With Valentine’s Day coming up, it seemed like a perfect time to share my own courtship story.  It will also help provide some background for when I tackle the courtship/emotional purity issue as I mentioned the other day.

Ours is not a typical “courtship story” — at least not the type we’re taught to expect — because we met outside the context of my parents’ activities, so Mom and Dad had never met Michael before he asked permission to court me.  But that’s reality — we don’t always meet our future spouses within the four walls of our churches!

The Pre-Courtship Period: How We Met

In 1999, I was working as a cashier at a local, Christian-owned grocery store chain with several young adults from Michael’s church.  One of my friends and coworkers, Neil, invited me to his church’s Young Adult Bible Study (aka “YABS”).  Actually, he invited me on numerous occasions, because I was slow to take him up on the offer.  I didn’t have any particular reason not to go, I just never made it a priority, as I was already actively meeting with my own church family.

(Just to be clear, since you guys don’t know all the people involved, these invitations were not overtures or anything.  Neil was “attached,” and I worked with both him and his girlfriend.  These were simply sincere invitations from one Christian to another.)

Eventually, though, after several months of invitations to their weekly Bible study, I made arrangements to attend once.   Ironically, Neil had a late class that night and wasn’t going to be there ’til a couple hours in. It seemed that everyone else was late, too.  When I arrived, no one was there.  I was a little nervous that maybe I had the wrong place and would be sitting around in some — wrong — stranger’s house, so I headed back out to the driveway, where I met Michael, who was just arriving.  That’s how we met: him walking up the driveway in his peacoat, carrying a small television, and me headed back down the driveway for fear that I might be in the wrong place!

More of the Pre-Courtship Period: Just Friends

Our “Young Adult Bible Study” actually was Bible study and fellowship, and I loved it.  We’d eat, then have an inductive Bible study — which Michael led — then watch a movie or play a game or whatever until the wee hours of the morning, after which Neil and I would often show up at work at 6:00 a.m., singing VeggieTales songs from the night before!  (Yes, we grown-ups enjoy(ed) VeggieTales, too.)   I began attending every week.

Michael and I were the only totally “single” people consistently coming to the study. Only one couple was married, but the others were all in serious relationships.  They weren’t officially engaged, but they might as well have been. For a long time there was no romantic inclination between Michael and me. We were good friends; we talked a lot, and we both knew that in general we were what the other person was looking for in a spouse, but there were a couple of doctrinal differences between us that we knew made even considering marriage foolish.

Somehow, in the course of all of our discussions, we eventually resolved these differences. I don’t even remember now what they were.   We didn’t sit down with the intention of working through them; we just talked, in general.  In some cases, it was a matter of us agreeing all along but not explaining ourselves well enough to realize it at first.  In others, one or the other or both of us altered our views just slightly due to study and that was enough to bring us into alignment.

Raising the Stakes (Still Just Friends)

Well, in September of ’99, we had a conversation that changed my perspective on our relationship.  It was one of “those” days (or weeks), and Michael was feeling really unappreciated and discouraged. As we chatted online, he spoke of quitting his job and moving to Maine. He wasn’t really serious; it was just one of those things one says when discouraged, but I realized that I hated idea of his moving away, because if he moved I wouldn’t ever see him again. And I hated the possibility of never seeing him again. There still was no particular physical attraction or anything of that nature, but I realized that did not want to ever be separated from him.

Upon reflection, I realized that we had resolved our doctrinal issues and there was, therefore, nothing standing between us. I remember praying that if he was the one the Lord had for me that God would send him to talk to me (as opposed to me approaching him) and that He would cause my dad to know that he was the one. I also asked Neil to pray for patience for me. (We joked that praying for patience could work because you know the old joke about how if you pray for patience God will give you twins? Well, to have twins, I’d need a husband!)

I believe that shortly after this, God began to turn Michael’s heart toward me, although Michael didn’t realize it yet. I started seeing some tiny indications that his heart was softer toward me or something.  I’m not even sure how to explain it, because he wasn’t flirting or anything.  There was nothing overt.  He tells me, looking back, that it wasn’t even conscious.  But I sensed something. And if he goes back and reads his journal from that period, my name was starting to come up more and more.

A Turning Point

By about Christmas, he was becoming aware of his heart change. New Year’s Day we chatted online. He asked me what those things were that had been between us.   When I heard (or, rather, read) that question, I knew it was the beginning of the end of life as we knew it.  I responded with the list as I understood it.  His reply?  “Uh oh. There goes the safety net.”

That was it. We just knew at that point that we had been chosen for each other. I can’t explain it. It wasn’t a matter of it “feeling good” or some other emotional thing.  It wasn’t even a romantic thing.  We just knew.

Up to this point, there was no courtship.  We were just a couple of friends, and — because of those aforementioned differences — there was no reason to even consider courtship to this point.  But at that moment when both of us knew those barriers were gone, everything changed.  He called my dad and left a message for him at the office.  When Dad got it, Mom heard, too, and said, “Don’t call him back! I know what he wants; I’m not ready for this.”*  Dad called him back.

*She was joking, y’all.

The Actual Courtship Period

Dad and Michael met and talked and Dad said he’d talk to him again in a week. Talk about torture! Michael seemed pretty calm but I was about to go crazy with the suspense. Another comment that specifically stands out in my mind is Michael telling me not to worry because, “You have two men and one God who love you very much. You’re the safest girl in the world.”  Dad, obviously, gave him permission to court me. Actually, he gave him permission for sort of a trial courtship.  I don’t even know what that means; that isn’t really a “thing.”  I think calling it that just made Mom feel better.

Dad was pretty comfortable with Michael right away, but Mom wasn’t at all.  (That’s what I get for neglecting to remember to pray that God would let Mom know he was the one, in addition to Dad!)  Mom says that at some point Michael said something — she doesn’t remember what it was, but she thinks it had something to do with him verbally defending me to an important person in our lives — that changed her heart in an instant, and she knew it was all right, that he’d take good care of me.

He spent some time at our house, and I occasionally spent some time with him at his mom’s house.  But the bulk of our time together was at church, or driving to/from church.  When you’re the youth & music minister, you spend a lot of time at church activities!   So he would just come pick me up from (my) work and take me with him.  I still attended church with my family on Sunday mornings, but I would join him for church on Wednesday evenings, for youth activities, and occasionally on Sunday evenings.  And of course for YABS.

At the beginning of April there was another sit-down conversation with my parents.  This is where we were hoping that Michael would get permission to actually court me instead of just “trial” courting me.  I thought it was going horribly.  In fact, I actually left the room crying in frustration.  But as it turns out, after I left he was given permission to marry me.

Nothing Changed, But Everything Changed

On April 13th he proposed (in the driveway where we met), and we were married on September 9, 2000.  You know how “everyone” said that when the year 2000 rolled around everything was going to fall apart?  Computers would all crash and everything would go crazy?  Well, we joke that the new millennium didn’t change anything, but it changed everything!