day two. part two.

if you're just tuning in.. welcome :) i'm sharing our love story this week as we lead up to our first wedding anniversary! to catch yourself up - you can start [here] -
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now for part two.

so we met.

from then on i always had a secret crush on him. it was on and off because so often i would think how wonderful it would be to date him, but how it would probably never happen. i tried to minimize my feelings for him but they always somehow found their way back to the surface.

[mr. b is on the far left and i'm on the far right for both of these photos. i was also obsessed with the peace sign and duck lips]

we saw each other every week for the group meeting and had lots of fun adventures together.

each week we had an 'after the meeting hangout' and it was always loads of fun. i always tried to sit by him and talk with him to get to know him better.

i sound like a creeper don't i?

after the school year was over i moved back to my home town.

we still kept in touch over facebook and couldn't wait for fall to start to get back on campus and see each other again.

some of the things mr. b said to me made me think at times maybe he liked me.. but i learned very quickly he was a very big flirt! [no worries, we talked about this before we had started dating and i told him he was super flirtatious. he no longer is - except with me :)].

the following fall, we got back on campus and continued to run into each other every so often and make small talk. i still continued to have on again-off again feelings for him.

at one point i seriously thought nothing would ever come about so i started 'dating' other guys. some of my choices back in the day were less than the standard. i realized very quickly that i needed to raise my expectations when it came to guys and not settle for non-believers. [this also has part to do with the lies i was fed in my high school relationships. i didn't think i was worthy of a good quality man.]

that school year went by quickly. summer came and i decided to go on a 10 week summer project with [cru.]. there was quite a group of us from our university going, one of them happened to be mr. b.

at this time i was still dating this non-believer we'll call... johnny. he was nice to me while we were dating and he was even sometimes romantic. i didn't know if i wanted to be dating someone while i was away for 10 weeks. part of me wanted to go down there open to whatever the Lord had in store and how he wanted to grow me. but the other part of me didn't want to stop dating johnny. so we decided to stay together while i was in va beach [where the summer project was].

on our ride to va beach, i confessed to mr. b how i used [i think this was a time when my feelings were buried and i didn't think i still liked him] to like him throughout our first year and a half of college. and after all - it was safe to tell him because i was in a relationship with johnny and didn't care what mr. b thought [or so i thought...]

as most guys are.. mr. b was shocked.

he claimed to have no idea.

then he continued to go on and apologize because he didn't see me that way and we were just really good friends.

talk about heart crusher! good thing i didn't still have feelings for him, right? ;)

our summer was amazing. after being there for one week i realized how foolish it was of me to date a non-believer while being a Christian and trying to grow in my faith. i called up johnny and told him that it wasn't going to work between us and i humbly asked him to not wait or expect things to change when i got back.

i remember feeling so free and blessed by this as i was obedient to God's calling of saving myself for a Christian man to pursue me like Christ pursues his bride.

by the end of the summer mr. b even spilled his heart to me about another girl he thought he was developing feelings for - i encouraged it too! wow.. what was i thinking?

i was starting to spend time with another guy - this time a Christian. he was and still is super nice and Godly, he just was not the one for me. he's happily married now too - which is wonderful!

summer was over and we packed our cars up and made the 15 hour drive back to campus for the summer.

[these are all photos from va beach. it's so fun to see how we've changed and grown both physically and spiritually]

the following fall is where the fire started to kindle...