The Story of Us: Dating

This is part 2 of a series all about John and I.

Click here to read Part 1 "The Beginning".


Dating for John and I lasted for 4 years. I was just about to begin my final year of high school when we started dating.

Things started out like you would expect of awkward teenage kids. We were shy and unsure of ourselves. Yet we (I) did lots of talking. We spent many nights chatting in the driveway before I went in the house for the night.

On our 1 month anniversary, John surprised me with a wonderful bouquet of roses as well as a box of good chocolate. Well after that, I was hooked!

My best friend at the time also began dating her now husband within days of when we did, and slowly we began to drift apart as we spent more time with our boyfriends.

John was working while I was in school but for most of the time, we were together. We were rarely apart.

As you may recall, I was not impressed with my previous boyfriend for using the "I Love You" term just because. So for this reason, I wanted to be Very sure before I would even consider saying this to someone. I was struggling with my strong feelings towards John and I wasn't wanting to admit just how serious this was becoming, even to myself.

It wasn't long after that John said it first.

Was I scared? No. Was I upset? No. Was I relieved? Absolutely! Did I say it back and mean it? Definitely!

I remember still being in Grade 12 when John gave me a promise ring. It's a beautiful little ring with a small solitaire diamond and I still wear it to this day. Friends of mine at the time asked me if I thought it was meant to be more than a promise ring, but at the age of 17 I knew better. We were obviously too young to make any legal commitments to each other, but we always knew that we would get married someday.

When the summer was creeping up, John decided that to make more money he was going to go treeplanting in BC. This meant that we would be apart for several months. I was devastated to let him go and I remember lots of tears thinking that I would never see him again.

We wrote many letters back and forth to each other and occasionally we were able to speak on the phone too. It was a great way to build up the communication between us, and it is true....absence does make the heart grow fonder.

For the next two summers we were also apart. The next year I worked at a bible camp and the year after John went treeplanting again. I guess we were getting used to the distance between us, but we didn't like it any more.

After the summer of John's first treeplanting experience, we both started working. I was saving up to go to bible school and after a boring semester at the U of S which John decided was NOT for him, he decided that he would go to bible school also. So 1 year later, we did go together to CBC (Canadian Bible College) which was in Regina at the time.

I am truly thankful for the experience that was dorm life and Christian education but 1 year was enough for me. John ended up going back for a second year with thoughts of becoming a youth pastor but in the end he didn't think that was where he was supposed to be.

I was able to get a job not too long after my school year at Canada Trust, which I worked at for many years. I was waiting for John to return home from his second year of treeplanting, which was also the end of 3 years of dating for us.

In phone calls and letters, John was fairly disappointed with the funds he was earning this time around. He said that he wasn't sure if he would ever be able to afford an engagement ring so we could start planning a wedding. For the previous year, we had talked a lot about getting married so this left me disappointed as well. I only had a part time job, which didn't bring in much money, and he was going back to his job at a machine shop, also not a lot of money.

How would we ever make it work?