Barb over at A Chelsea Morning asked fellow bloggers about their love stories. Here’s mine. 🙂

I worked in the library at my alma mater for 4 1/2 years. That was the old library — they had just started building the new one my last year there. In those days, most of the books were in 4 floors of “stacks” behind the desk. A student would look up in the card catalog what book he wanted, fill out a slip, and bring it to the desk, then we’d run up and get their books for them (my job was also my major source of exercise. :)) Later on I worked the files, checking books back in and rechecking them for students.

Jim worked in the periodical room. I had actually seen him before across a crowded amphitorium when he worked as an usher. I thought he was handsome. 🙂 I knew he worked at the library as well, but we weren’t scheduled at the same times, so we didn’t meet that year (his freshman year, my sophomore year. Yes, I’m an older woman — by about 6 months). Finally at the beginning of my junior year we were scheduled at the same time and met. He was always a lot of fun to be around. There was another guy whose job was to put the books back in order and back on the shelves when they were turned in, and if it was not busy at the front desk or in the periodical room, Jim and I were assigned to help this guy. So we all got to know each other and had a lot of fun. Some time after Jim and I had been dating, he told me that at first he was trying to get the other guy to ask me out because this guy was very shy and didn’t date much. That guy declined, then Jim thought to himself, “Well, if she’s such a nice girl, why don’t I ask her out?” So he did. 🙂

The very first time he asked me out, I was scheduled to go on a nursing home ministry in another town, so I had to decline. That’s always a little awkward for the guy, because even though it is a plausible reason to say no, he can’t help but wonder if there is some other underlying reason. But the day I was supposed to go, it snowed, and our ministry for the evening was canceled. As I was leaving the dining common after dinner, I saw him waiting for me. He still doesn’t remember saying this, but he greeted with me with, “Well, since you can’t serve God, would you like to serve mammon?” (Can you believe I did actually go out with him after that? :P)

We began dating, and I really enjoyed my time with him. With other dates I was always a little tense and nervous, but I think because Jim and I had gotten to know each other at work, I was more relaxed. Even though he was a lot of fun, though, I wasn’t sure about the relationship going any further — I wanted a guy with a sense of humor, but I wanted a little more than that to him, too. Well, as we continued to get to know each other at work and through dating, I began to see a bedrock of character. I saw him intercede for a student at work who was having problems and needed to go home, and discovered his compassion. I saw his genuine kindness and concern for others. I saw that there was an underlying love for God and a desire to please him. I saw his “sanctified common sense”. I realized that spirituality in a man could manifest itself in a quiet undercurrent rather than overflowing waves. (Another very fine young man had asked me out several months earlier, and as we sat down together, he took out his Bible and shared a little mini-sermon. I’m certainly not opposed to sharing things from the Bible with each other — Christian friends can and should, and dating couple should feel a freedom to do that as well. But this instance left me a little cold — there was no sharing or interaction. The young man was a ministry major and had certain ministry requirements to fulfill each week. I sort of wondered if I was his preaching opportunity for that week. 🙂 I had just become a Christian in my later teens and was fairly new to dating Christians and thought, “Okay….it this what it’s supposed to be like?” It took a while to realize that a guy didn’t necessarily have to pull out his Bible and convey a message for him to be considered a spiritually-minded man. 🙂 But I mean no disrespect at all to the young man in question — he was a great guy who loved the Lord. We just didn’t hit it off.)

So…I was discovering there was much more to Jim than a sense of humor, and I was finding myself more and more interested. I had two areas of struggle, though. First, I had been engaged before, so I knew it was easy to confuse feelings with the Lord’s will. Secondly, in my circles around that time, preaching to teen-agers routinely included appeals for salvation, surrender, and “full-time Christian service.” I had been saved at about age 17 and surrendered my life to the Lord for anything He wanted me to do. The next logical step seemed to be “full-time Christian service,” and the opportunities for that, as far as I knew at the time, were to be a missionary, marry a preacher or a missionary, or be a teacher in a Christian school (I didn’t know that there were so many more opportunities to serve God until later. 🙂 ) I had thought for a long time that the Lord wanted me to be a missionary, but through a variety of ways the Lord didn’t seem to be leading that direction. Jim was not planning to be a preacher: he was a Physics major. So part of the struggle with whether or not things could progress with him was the struggle with what the Lord wanted me to do with my life. After a long while I came to the conviction that all Christians are supposed to be in full-time service to God, not matter what our physical occupation. And God reminded me of something I had forgotten: just before Jim asked me out, I had grown weary of “dating games” and told the Lord I only wanted the guys to ask me out that He wanted to ask me out — and Jim was the very next person to ask me out. And He reassured me that since I had been earnestly seeking and asking for His leading all along, there was no reason to doubt that this was the way He was leading.

So once I felt I had the “green light” from the Lord, I felt I could continue on in the relationship with Jim. We had been dating for about a year and a half when we got engaged, and were married six months after that. That was almost 27 years of wedded bliss and three sons ago. 🙂

I can’t believe we looked so young!

(By the way, the Lord has reinforced that truth over the years that all Christian are — or should be — in “full-time Christian service.” Jim has had opportunities to minister to and witness to people in the course of his work who would likely never come to a church service or who would be guarded and defensive with a preacher. And He has shown me that ministering to my husband and family first, then just doing whatever is at hand needing to be done at church or even in the neighborhood is a ministry in itself.)