Real Life Romance: Part One

A few months ago, Emily from Emily Had A Little Lamb posted a mini-series about how she and her husband came to be. I decided in honour of our swiftly approaching anniversary, I would do the same. I love telling people the whole story of how the fabulous dude and I met, fell in love and came to be Mr. and Mrs. Fabulous Dude. I think our story is actually quite cool and I can't wait to be able to tell it to our future children someday. Some may call it coincidence, some may call it fate. I call it God's plan. The story is quite lengthy and as such, is broken into 7 parts. Coincidentally (or not so much), our anniversary is in 7 weeks from today and so I will share a piece of puzzle each week until then.

So, grab yourself a glass of sweet tea, a Pepsi, a margarita, or something else cool and delicious, sit back and enjoy...

When We Were Young

Our story begins somewhere around 1993-1995, between the 7th and 9th year of my life. I am not exactly sure what age I was when my Uncle Dave starting telling me that he knew the boy that God wanted me to marry but it was somewhere during middle childhood. Uncle Dave and Auntie K were good friend's with the fabulous dude's parents. (This all sounds much more complicated than it really is...).

PAUSE: For the sake of clarity... My fabulous dude and I both come from family's who are part of the same church fellowship. Therefore, although we lived in different towns, we had many connections through church related events, camps, youth rallies and a particular Christian residential high school school, "GL", which will become very important later in the story.

Back to the story. My Uncle Dave and Auntie K were visiting us once and I clearly remember him telling me that he would soon introduce me to this boy...my future husband. I, being the saucy, smart-alecky child that I was, stuck my tongue out at him and said, "There's no point. I already know who I'm going to marry. I love R". R is a childhood friend, the son of my parent's best friend's, who later become one of the FD's best friends and was actually a groomsman at our wedding. See, I told you this all seems so complicated.

Over the next little while, my Uncle Dave made little comments and jokes about this elusive boy everytime I saw him. In Februrary of some year, I was traveling with my mom to FD's hometown to drop my sister and her friend's off at a youth rally that was being hosted by the FD's church. My Uncle Dave was there, also dropping off teenagers, and said to me, "I have someone I want you to meet. [Lucy], this is [fabulous dude]. [Fabulous dude] this is [Lucy]." My face turned beat red and the fabulous dude just kept bouncing his basketball, said "Hi" and then turned around and continued his game.

I know this seems so silly and inconsequential, but I can still remember the hat and necklace that he was wearing and exactly what he looked like as he stood there playing basketball with the big boys. This was about 15 years ago.

I am sure my Uncle teased me a little bit more about this boy over the next few months but when the summer came, that's when it got really bad. It was time for me to go to summer camp for the first time. When I arrived, I found I had been mysteriously placed on the same team as this boy for camp activities (did I mention my Uncle and cousins helped run this camp?). This mysterious placement continued to happen every single year when we returned to camp for another summer.

We were young. He was cute. He, along with one other boy, were the heartthrobs of summer camp. All the girls were ga ga over them. Except me, of course. I kept myself cool and composed, obviously. Looking back on my old photos from camp, I find many photos of me and my friends with the fabulous dude and/or the other boy "coincidentally" posed in the background. That's right, we would set up our photos to make sure that they were in the background because we were too shy to ask them to take a picture with us. The following photos will demonstrate my point very clearly. They were not all taken the first year I met him, but demonstrate my crazy obsession over the following years.

The photo looks as though it was taken of this girl. The legs hanging from the ceiling belong to the FD and the boy in the striped shirt is the other heartthrob I mentioned.

The photo is being taken of my friend wearing the beige hat in the right hand side of the photo. I'll give you one guess as to who the boy wearing the white hat in the left hand side of the photo is.Again, here is a picture of my two friends, Jen and Lindsay and surprise surprise, the FD is sitting beside them.

The yellow hat? Yup, you got it. That's him.And finally, I was brave enough to take his picture. Although probably one of my friend's did the deed.

I am sure I hardly spoke to him while we were at camp that first year. We were at an age where girls liked boys but boys still thought girls were gross. So, aside from the fact that we were on the same team and he was lucky enough to see my athletic prowess from a very young age, I wouldn't say we actually became friends until a few years later. Below are the only photos I can find from camp that have both of us in them. Some are from when we were young but some are from much later.

This is us with our camp friends when I was 11 and he was 12. Can you find him??

Here I am second from the left, wearing the blue Campus Crew shirt, displaying a really strange look on my face. The FD is at the far right with a flower tucked into his hat.

By the time this photo was taken, we were teenagers and I was no longer afraid to talk to him or to take his picture. This is one of my very favourite photos of us.

The next part of the story is one that I don't personally recall but I have been told and retold enough times that I am sure it must be true. My mom tells me that when I returned from camp that first year, she casually asked me if [fabulous dude] had been there. I looked up at her, turned bright red and said, "Mommy, I love him".

To be continued...

This post is being linked up at MM&Ms at Musings of a Future Pastor's Wife