Around our dinner table this week, a young couple asked Josh and I to tell the story of how we met. Our kids jumped in with anecdotes and details they remember from hearing us share over the years, and later that evening I was left with the flush of feeling I always have as I think on those early days: we had no idea.
I thought I had an idea of course, at the time. I had a lot of standards, expectations, stories of others who had gone before. I also very much wanted to Do What God Wanted. I was probably a little insufferable, at least to myself and maybe to others as well. I remember at one point early in our dating life, Josh saying that perhaps I needed to relax.
We were both pretty thoughtful about our admiration for one another. It was certainly something that grew, over time, through friendship and conversation, and not all hot-blooded passion. But the truth is that we just didn’t know what we were getting into. Even with all the advice and the counsel, even with the desire to be discerning and God-fearing, who can know the person that the other will become?
It is because of this that I look at our story and say without a trace of cliché— I was given this good man by grace.
Josh turned 45 a few days ago, which we celebrated with carrot cake and an overnight stay in the city. I look at him now with his salt and pepper beard, his piercing blue eyes that wrinkle when he smiles, and I can still remember those first giddy days and the shock of my life when he told me he liked me.
I can still remember those days, but I can hardly recognize those people. He has changed. I have changed.
The most obvious change of course, is that he no longer has any hair. And this is usually the beginning of our story: Josh’s hair. I noticed it the first time I saw him, running with the rest of the soccer team across the field of our college campus. He was tall and athletic, blonde hair flowing in the wind. I was a new student, unaware that there were already quite a few girls who liked this blue-eyed boy with the long sideburns.
What I did know was that any guy that good-looking was probably not a man of character. How could he be? Cute guys usually knew it, and what were the odds that someone was both handsome and the kind of thoughtful, intelligent, man of conviction I was interested in?
I remember the first actual face to face conversation we had, in the parking lot outside the library. Josh said something insightful, something that stopped me— and he wasn’t flirtatious or shallow. I was surprised, and intrigued.
In the following months, we would find ourselves at the same table from time to time during meals. I continued to be surprised. He had a maturity to his thinking, and was not trying to impress anyone. He was thoughtful but not bullheaded. He was smart and liked to read. Before long I was swooning. But I knew it was a long shot. I had never had a boyfriend, never had anyone show interest in me. We were friends, albeit at the edges of our social circles. So I stalked him in the library. And he gave me a ride home for Christmas.
Then, somehow, miracle of miracles, the following summer he told me that he liked me. He wanted to date me. He drove out to meet my family. I told him all my deep thoughts and high ideals. He didn’t run away.
We spent the next year too much with each other and not enough with our friends. We learned, we grew, we went slowly, and then not slowly enough.
One Sunday in October, the perfect kind of fall day that comes to tree lined streets on the outskirts of Philadelphia, I told him I needed the afternoon to myself. Sundays were usually a day we spent together, but this day was different, and I was feeling heavy with decision. He knew something was off, but didn’t grow anxious, and he let me be. I spent the day praying, waiting, asking, wondering. For reasons I couldn’t exactly explain, I wondered if I was supposed to break it off.
He knew I was pondering something about us, and that I wasn’t feeling good about it. And he was also planning that very night to give me a ring. For a reason he too couldn’t explain, my state of mind did not dissuade him. He went through with his planning, and told me he’d pick me up that evening for dinner— supposedly to hear what decision I’d come to, but fully believing it would all be okay.
I don’t know what brought on my wrestling. Even now, I’m not sure all of why I felt so heavy that day. Sometimes I wonder if it was just a way to assure me that I hadn’t stepped into this on a whim, unwilling to consider the alternative, afraid to let us go if that was needed. By the evening, I was calm. Sober maybe, but calm. I had no idea Josh was planning a proposal.
Looking back, I can see the seeds of the man I know now: decisive under pressure, assured even when I am not, formed by his conviction rather than the fears of the moment. But back then they were seeds. Glimpses, not guarantees. Whatever I thought I was so carefully considering then, the truth is I had no idea what I was doing, and yet God was so good to me in spite of myself.
We sat in our hotel room this week, looking out over the city, ruminating over the past year and what we have learned, what we have noticed, what we are asking. It is not lost on me as I thought over our story from its very beginning, that so often we still have no idea, and so often I am still insufferable.
But I will say this: I lean on Josh with more confidence than I used to. I believe God is more gracious than I used to. I worry (a little) less about getting it right than I used to. I hope we are softer in our decision making, more trusting, more hopeful, more giddy with the possibilities of the good that comes in spite of ourselves.