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Ten Years

An edited post from the archives, originally published exactly five years ago.

Ten years ago today, at approximately 7:00pm, a new guy showed up at our church's young adults' Bible study.  It was a good long time ago, really, but a few details stuck in my head (and who knows why I was even paying attention?!):

*New guy was short, bespectacled, and wearing a yellow T-shirt.  (I have no idea what I was wearing.)
*New guy sat on the couch closest to the door of our pastor's old house, while I sat in a chair next to the dining room (and the snacks.  Some things never change).
*New guy typed notes onto his laptop instead of using the paper outline and pen like the rest of this.  I found this rather pretentious.
*New guy claims to have tried to talk to me that evening.  As any good introvert would, I backed out or ignored him or some other mildly-rude behavior to save me from a conversation with a stranger.

Two days later, new guy shows up at our fall camp-out wearing an orange plaid wool lumberjack shirt and nearly trips over himself offering to light the way to my car in the dark with his headlamp.  I am slightly amused.  The real fun starts, though, when the instruments come out and we sit around singing, classic old-school American youth group style.  I have always considered guitar players and soccer players to be the sexiest of God's male creatures, but a trash-can-turned-djembe opens a place in my heart for hand percussionists.

A breakfast served together, a walk to see some cows, a sneaky maneuver by our pastor to see that I was the one to drive new guy and his friend home, and a careful ditching of the friend later, I was calling my friend Jenny to say, "I think I met someone.  You know, met someone."

And met someone I had.  "New guy" is, of course, my husband Isaac, married nearly nine years now.  These early/middle days of October are fond ones for us, and it's hard to believe we now have the birthday of our fifth child joining the celebrations!

If the past ten years aren't proof that God is good, I don't know what is!

This picture is from November 11, not October 11, but it was the earliest one I could find on this computer.  

There actually is, of all things, a picture of Isaac and I taken at the camp-out on October 14, three days after our first meeting.  We're eating an orange-chocolate cheesecake that I made.  He hates cheesecake.  :)

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