Once Upon A Time . . .

June 16, 2005

(because all good stories start with once upon a time and this is a good story)

I met this guy. I was at a conference (much like the conference I’m at now in St. Louis, except it was last year in Los Angeles) for ministry type people and one of the standard questions to ask was - what seminary are you going to attend and why? (just a little background for the story).

So. It was early one morning and I was waiting for the library to open so I could check my e-mail and there were some people waiting as well and we did the polite question game. Who are you? Where are you going? Why? As it happened there was a cute guy, so I asked him. He said he was going to Princeton [more background: I thought for sure I’d go to Princeton until I visited and heard over and over again how conservative it was and so decided - probably not the school for me], so I was curious about this poor choice and asked why.

The response was something along the lines of: I want a more progressive perspective than the one I grew up with and I want to broaden my horizons, etc (you get the picture). Now you can imagine my complete shock. That was the very reason I didn’t choose Princeton. I was just flabbergasted (and it was early), so I simply said, “and you choose Princeton??”

I know. Not the most tactful response, but so be it. The library opened and that was that. Later on in the conference I encountered this same cute guy outside the library trying to find a wireless signal on his laptop (are we getting a sense of this guy - internet addicted perhaps??) and it came up in conversation that he had “googled” everyone at the conference before he came. Now. Perhaps that is something you normally do, but I do not and I thought it was very strange/odd/dorky/stalker-ish. And so that encounter ended.

It turned out that this guy was not as conservative (read: close-minded, in my world at that time) as our first encounter had led me to believe, nor as dorky or creepy as our second encounter had implied. In fact, he was kind of cool (and cute - did I mention that?? yeah, totally hot). So we hung out a couple other times during the conference.

One night we ended up at a bar with a group of people and I started laughing so hard I thought I was going to pee my pants and this guy took a picture (and put it on the internet later, of course). You can see the really classy nature of our first encounters with one another.

Yet, as fate would have it, he was interested in similar things I was: namely, how we do worship differently and incorporate spirituality and different types of reflection into worship experiences, etc. So, we kept in touch after we left the conference by e-mail and a few phone calls (namely when he was driving to school through torrential downpour and needed to stay awake, and not die).

It happened later that this same guy needed a place to stay in Atlanta one weekend this winter for a conference on Columbia’s campus. Now we had a mutual friend (Mark) who also went to Columbia so the thought was that this guy would stay there (makes sense - guy staying with guy); but, if you ever saw where Mark lived you would understand that no living, breathing human being would willing choose to stay in that place (lovely to visit, not to sleep - bugs and such). So, this guy ended up on my couch. Fortunately, I have two rooms with a door between them so it was all kosher. But, he stayed for the weekend and we hung out and it was fun to reconnect (still really hot by the by, but with a girlfriend, so you know . . . eye candy).

Now. He was dating someone at the time and so he was off limits. But I might have developed a small crush (okay, well, crap, I took his picture off the internet and proceeded to show my friends his amazing green eyes - over and over and over again). Apparently I really liked this guy.

It’s a month or so later, and we’ve kept in touch, and he comes through Atlanta again on his way to Florida and needs a place to crash for a few nights. I have a lovely couch, so he stayed again and this time was not dating anybody and well (thanks to Jake and Rockstar), one thing led to another and . . .

So. It’s true. I met my future husband at an FTE conference (crap, I brought up the marriage thing, sorry Adam). But it’s officially been a year now that we’ve known each other and so we thought it was about time to tell the story of how it all went down . . . including the part about me being something of a bitch the first time we ever met.

For the other side of the story, which is a little different, you can read about it here . . .

hehe.  i love him . . . i’m so goofy (sorry).

Posted in life by Sarah