Our Story, Day 1

Last July, I noticed many friends posting in a photo challenge to post a photo of themselves with their spouse every day for a week. While I thought that was cool, I wanted to try something a little different. So in addition to a picture everyday, I posted a little bit of our story to go with it. 

I am beefing up the story a little, and adding it here. 

 

In July of 2001 I went on a youth trip to Branded By Fire in Brownsville, Florida. I was mostly interested in this trip to spend 5 days away from home with friends. I had never been away from home for more than one day, so 5 days was very exciting to me. 

We had many adventures on the way up, a stolen teddy bear, plastic bottle rings, and lots of card playing. Once we got there I got to see what this whole event was about. We had morning services while our youth pastors got to go to youth leader training's, lunch, free time in the afternoon, and back again at night for the PM service.

On one of the days at lunch time, this crazy guy from the group is standing next to me in line for food. His name was Paul, but I had been told by another youth leader to call him Jr if I wanted to irritate him. That was the extent of my knowledge of this guy. Well, as we are standing in line, he randomly tells me pink is his favorite color (I was wearing a pink shirt), following up with saying we have something in common. Coincidentally, he ends up sitting across from me at lunch. He has Doritos, burrito with onions, and a Coke. I have the same meal. Smiling, he looks at me and says "we have the same food. Did you get onions on your burrito too?" Pouring my doritos on my plate I say "yes". He responds with "Look, you even poured your Doritos on your plate like me. Man we have a lot in common." 

I'm pretty sure I rolled my eyes at him and started a conversation with someone else near me. 

This crazy guy did have the most beautiful blue eyes ever, but one other thing I knew about him was that he was wayyyyy to old for me, he was 24 and I was 16. He was not an option. Just a goofball.

This trip wasn't just about God for me. While I was learning more about him, I was also pretty distracted with basically every "cute" guy there. You see, I wanted a boyfriend so bad. I basically was obsessed with wanting a relationship. I felt something was wrong with me for not having been in one yet. God was working on me though. See, I had read this fiction series in which the guy was the perfect Christian guy, and I kinda wanted a boyfriend like that. Just not bad enough to give it all over to God.

During the day you could also go to the store, buy VHS copies of the service (those old school things), books, CD's, teeshirts and other things from the speaker. While looking at books, I picked up a book called "Choosing Gods Best". That was a topic I was interested in, and as I was looking at it, my youth pastors wife said was good. So, I bought the book.