HOW WE MET : JOHN'S VERSION

So I decided to ask my husband to write his rendition of the "how we met" story. 

We don't have a wonderfully romantic fairytale by any means. 

To be honest we were two very different people than we are today. 

Six and a half years ago we were two incredibly self serving individuals that God had other plans for. 

He brought us together..

to change us...

to show us His glory...

to show us what His love really was about.

We needed Him. 

He revealed Himself to us. 

Together.

We give Him all the credit for changing our lives and trust me, we both still have a long way to go. 

So here is John's glimpse of those beginning days... I will be giving my version next. 

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I'll need to start off my "first blog" with a bit of a disclaimer:   My wife - great writer... Natural talent, eloquent, detailed, and fascinating.  I can easily see that she has the gift to inspire, based on many comments left on her blog over time... Even more so I know she is inspiring me personally through her writing, but also through the blessing of living life together.

Now, I on the other hand, am not known to be an amazing writer... But I'll give it a go.

Heath asked me to guest blog on her page the other day, in response to a couple "how we met" story requests.

Heather has always found entertaining my rendition of "our story" and I must admit, it is a bit silly.
   

The first time we met (yes, there was a first!) I was a hard working, future oriented young man.... At... Abercrombie & Fitch.  My job consisted of properly folding of purposely wrinkled clothes, spacing hangers equidistant from each other, and of course always trying to shoot rubber bands onto the "Moose" and its horns. Oh, and I can't forget... Hitting on girls that were shopping there was a must for most of me and my coworkers.
   

Needless to say, one fateful day, along came Heather with a friend of hers innocently shopping one day. They didn't know it at the time, but upon purchasing the clothes they wanted that day, they would be the selection (through happenstance) of my next flirtatious conquest.

Now I know I'm not exactly earning points with the readers here, but I *was* single, dumb, and working at A&F... What did you expect? :-)   But my "conquests" were rather harmless and silly anyways.  Mostly for fun.    

Now, when you're working retail and you only have a few precious seconds to get your one-liner across and hope for the best, you better have a good system down.  In my case, I figured "no pressure, be a bit ridiculous, and expect to be shot down.  Because, you're definitely going to come across like you're not trying very hard!"
   

Are you ready for my line that got me my future wife's phone number?

   ".... So.  Rager tonight, at my bro's pad.  You should come!"

Want to know why it worked?  Me too... I'm still trying to figure that one out! The only way I justify it was that I so oversold the "rager".... And there wasn't one, by the way.  Although if she/they would have said yes we totally would have thrown one together...  And so oversold it that it maybe didn't sound too threatening? I don't know... Like I said, still trying to figure that one out.

Moving one, so now I have Heath's number.  Wait a couple days (well past the Rager that never happened) and give her a call.  Phone rings. And a girl answers the phone... A girl that definitely isn't Heather!  A minute later, and I found out that heather had just moved to Hawaii for college, and I was then talking to her 15 or 16 year old sister, and recent recipient of Heathers "hand-me-down" cell phone.  Upon finding out I was speaking with a sophomore in HS, you must see why Heather and I had to meet *twice* to build our relationship.  Needless to say, I deleted her number from my phone...

We hardly knew each other anyways... I had literally just met her, hadn't spent any time with her, not to mention she had just moved to HI for college.

*delete* from phone... No harm, no foul, no hard feelings.

Then, a couple years later.... Good old fate stepped in.

Ironically, I'm still pretty much the same guy, but really trying hard to do more with my life.  So I'm out of A&F, and am managing my family's auto repair shop while going to college.  But... Still having ragers...

One night, my roommate invited this girl he had met over to our apartment. We were having a bunch of people over, it was a great time to hang with his new girl, and all was good.  So in she comes, with my future wife, Heather Marie.

And here is the mood I'm in this particular evening.

(Again, I don't always love telling this story because I was still in my particularly sleazy stage that most guys go through)

So here's the mood I'm in.  My date that night was in the bathroom when Heather walks in.  She had drank too much that night and was sick as a dog in the bathroom... Which was a major turnoff in my book.  

Needless to say, as fate would have it, in walks Heather, and the opportunist that I am, seizes the day to hit on her again!  And.... I got her number, again!

However, at this point, neither of us knew at the time we had met once before.... That realization would come months later.

So I get Heath's number.  And here's what I instantly like about her.  She hardly gives me the time of day.  

She wanted to talk to me, but on her terms (usually when she was bored at work... She'd want me to text her jokes). Oh, and while she doesn't shoot me down, she is next to impossible to spend time with!  These things drove me crazy, and made me really like her, and respect her even more.

Not long after meeting Heather, her disapproving cousin invited the two of us to church.  She and I had eventually started dating, and he could tell I wasnt a type that his family would like, and he decided the only way to save his cousin was for me to hear about Jesus.

Man... He was right.

Not only did he (and He) save our relationship, I accepted Jesus as my Lord and savior virtually immediately.... And needless to say there were some serious changes made.  Gone was the heavy drinking and reckless partying.  In came a meaningful relationship with my Lord and my girlfriend.

Over time, God changed my priorities to His.  The worldly lifestyle was now distasteful to me, and happily left in the rear view mirror.

It wasn't till Heath and I had been dating for three or four months that she came to the realization that I'm the guy from Abercrombie & Fitch... And I still to this day get made fun of a bit for it.

We can both laugh at it now.  It reminds us of when we were younger, and helps us keep a perspective of what it was like back then that and how easy it is to be completely worldly and how badly we need Jesus to change our aimless hearts and minds.

Now we are married for almost five years... And with kids!

God is good, he has blessed me more than I deserve. 

Thanks all for reading this, and sorry Heather for embarrassing you in any shape/form!

John

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Here are a few photos from our dating days. Notice my constantly changing hair color! lol!