Our First Meeting

Not lacking in imagination, I could think of many romantic first meetings with a future spouse. I can imagine that I was pushing a cart through the store, doing my grocery shopping and talking on my cell phone at the same time. I could imagine that as I was striding down the “international foods” aisle at Meijer’s, looking for my favorite salsa, I inadvertently bumped my cart into a man who was in the act of grabbing a jar of spaghetti sauce off a shelf. The man dropped the jar of sauce when my cart ran into him, and the jar shattered on the floor and splattered spaghetti sauce on his shoes. I imagine that in that situation, I would gasp, quickly hang up on my phone call, and apologize profusely, though, of course, the man would be gallant and untruthfully declare that it wasn’t my fault at all. Sometime later we would meet again at a church event or a mutual friend’s party, recognize each other from that unfortunate incident, and gradually come to the conclusion that our lives ought to be joined in holy matrimony. Now that’s my idea of an interesting first meeting. Other interesting first meetings would include such factors as runaway horses, faulty GPS’s, cases of mistaken identity, language barriers, stalled cars, ballroom dances….you get the picture.

However, the first time I met my husband does not make nearly such a fun story. When people ask us how we met, the short and standard answer is, “At Bible study,” though, technically, that isn’t the first time we met. It was the evening of my first day at college, and there was a fair where all the student organizations set up tables and tried to entice us freshmen to join them. I wandered around, table by table, looking at what the college had to offer. When I saw the sign for “Bible Bonanza,” I immediately knew I wanted to join the Bible study group. I quickly walked over to the table and wrote my name and email address on the sign-up sheet. The student running the table was in the midst of a conversation with another new student, telling him about the joys of regularly attending Bible Bonanza, which explains why I, who clearly did not need any convincing to encourage a desire to attend, was peremptorily ignored, except for a quick “Hello, I’m Angel.” The student who ignored me that day turned out to be the man who is now my husband. I met him again several weeks later at the Bible study and gradually a friendship grew out of our weekly meetings. To this day, he has no recollection of our first meeting, and he didn’t even know that I attended the new student fair until I told him that was where I met him. But I can live without an exciting story of my first meeting with my Love. Our life ever since has been exciting enough!