This is our 11th Valentine’s Day together! It seems like it was just yesterday that this whirlwind romance started, and yet it seems we’ve been together forever.

In honor of this Sweetheart day, here’s a repost of…

Our Love Story

Chris and I met our senior year of high school when his family started coming to our church. We were in the same youth group that year, but I actually ended up avoiding him because I had a crush on him. :)  At most, we were acquaintances for the next five years. We weren’t even what I would call "friends" since we didn’t really talk to each other or have mutual friends.

The summer after I graduated college, there was a group of singles at our church that started hanging out together. The two of us had a lot of fun in those gatherings.  Sometime mid summer the teens at church went to Mexico on a missions trip, and I babysat the youth pastor’s kids.  During that trip, I came outside after church and found Chris talking with the kids planning a putt-putting outing with them the next day! Of course, that meant their babysitter had to come too, conveniently for him!

We did several things with him while I was babysitting, and I was really mixed up inside trying to analyze what I was feeling.  I told myself that it would never work out between us. We were just too different. Plus I convinced myself that he wasn’t interested. He was just a friendly person.

He shattered that theory when he asked me one night if I wanted to go get something to eat after a Bible Conference service. Over dinner, he told me that he had been interested in me for a while, and basically since I would be leaving soon for my first year of teaching, he wanted me to know how he felt though he wasn’t ready to ask me out yet.

Talk about shock…. I told him I just felt it could never work out. I had this idea in my head of what kind of guy I would end up with. And he didn’t fit in with my ideas. 

A group of us went to Charleston, SC for a weekend, and by that time, I was totally confused as to what I really wanted. I knew I was sending him mixed signals. I told him, "No, it wouldn’t work out." But my actions were saying,"I think you’re the man for me!" I just "couldn’t" seem to help myself.

Apparently my actions were confusing Chris as well, since he asked me hypothetically one night ,"Guy likes girl. She says no. Later she invites him places and is willing to do things with the guy. What is the girl trying to get the guy to think?" I gave the feeble answer of the girl really doesn’t know what she was thinking. I felt so bad that I was giving him these signals when I wasn’t sure what was going on!

It was that weekend though, that I just decided to let go of my preconceived notions of what kind of guy I needed and just give this a chance to work. And, surprise… it did!

Only two months later, on a date aboard the Catawba Queen dinner cruise ship, Chris handed me a gift…a custom wooden puzzle. As I was putting it together, Chris kept saying over and over, "I hope all the pieces are here…"

As I got towards the end it looked like there were a few pieces missing. I was worried that he would be disappointed, but he just said, "Well, go ahead and read it and I’ll try to just fill in the rest." So I began reading a nice sweet poem, and I got to the last line, "This is the way love should be…"  At that moment, Chris got down on his knee and pulled out the missing piece which said, "Honey, will you marry me?"

I was so excited and surprised because he had convinced me pretty much that a proposal wasn’t coming yet! Despite the surprise, I said YES!

The rest is history as they say. We got married just five months later in March of 2000 during Spring Break of my first year of teaching. It seemed really fast to everyone and a shock I think, since Chris and I seemed to be really different. I was the good girl and he was the rebel! :)   

But ELEVEN years later, here we are…

Happy Valentine’s Day!

♥♥♥