Our Love Story—The Beginning

He was 25 and I had just celebrated my 19^th Birthday. He was a well-known leader on campus, and I was a random girl who transferred into the school just a few months earlier. He was known as a gifted preacher despite his youth. I was completely unknown by all but a select few. He had been a dedicated Christian longer than I’d been alive; I was still a babe in the faith. I had given my life to Christ just over a year before we met, and I had lived according to the world’s standards for my first 18 years. He was fit, well-groomed and well-dressed. I could seldom be found in anything other than a t-shirt, sweatshirt, pair of jeans and tennis shoes, with my hair thrown back into a pony tail.

He was my shoot-for-the-stars dream guy. The unattainable, no way would he look twice at me, I can only imagine in my wildest dreams that he’d spare some of his attention on me kind of man. Even that—he was a man. A real man.

I had just emerged from a year long relationship with a guy who was still back home, finishing his Senior year of high school. He was really nice, a great guy actually, but looking back I can see a million reasons that we simply weren’t a good fit. And, in many ways we were both still kids at that stage.

But this guy that now had my attention was a Junior in college. He had been in the military. He had lived on his own for quite some time. He could do his own laundry and fend for himself in the kitchen. He was the leader of the college group that I started attending (and no doubt, continued attending after I met him… and all of the other wonderful people there too, of course!). He was president of the Eagles. They were the male counterpart to the Doves, the sorority-type group (we called them fellowships) that I had gotten involved with.

He had been the speaker at a college group retreat that I attended a few short weeks after I came to Western Baptist College (now Corban University and henceforth referred to as Corban for clarity sake). He also spoke on Wednesday nights at the aforementioned college group I attended. I looked forward to seeing him on Sunday mornings both at church and the college aged Sunday school we both attended (again, I’m not sure I would call it a coincidence that I decided to stay at the church that he was attending… I was incredibly intrigued by this man!). He was a regular in my world, but I was pretty sure I was just another girl in the sea of faces that he interacted with regularly.

There were only three people that I remember sharing my intrigue of this man with early on. Two were girlfriends who more or less laughed at me. One told me, “Yeah, you and every other girl on campus.” And the other one delivered the gut wrenching blow that he had his sights set pretty firmly on another girl on campus. And trust me, this girl was way more in league with him than I was! The other one was a mutual guy friend, I’ll call him J here, because well, that’s what his name starts with, but I’m not sure he wants to be named in the middle of my love story. You’ll hear more about him later though, because like it or not, he is part of my love story, just maybe not in the way he would have wanted to be a part of it 10 years ago!

I was a girl who was really trying to find my place in the world. I was new in my faith and was daily trying to figure out what it looked like to be a Christian. I felt out of place on a Christian campus where everybody seemed to have all of the pat Sunday School answers, and, although I’d read half-way through the Bible at that point, I had way more questions than I had answers. I had been raised in a very non-Christian environment, and this new world was a complete culture shock to me, but I loved every minute of it! I couldn’t get enough of my classes, chapel, our college group, church, Sunday school, etc. I drank up every sermon, every speech, and every talk that was delivered. I devoured every minute of time I could learning more about, and spending time with God, the God who loved me. Me of all people!

It was a whirlwind time in my life. I had just spent 3 ½ months at Western Oregon University where God stretched and grew my faith in amazing ways. Now here I was, the newbie on campus again—for the second time—but this time at a wonderful Christian College, surrounded by some of the coolest people I’d ever met!

Over the next year I’m going to do my best to chronicle our love story, in “real time”, 10 years later. Because 10 years ago this week, my love story officially began. Though I met Rob at the end of January, it would be two months before we would entertain the idea that God might be weaving our lives together. Okay, who am I kidding, it took me all of 2 minutes to entertain that thought, but it would be two months before I would realize that my silly little crush on this incredible man might actually turn into something far greater than I ever could have imagined!

First though, I must confess, I don’t remember exact dates, times or verbiage of our conversations, but I’ll be doing my best to capture the essence of our love story in written form. Everybody who is (or has been) married has a love story. I love to ask others about their love story, and I enjoy telling others about our love story too. Bits and pieces of this story have been told to plenty of people over the last 10 years. But here it will be published for the world to see. I sincerely hope that someday my kids and grandkids, and maybe even great grandkids will get a chance to enjoy this story and better understand the beauty of letting God write your love story! If I could have written my own love story 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have come anywhere close to writing it as beautifully as God has written it for me!


Click on the "Our Love Story" tag at the top of the page to see other love story posts, or to start from the beginning.