Our Love Story—Date #2

We met at the State Capitol Building at 8:00 that evening. I had spent the whole day looking forward to our time together with great anticipation.

And the evening didn’t disappoint!

We trolled the streets of downtown Salem together for hours that evening. The weather was cold once again, but not cold enough to keep me huddled up in my dorm room instead of out and about with Rob.

Our conversations that night were anything but shallow. Forget the weather, sports and politics; we were engrossed in conversations about faith, family and the future. We were certainly having a great deal of fun together, but this was a different kind of fun than I was used to.

This wasn’t fun for the sake of having fun; this was clearly fun with a purpose. Rob was methodical, intentional and calculated. He seemed to be very deliberate about the subjects he brought up to talk about. And very purposeful about what he shared with me.

And the more we talked, the more I prayed this man—or at least a man of equal character—would someday walk through life with me.

Suddenly I was beginning to see that perhaps marriage isn’t just a necessary evil—something to be endured. But perhaps marriage could be the joining of two hearts, for a common purpose. Perhaps marriage could be a joy, a blessing, a life-long commitment and even fun!

In the world I came from marriage was until someone gets bored, or mad, or cheats, or lies or steals. In my world the words until death do us part, were not words of commitment, rather they were words of tradition. Because that’s what you say at a wedding. Not because that’s what you mean.

In my world the typical arrangement was to date for a little while, move in together, have a baby (or two or three) then get married. Stay married for a while. Endure it’s misery until someone decides they want something more (or different, or better) out of life and they part ways fighting for the next two decades over custody agreements and whose fault it was that things went south.

Repeat.

Though there were certainly exceptions to the scenario above, this was typical among my friends’ parents and my family members.

As I begun to understand God and the Bible more and more with each passing day, my hope for the future looked brighter and brighter. I knew I wanted something different for my life. Something more. Something real. Something lasting.

I wanted to spend my life with a man of deep character and integrity. A man who loved God and wanted his will above anything else. A man much like this man walking next to me that I’d grown to admire more than any other man I’d ever met.

At that point, there was no where else I’d rather be than walking through downtown Salem in the crisp, cool Spring air, enjoying the beautiful colors that surrounded us that signified new life. I was enjoying my time with Rob more than I’d ever enjoyed time with any other guy in my whole life. As much as I wished the evening didn’t have to end it started to rain about 11:00 and we both knew we’d have to wrap things up until another day.

Every moment I spent with him I found myself wishing for more time. Hours upon hours were never enough. After our conversation that I night I was pretty confident that there would be a third date in my future. He still wasn’t doting on me, expressing his affection toward me with words or actions, or speculating about our future together, but something about our time together felt so right. Surely he must be feeling it too?

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.