Our Love Story

I've been inspired by Erin, who recently shared on her blog how she and her hubby met. I know a lot of my readers already know "our story," so you can skip over this post if it bores you to tears to hear it again. :)

I love thinking back to the way God brought us together. Jim is from Ohio, while I'm a NH native. Jim attended college at Bob Jones University in SC, while I attended Northland Baptist Bible College in WI. Humanly speaking, the odds of us ever meeting were pretty slim! But God does work in amazing ways.

I always figured I would meet my husband-to-be at college. Through my first 2 years at NBBC, I went through one crush after another, but I never once in those 2 years had a date. I've never been an outgoing person, and actually I had never been on many dates, period. In my senior year of highschool, I had gone on 3 dates total: Christmas banquet, Spring Banquet, and Jr.-Sr. Banquet, all with different guys, all of whom were good friends to me, but not potential mates. :) At college, I was rather disappointed to again be overlooked when it came to dating. I would go to social events with a bunch of girlfriends, and we would have a great time, but I would have at least liked to get to know some guys! (It wasn't unusual for a lot of girls to be without dates, though; some Northland guys tended to not find Northland girls very attractive, as evidenced by their use of the term "the cowpath" to describe the path that led from the girls' dorm to the classroom building. :) Although to be fair, there were many nice, gentlemanly guys there too, and a lot of my friends met their husbands there!) Anyway, looking back now, I could not be more thankful that I didn't have any dates during my college years. Though it hurt at the time, I can see that God was keeping my heart for my future husband, who had not come on the scene yet! Although I don't believe it is wrong to get to know guys in a casual setting, I've come to believe that when it comes to dating, it's better to not give little bits of your heart away to one guy after another, thinking that each of them is "the one," and then finding out he's not.

Anyway, I came home for the summer at the end of my sophomore year (1997), still with a few lingering crushes and hopes for meeting Mr. Right the next year. Little did I know that Mr. Right was right on my doorstep, so to speak! :)

My home church had been given the opportunity of hosting a carpentry mission team from BJU for a month. This team would help the church men with finishing our new building. Our church was small, and the men had been working on the new building for several years, not wanting to hire out a lot of the work and spend more money that they didn't have. So this mission team of 6 young, strong college guys and one of their teachers, was a huge boost to all of our spirits! During the month that they stayed, they got a lot accomplished. We still didn't get the building completely finished for another 2 years after that, but they got it much further than it had been.

As I'm sure everyone has figured out, Jim was one of the 6 guys on the team. I actually didn't notice him the first night they were at church; I was too busy catching up with friends and family to really pay attention, but over the next few weeks we spent a lot of time with the team. Different people in the church would have them over for supper every night. The first time they came to our house, I think it was the Monday or Tuesday after I got home, I did notice Jim. He was pretty quiet, and several of the other guys were not! The funniest thing to me was that he was the only one who had gotten cleaned up and combed his hair before coming to our house. I thought he was a little conceited! :) After they left, I remember telling my mom, "That JP is cute, and he knows it!" (The other guys on the team called him JP because there were 2 Jims on the team.) Anyway, he really wasn't conceited, and I found out later that he wanted to make a good impression because he HAD noticed me at church, and already somehow knew that I was the girl he was going to marry! And I realize now that I've always been way too quick to judge based on appearances, without knowing what the person is really like. :)

My family also would go up to the church occasionally in the evenings, and my sister and I, and whatever other young people from the church happened to show up, would play Dutch Blitz with the guys if they were done working for the day. We had a lot of fun teaching those guys to play Dutch Blitz. Jim and I still love to play it, but it's best with a group! During this time, I guess both of us could sense a mutual attraction, but we were both pretty shy, and didn't really talk that much to each other. But once in a while the other guys would tease him about me (in front of me), so I knew he was interested. :)

A few days before he had to leave, he called me up and asked if I would like to go out for lunch with him! I was SO excited; of course I said yes! He came to get me the next day, and I was so nervous. I figured he wouldn't know any of the places to go out to lunch around there, so I had it all figured out what we would do. (This is a good example of why the girl should learn to always sit back and let the guy be the leader.) Well, he said something about a picnic, but being so nervous and all, I didn't catch what he said, so I blurted out how we could go to this pizza place, etc. I never even caught on to the fact that he had a picnic all packed and in the back of his truck! :( He didn't push it and we just went out for pizza! Later when I found out, I felt so bad. I guess we were both nervous, though, otherwise he probably would have spoken up again! We had a nice time anyway, and got to know each other better over pizza. And the next day, we had another date--this time for a picnic! :)

We decided that we would write to each other after he left, and see where it all went. Over the summer, I found out that although Jim was quiet and shy in person, that he could write a good long letter when he put his mind to it! Letters flew back and forth from OH to NH, and he and his mom even came back to visit in July. In the fall, we went back to our respective colleges, and continued to write and call each other every week, sometimes more than once. I was looking back over some of his letters to me last week, and it made me thankful that we had all that time apart, even though it was hard at the time. Getting to know each other through the written word was really neat; and I think helped us get to know each other on a level that most couples don't get to experience. Even now, I sometimes miss getting letters from him! We tend to want to clam up about the difficult issues of life sometimes, when in the past, we would just spill it all on paper. I sometimes think we communicated better before we were married! :) But, it's a lifelong process and we're working on it. :)

We got to see each other occasionally; he came out for a week of Christmas break that year, then I flew down to SC to visit him at BJU, during NBBC's spring break. That summer I flew out to visit him in OH for a week, which is when we got engaged. :) Then he flew back to NH with me, and went on vacation with me and my family to PEI for a week. That was fun! We haven't been back since, but I long to go again!! He had graduated in the spring of 1998, and so he was working in OH that fall. Letters and calls now went back and forth between NH and OH! He came out to Northland to visit me for a few days in the fall, which was good, but just too short. Then we saw each other around Christmastime again. By this time, we were planning our wedding for the summer of 1999. Jim decided to move out here that winter, and began his own carpentry business. We had originally figured on living in OH after we married, but we have ended up in NH so far. (Jim still has an itch to move west eventually, though, and I'd be OK with that, so who knows where God may put us in the future!) We married on August 7th, 1999, and here we are, 6 years later. It's been a wonderful ride so far. I look back and see so many ways I could have been a better wife . . . but there is no going back, so instead I need to determine to be the best wife I can from today onward! I'm so thankful that God has given me a man who loves Him, who desires to lead his family and provide for us, and who loves me and puts up with me in spite of all my shortcomings! I'm also so glad that God knew just who was right for me, and kept me from getting sidetracked in other relationships before meeting Jim. He truly knows what is best for us! I don't know who said this, but it's a quote that I like, and I feel it has really applied to my life: "God always gives the best to those who leave the choice with Him."

Well, I'm sorry this was so long! If anyone has actually made it all the way through without falling asleep, thanks for sticking with me! :) I know there are many more intriguing and exciting love stories out there, but this is ours, so it's special to me. :) It's been fun to reminisce about it. I hope we never forget to see God's hand in all the twists and turns of our life.