23 Years Ago…

23 years ago I was 16 years old and a junior in high school.  And I found myself hanging around with this guy…this guy I had known since elementary school, who I went to church and youth group with, who I sang with in the youth choir.  It seemed that everywhere I went at school, there he was.  Before school, during lunch, even when I was roaming the halls he showed up.  At church, the youth group always sat together during the service and for the last few weeks, we usually found ourselves sitting together…

23 years ago today, I became his girlfriend.  Together we went to 3 proms, countless movies, ballgames & dinners.  I watched him sing in the school choir, march in the band (he was a drummer then, too) and play soccer.  He watched me graduate and a year later, I watched him.  I said goodbye to him in front of his apartment building in Nashville, TN and rode 8 hours home with his parents.  I wrote him letters and talked to him on the phone late at night (when the rates were down) for the long year he was in school.  And after watching him graduate again, this time from Nasville Auto Diesel College, I rode away from that same apartment building except this time, he was driving us home.  Less than a year later, I helped him move again.  This time, I helped him move into an apartment that in less than 6 months would be our first home together.

Our journey hasn’t always been smooth – no one’s is.  There were harsh words and misunderstandings and arguments.  There was even a short break up in there, but we never left each other’s hearts.  The separations were hard and sometimes we wondered why we bothered to stay together being so far away.  But for me the bottom line was I couldn’t imagine my life without him.  For some people the decision to leave their hometown and all their family to get married might have been hard.  But for me, it was simple.  I would go where he went – and I’ve never regretted it.

23 years is a long time…but it seems like it was only yesterday that I was standing in the hall of good old Bluefield High School, waiting for him to get to school.  I can see him walking in the doors in front of the audiotorium, feeling myself start to smile because he was smiling at me.  He’s walking toward me and leaning down to kiss me…