Setting the Stage
It was summer of 2011. I was trying to regain my health back by visiting my doctor on a weekly basis, which meant collapsing into a sterilized recliner whilst being hooked up to an IV drip. I hadn’t planned to meet a love interest. I felt like my still puny health negated the possibility for budding love. Until my future husband ushered his gregarious presence into my life, which dispelled every preconceived notion I had concerning what necessitates the need for romantic love.
But before I ever saw him face to face, actions had to be set in place for me to even meet him. Which leads me to a statement I never thought I would have written a decade ago.
I met my future husband online.
One of my best friends suggested I try meeting someone on Christian Mingle in the somewhat near future. I shook my head, inwardly thinking I would wait to do something like that when I felt like my biological clock was really ticking. Now wasn’t the time. But then I received a message in my inbox one July night advertising the services on Christian Mingle. I felt a prompting to click, so click I did.
I quite honestly clicked out of curiosity. I mean, who is on these dating sites anyway? Were they just a bunch of loser guys? Nerds who were in love with their computers more than people? I tried to click to discover more, but in order to actually see the faces of these mystery individuals, I had to register.
Darn. That put me in a predicament. I definitely didn’t want to get to the point of registering… but I complied. That very night, I saw the face of the photo you see above this story.
The face that would be my future husband.
During the registration process, I uploaded the photo above of myself. I love how we were already matching with the black and red. Thankfully it was one of those cute, unplanned coincidences and not one of those overly matchy runway disasters like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake’s nearly head to toe denim fiasco.
When I saw his face, I felt inwardly stirred to meet him. Somehow, something already seemed special about this one. We began corresponding, which then led to a message from him mentioning how he had met my dad at an auto repair shop, and also how he went to church with my brother at one point.
I was scouring my brain for information that would fit this story. Who was this guy? I asked my mom, detailing the information he had given me.
She burst out with a hearty exclamation of, “He’s that guy! He’s that guy your dad met at the auto repair shop! The one who your dad wanted to fix you up with!”
He’s That Guy!
Oh, so now it all made sense. And this is where I get to rewind the story for you so it can make sense in your noggins.
You see, in January of 2011, my dad met this blond headed gentleman at auto repair shop. My dad came home to me saying that this guy was just my type. He had his head screwed on straight, he had ambition, he loved God, and he was good looking. Only problem was, I was very sick at the time. Much sicker than I was in the summer of ‘11 because I had just started treatments.
I didn’t want any guy to have to be put through the gauntlet of seeing my body at a diminished state. That just wasn’t fair to him. It didn’t matter who the male pronoun was affixed to, it just wasn’t fair.
I brushed off the comments when they would come. And come they did. My dad kept mentioning how he wished we could meet sometime. My mom was eventually sold on him from my dad’s pitch to the point where she was wanting to know which church he attended to track him down! Again, the comments would only settle at the far corners of my brain.
…..Until I heard of his mention again that summer. “What? This is the guy dad was trying to fix me up with?”
You see on the other side of the computer screen, my fair haired mingle correspondence found out through a close friend that I was the sister of someone he went to church with, and the daughter of the man he met at an auto repair shop. These off handed comments from a friend is what compelled him to write in his message about his connection with my family.
It’s also how I was able to click the puzzle pieces together.
My mom’s enthusiasm was vitally present because this was the guy my parents were wanting me to meet for six months. I didn’t know of the match making connection until my mom’s announcement. Suddenly, those puzzle pieces were starting to become a very clear picture.
Out of all the people to be attracted to, I fell for the one my dad had already isolated as the guy he wanted me to meet without my prior knowledge before the cyber exchanges. How crazy is that?! Talk about providence. We eventually began talking on the phone for hours, I’m talking at least four hours!
A New Season
Month by month, my body was revitalizing. At some point that summer, my body began to heal to the point where I felt more like a human and less like a wounded zombie. When I finally met him face to face at Barnes and Noble, my body had mended to the point where he would never have been able to presume an illness had touched my body.
Upon meeting in person, he suddenly became shy, looking down at the ground, and nervously fidgeting with his hair. Definitely a far cry from the unabashedly bold but caring guy I had talked to over the phone! He finally began to open up, and communication freely commenced as if we had known each other since we were babes.
Oh yeah, and in case you’re wondering when I told him my dad was trying to fix us up, I waited. When mid October came and we became official, I told him. I laid out the bizarre connection: how my dad kept inserting words about a wonderful guy at an auto shop that would fit perfectly with me, and how I didn’t know he was the aforementioned guy until my mom fit the pieces together after I read his message out loud.
Over the months and years, I had found that he carried every single attribute I had prayed for in a husband. All of those years as a teen and in my early twenties when I would jot down the characteristics I wanted in a husband were not futile. They were prayed over, and God delivered. Boy did he deliver! We’re now married best friends, partners in prayer, book buddies….The list could tick on with more descriptions of our companionship, but you get the point! I feel blessed to have a marriage like ours.
Reminiscing
Reminiscing on the beginnings of romantic relationships with our significant other should never get old, whether it was a traditional experience (through friends, at college in a shared course, etc.) or in a whacky way…you can fill in the blanks with those experiences. Each is an inkblot in your own story. Share your experiences of when you first met your significant other. I would love to hear your story.
Sorry to comment 8 months later but since I just came across your blog, I thought I would post how I met my wife in 1988.
My cousin was her youth pastor. He also lived on a lake in Warsaw Indiana and would often have the youth group come over and go out on the boat to water-ski or inner tube.
I also had my own boat and it was docked at his house so I was there quite often and he would want me to go out with him when the youth group came over so that he’d have someone watching behind him that he could trust as he was driving the boat.
One of the 18 year old girls from his youth group wanted to bring her boyfriend and go out on the lake and so again he asked me to help out and I did. I didn’t think anything about her at the time. Once they left my cousin ask me what I thought about her (Stacy). I said I didn’t really think about her or look at her that good but isn’t she like 16? He said she was 19 but she really was 18. However I was 24 and not only felt that I was too old for her but she already had a boyfriend.
I found out that a couple I knew, that lived across the lake, were her brother and sister-in-law. When they were visiting my cousin her sister-in-law said that she wish Stacy would dump her boyfriend and go out with me and apparently she told Stacy that.
About two weeks later she called over to my cousin and asked if I was there and I was. We talked for just a moment and then I went over and picked her up and came back to the lake. We went out on the boat together but she said she just wanted to be friends but was quite the flirt. Within a month I asked her to marry me. 5 months later we were married.
I left out a few important parts especially that her father was dying of cancer and my father had died when I was nine and although she was 18, because of dyslexia her brain was more like 13. Anyway I had sent her a card that I had selected while I was vacationing in Florida and sent it clear back to Indiana to her. Several of our dates were to see her father in the hospital. In July he was given 6 months to live so that kind of hurried our plans to get married within that 6 monthd. He was able to walk her down the aisle and died six months later so he actually lived a full year after diagnosis. I think it was important for him to walk her down the aisle and to also know that his only daughter, the youngest of four kids, was going to be taken care of.
Ryan Ritenour
We really enjoyed hearing your story about the meeting of you and your wife, Ryan. It’s wonderful to hear that your wife’s father was able to walk her down the aisle in spite of his health. I’m sure it was a sense of peace for him to know his daughter was taken care of as you mentioned. It was funny to hear that you were fixed up with your wife in a way and wanted to make sure she was yours quickly after meeting. She must be a special woman. 🙂 Thank you for blessing us with your story, Ryan. Even though we don’t know you personally, it feels like we do in a way. That’s the wonderful gift of the internet. Thank you for taking the time to connect with us. Many blessings- Michael & Sarah
As a side note: I’m sorry we didn’t respond sooner– we enjoyed your story so much when we read it weeks ago. Time passed, but for us, time seems different than years before. Your comment feels like it was just posted several days ago, but looking at the date, I can tell it was MUCH longer ago than that!
Sarah. Your story reminds me of how Allie and I met. We’re glad that we’re all friends on this journey together.
I just had someone else ask me how Allie Licona Peters and I met, so I figured I should tell the story. I was a student in 2009 at Southern Evangelical Seminary and I was also working at the Christian Research Institute. One day, I was driving back from work and figured I’d stop at the Seminary and see Gary Habermas who was teaching a class. Gary and I had spoken before. He had done a talk at our church about doubt and I asked if I could communicate with him about self-doubt, a problem I frequently have. He agreed and we formed a friendship.
I stopped by and when we were in the lobby with just the two of us, he asked me if I knew about Michael Licona’s daughter. Well no. I didn’t. He told me that she was going through a really hard time and that she had Aspergers. Gary told me that he had been talking to Frank Turek who told him that I have Aspergers as well. Alex McFarland might have been there as well for that conversation.
I joined Gary for the first part of his class and when the break came and it was time for me to go home, I asked some more questions. We started talking again and he told me what she really wanted was a boyfriend. I filed that in the back of my mind, but really, I didn’t want to go down the internet dating route, especially since she was in Atlanta and I was in Charlotte.
But I did communicate. At the time, Allie had gone through a break-up and a suicide attempt in fact over it and was trying to get back with the guy she had had the attempt over. I got Allie in touch with some of my female friends on Theology Web like Michelle Murphree and Michele Colton because I wanted her to have good female role models. I didn’t know she already had a great one in her mother Debbie Licona at the time.
So we started talking and I found something happening. I was coming to like our conversations more and more. I found my mind wandering at times thinking about Allie. Meanwhile, she was starting to notice the same thing. I was a guy different from the other guys she’d met. Apologetics had seemed to produce nerds who were all intellectual and no heart. I was different. She saw a love of apologetics in me to be sure, but also a love of Jesus. I find this odd because if anything, I would have said I would not consider myself a great lover of Jesus.
On Labor Day, we decided to say that we were dating. Plans started to be arranged for us to meet. That took place in October. Our first date was to the Atlanta Aquarium. That evening was spent watching Beauty and the Beast at her house and a dance together with me in a fancy outfit and her in a dress to “Eyes On Me” from Final Fantasy VIII. (The game is terrible, but the music is wonderful and this is kind of “our song.”)
When I got back, the mood was clear to everyone around me. They knew they’d better be prepared to book a wedding chapel. I found out later that Eileen Habermas, Gary’s wife, had said the same around September and that Mike had been saying that around the same time as well. Summer wedding was the prediction. I was thinking this sounded silly. After all, I had no prospects of getting married in July of 2009 and if you’d said I’d be walking down the aisle a year later, I would have said you were crazy.
On July 24, 2010, Allie and I said our “I do’s” to each other. Gary Habermas, the man who introduced us, was also the man who married us. Our wedding was truly a fairy tale wedding, with the best wedding toast ever by David Sorrell.
It’s amazing how love begins and today, I’m still learning what it means to love someone. I don’t think I truly knew until Allie came into my life. I don’t think I still know yet, but I want to spend the rest of my life learning it. I have come to love Allie even more as our relationship has continued and I figure that years down the road, I will love her even more and still be clueless as to what love is, but hopefully understand it better.
I love married life. I can’t imagine life without Allie and I strive every day to be a man worthy of her. I want to be that man that every day she can look at me with confidence as her rock and know that with me, she has found a place where she can be loved for who she is.
Love you Allie. Thank you for being in my life.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
http://deeperwaters.ddns.net/
Thank you for sharing your story, Nick. It certainly sounds like God’s providence that brought you and Allie together. Your date itself sounded like a fairy tale. Both of us would love to go to the Atlanta Aquarium ourselves one day. Sarah moved away from the Atlanta area shortly after it was opened, and has talked about going for years now. One day we will make it happen. 🙂 The unexpected elements are some of my favorite parts of your story: how you didn’t plan on getting married, Habermas introducing you two, the unexpected thoughts of each other- God certainly has a way of surprising us! Many blessings to you and Allie. -Sarah & Michael
Sarah, I love this! Talk about a marriage meant to be! There’s no denying God had this in his plans for you guys! No coincidence! You got what you prayed for and more!! What an amazing testimony to how God works for us. ❤️
Thanks so much for stopping by to read the post and thanks so much for your encouraging words, Tracy! <3