed intended to be a date but that he’d encouraged my husband to phrase it casually so that it wouldn’t sound too intense and scare me away.

With the situation clarified, I started to get really excited. I honestly had never seen this actually happening! Hoped? Of course. But given all that had come before, I never expected anything to come of it.

The date came that Friday night, when he picked me up and we drove downtown to meet the pastor and his wife for dinner. After dinner, we walked around downtown and grabbed some dessert.

It was a fun group dynamic, but by the end of the evening, I didn’t feel like I knew him much better—or whether the two of us would actually click or not. At one point, when my husband was off in the restroom, our pastor asked me what I thought. I told him I had no idea, as much of the evening had been based on small talk and stories—not really heart issues, which is what really mattered most to me. That's what I was waiting on!

One of the things my husband will now say that attracted him to me so much back then was that I knew what I wanted. I’m not sure how I conveyed that, but I guess he knew that I wasn’t just dating for the fun of it. If I was going to do this, there wasn’t going to be any playing games or hard-to-get. Fortunately, he felt the same way, which is why he called me the very next day. None of that “wait two days” or however long “the rule” is supposed to be. He called the next day, which I appreciated.

When he called, I was a couple of hours away, visiting my best friend. So I called him back on my drive home. I had no idea what to expect when I called him back; all our other interactions had been so brief.

But this one was different. It finally felt like the walls came tumbling down and I got to really know this man. It was a two-hour car drive and I was still talking to him while sitting in my driveway for another hour or so before going inside.

I can’t remember what all we talked about, but we talked about enough stuff—real stuff, meaningful stuff about God and family and character and priorities—that when I hung up that phone that night, I knew that whoever got to marry him—me or anyone else—would be a lucky woman. It was evident from that moment that he was the real deal. He was the kind of godly man I’d been waiting for.

Click here to read the next part in Our Love Story. You can also catch up on all the posts I've shared in Our Love Story series.

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