So, how did you meet?

A few nights ago, Todd and I presented our ministry to a group of new friends.   We had just a few minutes to get acquainted with the host couple before others started to arrive.  They asked how we met, so I thought that would be a fun story to start out with here, too.  So here goes:

Todd and I both grew up at different United Methodist Churches not too far from one another in Upstate/Northern NY.  We were both in Junior High when a bunch of my church friends went to Creativity Camp at Skye Farm Camp.   They camp home raving about this great guy who was at Clown Camp that same week.   They all had crushes on him, and one of them had snagged him as her boyfriend, so she brought him to a friend's birthday party.  I was unimpressed, actually.

We continued to see each other long after that romance fizzled, because we were both involved in regional youth events held by the church.  We became good friends.  He was my sponsor for an event called Chrysalis, which is a four-day retreat for youth.  There was never anything like romantic interest there; he always had a girlfriend, and I was never much of a boy-chaser.  I remember spending a good portion of an evening at one retreat comforting the girl he had just broken up with, while she sat on a bathroom floor and cried.  Yup, he was a heart-breaker!

It was at one of those retreats that we were talking late one night, on a sanctuary floor in Saranac Lake, NY.  I had a boyfriend with me that weekend, and I think he had a girl chasing him.  We were talking as friends about girls and guys, and he must have said something like, "...she's not the kind of girl I would marry...."  I thought, as if for the first time, I wonder what kind of guy I will marry.  And just like that, I heard it:  "You will marry Todd."  It was the voice of God speaking to my heart, not audibly, but unmistakably not my own idea.  I asked whether it was to mean someone like Todd, but no, it was Todd.  Then I understood that we would be apart for a while first, then find each other again.  I didn't say a word to him about it, but got out of that sanctuary fast.

Now, you may know that United Methodists are not raging Pentecostals for whom that type of thing happens all the time.  But I took it at face value.  I told some friends, and I dumped the boyfriend (sorry, Marc!).  Never had another boyfriend.  I was 17 and he was 16.  That Spring, I tried to make sure that even though I would be going to college, he would always know where to find me when he had his own revelation.  It turned out that my freshman year of college at Brandeis University near Boston, was our time apart.  At the end of the year, I hadn't heard from him at all.  I got a summer internship in Minnesota, and now I can't remember how he heard that.  I may have sent him an old-fashioned letter!

Apparently the threat of not knowing where I was finally motivated him to get in touch.  I got a letter from him in Minnesota, and he had actually called my parents to find out how to get in touch with me.  (I now know how rare a thing a letter is!)  We reconnected that summer,hiked a mountain together, and by October we had a long-distance relationship going over internet "talk", a 1994 precursor to IM.  We saw each other once after we started "dating," as his college was 2 hours away.  Neither of us had cars.  By the end of October, I finally told him that I thought God wanted us married.  He basically said, "Okay, sure." 
Yes, everyone thought we were crazy.
Three years later, on August 8, 1997, we were married. 
Many people are now even more convinced we are crazy.