The Story of Us, Part 2

In honor of our 10th wedding anniversary next month (June 17th), and because I've had several people ask to hear how we met and courted and generally got around to getting married, I'm writing out "our story" for those who are interested. If you don't remember (or you missed) Part 1, we're picking up after December 1997 when Peter had given me a hand-painted lighthouse for Christmas. He was 22 and I was 16 and we looked like this...

...So begins our second year of knowing each other. We continued to enjoy a close friendship despite our 6.5 year age gap (which was really nothing considering my closest sibling was 6.5 years older than Peter!). We went to a birthday party together in January and ended up talking on the way home about how God had lead each of us towards living and working overseas as missionaries. We discussed whether Peter wanted to do it forever or if he thought he would eventually do something else. We talked about how I wasn't sure how I was going to fit into missions - possibly a teacher (HA!) - and about how my dream was to attend Moody Aviation and train to become a mechanic. Most noticeable to me was that he didn't scoff or even laugh when I told him I'd like to work on airplanes. He was all for it and offered to help me learn more about engines and maintenance if I was really interested. The thought crossed my mind that "he will make some woman a wonderful husband". Well hey howdy hey! It never even crossed my mind that it would be me! I was not interested in Peter in "that" way. :-)

The end of January/first of February we had a huge snowstorm in East Tennessee that knocked out the power in the area. My parents have a generator at their home, so after a couple of days, several Moody students, including Peter, and Peter's mom and brother all moved in with us since we still had water and electricity. They ended up living at our house for ten days - lots of fun and laughter and really getting to know each other.

I'm quite sure at this moment these two never thought they would someday be son/father-in-law.

One night we went into town for Peter to do some laundry and while we were waiting for his clothes, he took me out and gave me a lesson in how to drive a 5-speed (his car). When we got back home, I mentioned to the other Moody guys that Peter had given me a driving lesson. There was shocked silence - apparently Peter never let anyone drive his car and yet he had let me drive. Oh really? Interesting. When the snow finally melted and the power came back on where they lived, I was sorry to see them go. Peter and I had enjoyed cooking together most nights and even cleaning up while others studied or horsed around. Once he found out I like to tinker on mechanical things, he even let me help him when he did a check on the generator...

On Valentine's Day week-end, my parents and I went to NC to visit my sister. Mom asked Peter if he would like to bring some friends and house/dog-sit for us while we were gone. He accepted and when we got back there were two apple pies waiting for us. (How nice - he bakes!!) He stopped by shortly after we got home and we were met with the new (and improved) clean-shaven Peter...

(Excuse the picture, the only one I could find was chopped up and in a scrapbook!)

There was another change that I didn't know about yet...he was fighting an inner-battle because he realized he was falling in love with me. The fact that he was 22 and I was 16 scared him to death...well, actually, it scared him to thin-ness. He lost over 40 lbs. in 2 months because he was so stressed out over his feelings for my little teenage self. Ain't love grand?! (As an aside, since we've been on the South Beach diet, it's been a running joke that he needs to stress about something again so the weight will come off faster!) He had decided not to ask any friends to stay with him at the house while we were gone as he realized he needed to spend some time praying about his feelings for me and hoping the Lord would put a giant neon light in the sky to tell him what he was supposed to do. The decision for him that week-end (unbeknownst to me) was that he was willing to wait for me and see what the Lord had in store. I should probably mention that if I had known that, I would have had a conniption fit (as I did later when I did find out). :-) But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Since he knew I was interested in learning more about engines and mechanical stuff, he offered to bring over an old lawn mower engine that he had so that I could take it apart and learn about how it all worked. My folks graciously agreed to let us use their dining room table (covered in butcher paper) as our work station, and one Friday night in March we tore into the thing...I learned about engines and Peter fell even harder for me. Thankfully I was still clueless at this point! :-)

It was shortly after we worked on the engine that something happened which would change the course of our lives forever...but as this is already getting long, I'll leave that for the next installment. :-)