My Family: Our First Date

I love my husband.  He is amazing.  That being said, it is a miracle that we are even together right now.  Truly – only by God’s grace.

When Phil asked me out, I had not been on a date in over four months (see my blog on “Dating & Waiting”).  I was excited, but also confused as to whether or not it was really a date.  After all, he asked me to go to a local HS basketball game (and it wasn’t like he and I were really even friends).  I was serving with the youth at our church and he was a Youth Minister, so I honestly thought that maybe it was some sort of ministry outreach or something… I just couldn’t be sure.

I wanted to look CUTE… so I packed a change of clothes and headed to work (the game was right after work).  My plan was to go shopping at lunch for some black boots to match my outfit.  I went to DSW and tried on a pair of super-cute Jessica Simpson boots when all of the sudden I felt a sharp prick in my heel.  A nail from the boots had lodged into my foot.  Ouch!  (FYI – the store was so gracious with me and really took care of me that day).  Well, I left without the boots and headed to the doctor for a tetanus shot!

That night, when Phil came to pick me up, he had a sweet gift bag – Band-Aids, gauze, and a “Get Well Soon” card.  I was so nervous on the way to the game that I couldn’t stop talking. I made EVERY rookie mistake you can make in a date.  During the car ride, I’d ask him questions about himself and his family and then interrupt him because all I could think about was what to say next.  He got lost on the way to the high school, and I made fun of him – to the extreme.  During the game, I over-shared.  I talked about my entire dating history, my ex-boyfriends, my prior eating disorder, my sin struggles – everything that can and should be off-limits first-date material was in my monologue (trust me – he barely had a chance to speak!). 

As Phil was dropping me off that night, I felt that strong, sickening sense of “this guy is never going to call me again…” And he didn’t.  For a week.  An entire five days. I waited, and he did not call.  (It turns out he had been praying hard about whether or not to see me again, but I didn’t know that at the time.)  I saw him at church that Saturday night and avoided him.  He called me that very night and asked why I had run out of church so quickly.  We ended up talking for about an hour on the phone and scheduled our next date.  It was equally as awkward, as was the third.  During Phil’s proposal (see “The Proposal” blog), he read me a journal he had been keeping since we first met.  In it, he discusses those first three dates and his questions/prayers to God of “is this really the girl I am supposed to date?” 

Here’s why I share my story with you… in the past, I would have tried to manipulate my dating situation – I would have figured out an excuse to reach out to Phil when he wasn’t calling, or would have done everything in my power to try and force my own agenda.  But this time, I didn’t.  After each of our dates, I went home and prayed that if this was the man I was supposed to date, that God would show me and show him.  And I knew that if Phil kept asking me out, it was entirely because he was led to do so by the Lord and not because of anything that I had done. In fact, in my own power, I had done everything wrong.  Fortunately, after our first three dates, everything went amazingly well.  We fell in love, and I am so thankful to God for my amazing husband! 

My Family: How Far is Too Far

Volunteering with youth, I often get asked the question “How Far is Too Far?”  While I was single, I spent a lot of time digging into what healthy relationships looked like (see blog “Dating & Waiting").  Most of the time, people who ask this question are referring to the physical boundaries of a relationship.  I’m going to talk about those first, but will also spend time later talking about emotional and spiritual boundaries.  Regarding physical boundaries, I’ve heard some Christians say that they never kissed their spouse until their wedding day, and others say that they only refrained from sex.  The secular world will tell you that you need to “test drive” the car before you purchase it, but in a world that runs rampant with infidelity, divorce, insecurity, and depression, I’m not sure that I find that to be the best option.

I can’t tell you exactly what you should do, but I can tell you what the Bible says and what Phil and I practiced in our dating relationship.  The Bible says to flee from sexual immorality (1 Corinthians 6:18).  It says that every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against their own body.  Hebrews 13:4 says that marriage should be held in honor, and that the marriage bed should be undefiled.  It goes on to say that God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.  Matthew 5:28 explains that Jesus defines adultery as anyone who looks at a woman lustfully.  And 1 Thessalonians 4:3-5 says that God’s will is that we would be sanctified - that we would abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of us would know how to control our bodies in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like those who do not know God.  There are so many other verses that speak to the fact that in the “how far is too far” debate - sex is too far, but I won’t list all of them. 

For me, I knew that if sex was too far, that I didn’t want to even be close to that line.  Phil and I drew the line much further away and decided that for us, French kissing was too far.  [That’s not to say that neither of us had never been passionately kissed in the past, but this was where we set the boundary for our dating relationship].  I know that may seem extreme to most, but here’s how we came to this decision.  For me, when I am kissing someone that passionately, it evokes emotions and feelings and triggers hormones that I cannot control.  If I am going to be self-disciplined and control my body, I know that when I get to that point, I lose some of this control.

Phil and I also set other boundaries in our relationship.  For example, Phil and I rarely spent time alone together (we both had roommates who were usually home when we were at our houses).  We never stayed up late together, and we rarely texted pictures of ourselves to eachother (and the pictures we did text were ones of me in a hard hat for work or him holding a rabbit that he caught).  When we went swimming, I wore a one-piece bathing suit.  I wanted to guard Phil’s mind and his eyes, and I knew that by dressing modestly, I was protecting him.

Phil and I also set  emotional boundaries.  Proverbs 4:23 says “Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.” For the first several months of our relationship, Phil did not call me every day.  I was confused and hurt by this at first, but came to understand that this made a lot of sense.  There’s no reason that at the beginning of a relationship, Phil should be spending more time talking to me than he does to the Creator of our universe each day. Just like we were taking the physical aspect of our relationship slowly, we needed to take the emotional slowly.  Phil and I did not hang out together more than two or three times per week.  It’s not that we didn’t want to spend time together, but we knew that a healthy relationship was not co-dependent.  We worked diligently to guard our hearts.

The last set of boundaries that we set were spiritual boundaries.  For Valentine’s Day, Phil gave me a book called “Knowing God” by J.I. Packer.  We committed to reading a chapter a week from this book and discussing it during one of our date nights.  Phil also wanted us to pray together after reading the book.  While I was comfortable praying during meals with Phil, I hesitated to pray with him for any long period of time.  Here’s why: I believe that prayer knits the hearts of believers together… that praying with someone one-on-one will strengthen a friendship or relationship.  While that is not a bad thing, I did not want my heart to be knit spiritually with anyone other than my husband.  While Phil and I would pray together after reading the book, our prayers were shorter and less emotionally deep than the way that we pray together now as husband and wife.

I know that some of these things may seem crazy – that our boundaries may not be the same boundaries that other couples choose to set, but here’s what I know… Phil and I had the healthiest dating relationship I have ever experienced.  If we had ended the relationship before we were married, I would have been sad to lose the friendship of such an amazing man, but I would not have been devastated like I had been in the past.  Our relationship progressed slowly but was sincere and was good.  I would encourage my single friends to set boundaries now, and to find a man who agrees with these boundaries.  Don’t settle for less than God’s best.  We’ve all made mistakes in the past, but it’s never too late to begin on the right path. God is in the business of changing hearts and lives – He can set our paths straight – all we have to do is ask.  I am so thankful to God for the work that He did in my dating relationship and the work that He has continued to do in my marriage.

My Family: Dating & Waiting

Today I want to share with you what I did during my wait – the time before I met my husband, during my singleness.

So here’s the deal – the honest truth – I really liked having a boyfriend.  I was the girl who was either dating someone or talking to someone or texting someone or crushing on someone.  And here’s the problem I found with that – when one relationship would end, I would feel like I had lost my identity.  Like I was incomplete.  Sure, there were times when I went a few months without having a boyfriend, but having a man was always the end-goal.  Looking back now, knowing what I know, that seems so silly.

A few years ago, I ended the most serious relationship I had ever been in.  It was an unhealthy relationship.  We thought we loved eachother, but he had trouble being faithful and we had a lot of drama.  I should have ended things much sooner, and he probably should have too, but we didn’t.  Not too long after that relationship ended, I felt a still, small voice telling me that it was time to be alone.  Time to stop dating and time to “figure things out”.  So I obeyed.  I made a commitment to myself that I would not date (even if asked) until after the New Year. 

I set out on a journey to become more in love with Christ and less in love with myself and the guys around me.  It was a truly amazing time in my life.  Each Friday night, I would have a “date night” with God.  I would begin by preparing dinner, thanking God for giving me great food to eat and for giving me time to spend with Him, in His Word.  After dinner, I would go back to my bedroom and read my Bible and other Christian books (mostly books about being single and resting in the comfort that God is who He says He is).  I would listen to Christian music, and then fall asleep praying, thanking God for who He was and what He was doing in my life.

I was travelling a lot for work during that time, and during my long commutes, I would listen to podcast sermons about what the Bible says that dating, marriage, and healthy relationships should look like.  Most of these podcasts came from Watermark Community Church.  They currently have a few different series on their website under “The Porch” section: Boy Meets Girl, Cupid: Dating Myths, The Dating Game, and Summer Lovin’ are a few of the series that I recommend.   As I started learning what healthy relationships looked like, I realized that my whole mind-set had been wrong.  I had been looking for someone to love me rather than being confident in Christ’s love for me and searching for someone who loved God. 

I also read several different books about being comfortable in singleness.  A few of these are: Passion and Purity: Learning to BringYour Love Life Under Christ's Control (Elizabeth Elloitt), Singleness Redefined:Living Life to the Fullest (Carolyn Leutwiler), and Your Knight in ShiningArmor: Discovering Your Lifelong Love (P.B. Wilson).  Here’s the deal – I wasn’t comfortable being alone.  I was literally defining my life by the wrong things, and that led to confusion, heartache, drama, and real emotional consequences.

For the several months leading up to the New Year, I did not date.  I worked on drawing close to God, and just like James 4:8 promises in the Bible – He drew close to me.  When the New Year came around, I realized I was very comfortable with remaining single.  I prayed that if God had someone out there for me to date, that he would show me who that was, and I knew that if there wasn’t anyone, I would be ok.  Well, on January 3, my husband sent me a Facebook message asking “What you up to?”, which turned into a phone call and a date request.  We went out for the first time the following day. (See blog “Our First Date”).  While dating my husband, I continued having a “date night” with God.  Spending time with my Creator had become a priority, and Christ became the center of my relationship with my husband.  The biggest difference this time was, I knew that even if Phil didn’t love me and didn’t want to date me, that the God who created this universe loved me more than I could imagine, and for the first time, I was content.