The Story Of Us: The Beginning

Since this blog is fairly new, I thought I would start a series of posts all about US. You know, John and I, us. How it all began.

I've read similar stories on other blogs, and I find the stories so fascinating. Maybe that is the curious reformed-snoop in me, but nevertheless I am always interested in hearing about people's history.

So here's mine. From the beginning.

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I remember the year that I met John. I was just finishing up grade 11 and was actually dating another guy. In fact, I wasn't even all that interested in this boyfriend of mine, truth be told. It was my way of getting over a long crush on a friend, and more likely I was hoping to make this friend jealous. It was a good self-esteem booster to know that someone else liked me. Very mature.

Several guy friends of mine had decided in their last semester of high school to join quizzing. Quizzing is a bible verse memory competition between churches. It runs from grade 7-12. So obviously these guys would join in their very last semester. Their reason for joining? Certainly not to memorize scripture. Nope! They just wanted to meet girls. Very noble reasons. It made me so mad at the time. They set out to go to a competition in Regina for a weekend. It was the last conference for the year.

I was never in quizzing. I hate memorizing stuff and it just wasn't for me. Yet now I am so thankful that these guys joined at the very last opportune moment. If it wasn't for that last Quiz Meet, I would never have met John.

During the course of that weekend, these guys did in fact meet up with some girls from Saskatoon. One began a dating relationship shortly after. He began to invite this new girlfriend and her friends to one of our youth group events. She did show up on night and brought several friends with her. Their youth group at church was pretty small and they decided to give ours a try. I'm sure I met John that night, but I don't remember hearing wedding bells or anything. This night doesn't even really stand out in my memory. I just know that this was the first time I saw him.

They continued coming to hang out with our group for the remainder of the school year. One incident that I remember quite clearly was one evening John had a chocolate bar. He offered to share it with me. Yes of all the things I could possibly remember....it is him sharing his chocolate!! But as a chocolate lover, this truly stands out to me. If this guy was willing to share his chocolate with me, a virtually unknown girl, he couldn't be all bad.

The summer began and I continued to date this boyfriend of mine. He was truly starting to annoy me, with comments of "I love you" that didn't mean anything to either one of us. I was very angry with those comments and vowed that I would never say that to anyone until I had felt that way for a very long time.

A large group of us from youth would often hang out together. One night we all planned to go see a drive-in movie. So we piled in to the cars and drove out there. It ended up that John and I shared the back seat of a small car.

I still remember watching Braveheart that night. (Braveheart music was what I walked down the aisle to, by the way) I still remember having to lean into the middle of the seat and strain to see past the rear view mirror to watch the movie. I still remember this odd sensation I had knowing how close I was to John. Throughout the whole movie I questioned what these new feelings were for the guy that I barely knew. (I found out later on when we were dating that John also felt those same things that night)

I went home that night and started some serious thinking. I must not have been very good at concealing my thoughts because I remember my mom saying something to the effect of "it's okay to like someone else, and you don't have to keep dating your boyfriend if you don't want to". Obviously not her exact words, but that is the gist of what she said.

Our youth group was going away for 2 weeks to Montreal on a missions trips which gave me lots of time to process my thoughts. I decided to break up with the boyfriend and just be friends with John for a while. So I did just that. I broke up with the boyfriend. I can't remember if it was the very same night later on that John and I talked, or if it was a couple of days later, but regardless we did talk. He was driving me home one night and one of us decided to open up the can of worms. Where was this going?

I said very clearly that I just ended a relationship and I wasn't wanting to get into anything else at that point. I told John that I liked him, but I wanted to get to know him as a friend first.

Our big group of friends continued to get together on a regular basis and I remember going for a long walk with just John one night. I'm amazed that I didn't scare him off as I think I talked non-stop for the entire time. He's a quiet guy by nature, and I guess the silence was too intimidating for me so I just kept on talking. We walked and I talked. A lot.

The next week (after the breakup) we were starting VBS in the innercity. This was our second year at this location and things were running very smoothly. John and I had made plans to go see a movie one Thursday evening. It was going to be a casual outing for us, but the day leading up to that night made it otherwise.

Thursday's VBS was a blast! We had arranged to bring in snow shavings from one of the skating rinks in town. We had an entire truckload of snow to play with on a hot summer's day. I do know that the kids loved it, but mostly I just remember John that day.

It's one of those moments where time seems to go slower and I can watch things in slow-motion in my memory. We had a snowball fight in August. He would chase me, I would chase him, etc. It went on for a long time that afternoon. I don't remember anything else about VBS that year. Just the snowfight between us.

That night we went and saw Apollo 13. Afterwards we went to the trainbridge, which became "our spot" for a long time. That night we began our dating adventure!

***I believe that 4 marriages (of my friends and us) resulted from that one weekend from the Quiz Meet and you can read about a similar version at my friend Colin's blog***