Mocha With Linda has begun a new weekly meme called Flashback Friday. She’ll post a question every Thursday, and then Friday we can link our answers up on her site.

The flashback question this week is:

When was your first date? You can choose either your first date ever or your first date with your spouse – or both! How old were you? What did you do/where did you go? Did anything memorable – either good or embarrassing? If it was your first date ever, did you continue to date that person? If so, how long? If it was the person you married, did you know he/she was “the one” or did it take a longer for love to bloom? Any other memories you wish to share about those wonderfully awkward first dates?!

My husband and I had our first date in January of his sophomore year and my junior year of college. We had worked together at the library all first semester, so were already friends. He asked me to a basketball game on a Friday night (a Friday the 13th, but I am not superstitious. 🙂 ), but I regularly went with a team to a nursing home in another town then, so I had to turn him down. But…it started snowing on Friday, so the university canceled all ministry teams for the night. As I was leaving the dining hall where the announcement was made after dinner, Jim was waiting for me, and said, “Well, since you can’t serve God, would you like to serve mammon?” He doesn’t remember saying that…but he did!

So we went to a basketball game that his best friend was playing. He somehow picked up on the fact that I am not much of a sports enthusiast, but we had a good time talking. We continued on as just friends, going out occasionally, but it wasn’t  long before I began to feel he was someone special and began to be interested in him as more than just a friend. It took me a long time, though, to determine that he was the one, partly because I am indecisive anyway, partly because I had been engaged before and wasn’t sure how to sort through my feelings and determine the Lord’s will. I told more about that and the rest of our “love story” here. We dated for almost a year and a half before we were engaged, and then we were married seven months later…30 years ago this last December.

I don’t have a picture from our first date — I don’t have many pictures from our dating days at all, and somehow most of them are a little blurry — but here are a few: