Since we’re only a week away from Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d share the story about how I met my husband!
Have you ever stubbornly stamped your foot and said, “No. I’m never going to do that”? I’m never going to live in that town? Or I’m never going to do that job?
When I was younger, I stamped my foot and said, “I’m never going to marry a pastor.”
I grew up as a PK (Pastor’s Kid). My dad was a Lutheran minister and served God faithfully until the day he died. While he loved his ministry, he would also get discouraged from disgruntled parishioners, financial shortfalls, the heavy burden of his workload, and more.
As a child seeing his hardships, I declared , “When I grow up, I want to marry a man with a regular job.”
But . . . of course, sometimes God has a sense of humor in how he works. It’s funny how He decides that what we DON’T WANT to do is often exactly what we NEED to do. He realizes long before we do that we’re letting fear dictate our decisions, and so He forces us to face that fear once and for all. He knows that once we walk through our fear (instead of running away), that we’ll be stronger on the other side.
During the fall of my freshman year of college, a guest speaker by the name of Tony Campolo come to our campus for a week of spiritual revival. Every day Tony shared about his ministry and passion for the poor, the underprivileged, and the hurting. By the end of the week, I knew I couldn’t live a “normal” life.
I came to a place where I wanted God to use ME in ministry. Once God had hooked me, it became clear that I’d need a partner who also felt the same about God using HIM. With fear and trembling, I added “pastor” close to the top of my list of qualifications in a mate. I’d gone from “never” to “need.”
Once God finally had my attention and obedience, I expected that He’d immediately bring the right man to my door. All fall and into the winter I looked for that man.
Nothing happened.
After praying and wrestling through the angst of being single when so many of my friends were pairing up, I decided that I needed to be patient and let God bring me the “right” man in His timing. So I stopped worrying. And I went home for Christmas break at peace with waiting.
Over break, I tried to arrange a visit with my best friend from high school. But it turned out that both of us were busy working and spending time with family and had almost no free time.
One evening near the end of my break, I was supposed to be at my younger brother’s basketball game. My best friend was supposed to be at a party. But somehow, neither of us ended up at our events. On a whim, my friend gave me a call (even though she thought I’d be gone). On a whim, I picked up the phone (even though I’d already changed into my pajama’s and was planning to go to bed early).
My best friend cajoled me into changing out of my pj’s and getting together for just a little while that evening with her and a couple of friends from her local college group. Thirty minutes after the call, my best friend and two young men showed up at my house with board games and chips in hand.
We had a lot of fun together that evening playing games and joking around. I immediately felt comfortable with the men, particularly the tall, handsome one who kept teasing me and throwing a dish towel at me.
As the friends left much later in the evening (a “little while” had turned into a “long while”), the tall one stopped at the door, looked me in the eyes with his twinkle and crooked grin, and said he’d had fun. Then much to my surprise, he asked if he could call me sometime.
I said, “Sure. Anytime,” as nonchalantly as possible, all the while my insides were jumping up and down like popcorn.
That sweet man with the twinkle in his eye and the easy smile, did call me. Over the next few days before I left for college, we spent more time together. I was attracted to him, and I could tell he really liked me too.
Our last night together we talked about what we each wanted to do with our lives. You can imagine my surprise when he said he longed for God to use him in ministry of some kind and that he was considering becoming a youth pastor.
After he left, I could only sit in stunned amazement at how God worked. He brought someone into my life in the most unusual of circumstances, on an evening I was supposed to be gone, on an evening my best friend was supposed to be busy.
It was a meeting that wasn’t supposed to happen on so many different levels.
But that meeting that wasn’t supposed to happen eventually turned into a marriage proposal! And now my husband and I have been married for close to 25 years! Although he’s no longer a pastor, he’s still in ministry as a Christian counselor.
YOUR TURN! How did you meet the love of your life? And for those who haven’t yet met your true love, what are the top qualities on your list for a mate?
P.S. I’m giving away 5 signed ARCs of my new medieval YA, An Uncertain Choice (which releases March 3)!! I invite you to stop by my website and sign up there for a chance to win! JodyHedlund.com
Jody Hedlund
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What a great story! Mutual friends arranged a meeting with my husband, but it was not a totally “blind date”. I was a fitness instructor at a local tennis club and his card group convened in the room I vacated at the end of classes; so we had a casual acquaintance to begin with. We met in February and were married in November; now married for over 22 years. Four children and four grandchildren later . . . . .
I met my spouse at church. His sister and I were friends in high school. We have been married almost 40 years with 2 children, many grandchildren and great grandchildren.
God does have a sense of humor! Loved your story Jody. I said I’d never marry a man that had children. A couple we both knew got us together on a blind date. He had been married before and had a four year old daughter. This coming August we will have been married 34 years! A sense of humor indeed!!
I was divorced for seven years. I had dated but just about gave up in finding a good man. I belonged to some computer dating sights and spotted a man who posted “looking for a woman of integrity”. Wow! I contacted him and met him a couple of weeks later. He was a widower with a 14 year old child still at home. We met and within a few short months I knew I found my “Good” man. One day he turned to me and said “you are Mildred,” Huh? His deceased wife told him before she died (sick for many years) that she wanted him to be happy and to find Mildred and enjoy a good life. My husband and I married 7 1/2 years ago. I couldn’t be happier. He is the love of my life. I married him 2 days before my 50th birthday. We honeymooned in Disneyworld. my life really began at 50!
I love this story and am pretty sure I’d never heard it before. I still remember standing in a prayer circle for you two before you headed out to get married…and being so excited to welcome you back to church when you returned! What a blessing you both have been over my life.
I still think it’s so God-like that my husband and I grew up 2 miles apart and spent 12 years in the same school…and yet I was 34 when we married. 🙂 His timing is perfect! While I don’t know how we really MET, I do so specifically remember the day when I sat in Chapel Pike Wesleyan Church, where I had attended for 11 years, where I was involved and happy…and God said “It’s time for a new church home.” WHAT?!?!!? WHY??? I had no clue where to go, and immediately He put the name of a church in my mind. A church not on my radar. An unlikely church. But I went, baffled about why God would ask this of me. Not long after, I met the man I believed God had for me to marry. And then in the heartbreak of a lifetime, he left me. I had no idea that Ryan was watching from afar, watching me agonize through that season. Watching me flounder and yet cling to the Lord. And the best redemption ever was this: I had prayed that the man who left me would come back. And not just come back, but just show up at my door randomly and say he loved me. He never did. But one night, months later, the doorbell did ring. And Ryan stood on the other side. And I had NO IDEA he was about to confess his feelings for me. God redeemed the very thing I thought I had lost forever. We knew from the start that we wanted a forever relationship. And when he told me he was dating me with the intent to marry, all fear fell away from me. God redeems in such HUGE ways. So grateful. Every lonely year, every tear-filled night, has been fulfilled in the man God chose for me. Grateful.
“He realizes long before we do that we’re letting fear dictate our decisions, and so He forces us to face that fear once and for all.” Yes! We listened to a video series in our church small group recently by Rick Warren and he said something along the lines of, ‘When you pray for patience (for example), God doesn’t usually just hand out patience. He puts you in situation that should produce the opposite of patience. And in that situation He helps you cultivate patience through His spirit.’ Same idea as your comment, Jody. He leads us to confront things.
I met my husband in college through a friend. My friend is my husband’s first cousin. If I hadn’t been placed next door to her in the dorm, I wouldn’t have met her, we wouldn’t have become friends, she wouldn’t have introduced me to her cousin, etc… 🙂
Loved hearing your personal romance story, Jody! So fun.
Wes and I met at church one Sunday while we were both in college. His roommate was a young man I had met by accident right before coming out to school my freshman year. We had a church camp reunion at a girl’s house in Los Angeles (about 3 hours from my home town) and Scott (my husband’s roommate) had been the girl’s boyfriend at the time. After we remembered that we knew each other, Scott, Wes, and I became great friends, the three of us hanging out together all the time. Then in church one day, Wes was leading singing and I was sitting next to him in the pew. One of the older men of the congregation who was a little senile came up to us after service and complimented Wes on his song leading then asked to meet his “wife”. Well, that became a joke among us for quite some time. In my head we were just friends, but I later learned that Wes, clever fellow that he is, planned to use that joke to his advantage. We started celebrating our “anniversary” once a month with a lunch date until Wes finally admitted that what he felt for me was much deeper than friendship. Having my eyes opened, things progressed from there. Within about 3 months, we both knew we would marry, but it was just my freshman year, so we decided to wait. We married the summer after my junior year and this year we will celebrate a real anniversary of 23 years. The Lord surely moves in mysterious ways.
So many amazing stories. They are a joy to read!
I also met my husband in college. He & my roommate had gone to high school together so we frequently called on him when we needed a ride into town. He’d often call to chat when he was bored and my roommate would make me talk to him when she was busy. Well, that forced me to get over my shyness a bit and over the course of several months we gradually became best friends and very quickly after that, we knew it was something more. We never “dated” in the usual way and he’s the only boyfriend I ever had. We’ll have been married 12 years this March!
I met the love of my life at a bible study. We went to the same college but we actually met off campus. We knew each other for about a month before I finally realized that I was attracted to him. He would walk me to my dorm building every night after our group of friends hung out and that’s how we really got to know each other. I didn’t have much of a list. I just wanted a man who would be kind and loving. And I married the sweetest gentleman you could ever know. God has been so good to me.
Thanks for sharing how you met your husband. It sounds like a really cute story. 🙂
My husband and I have been married for almost 46 years. I’m from Canada. I worked at Pepsi when I met him. I worked on the line and my husband worked at Lodge and Shipley in Cincinnati Oh. Pepsi updated their machinery and my husband who was a service engineer was sent to my employer to install the machine and get it up and running. I was supposed to be laid off during this setup. The plant manager decided it would be best to have a worker there to try things out during change over and I was chosen. Not sure why because I had plans for a vacation which got ruined. To make a long story short I met my husband and got to know him. We dated and after he returned home to Cincinnati he continued to call me. His work bought him to Canada often and eventually he asked me to marry him. So that’s how we met almost 46 years ago.
Shirley
Never say never to God. lol.
First I would like to say to Jeanette…Mildred means “gentle strength” You are what he needed.
Life began at 40 for me. I had been a single mom with 4 kids for 7 years. He had been single dad with one boy for 7 years. I never dated. I asked God right from the beginning if He had someone for me. He told me, yes, and I said that was good and I wouldn’t date until He brought him. A long 7 years later, I met him at my daughter’s church. The next day I dreamt I was getting married. I thought that is way weird. Anyway we were a mountains drive away so conversed for hours by phone. We were married a month and a half later. When people asked us why so quickly, we laugh and say…”We waited 7 years for each other.” God’s choice is awesome. We now have 9 wonderful grandchildren and are what the world likes to call “soul mates”. Another interesting point to our life was that we we both born in Washington, D.C. —both graduated from kindergarten in Germany at different times, lived in the same cities at different times in the west and both our dad were military lifers.
So sweet, Jody!!
Congratulations on 25 years of marriage.
I met him on a blind date! married 4 months later.. celebrated 38 years this year:)
I’m enjoying the comments too… 🙂
Cute story, Jody! I met my husband through my best friend from college and her husband. I lived in NJ at the time and my future husband in PA, where my friends lived. They just gushed about this guy that would perfect for me. I was never into “fix-ups” at all, and I protested. For a year or so, my friend never brought it up, but one day, she decided to broach the subject again. I kept thinking, “This guy, again?” I was planning a visit to see my friends, and they decided this young man and I should meet. I only agreed to a casual meeting in which others were invited besides him, but in the end, they felt that would be more awkward, so they only invited him. It turned out that he also was a little reluctant to the whole thing himself. We met, and it was not an instant attraction! It was only after our second meeting that I thought there was something more in him that I wanted to get to know. I went back home, and we talked on the phone for hours on end, finding that we had a lot of similar values in common. On my next visit, he treated me to dinner, and while we remained only friends for several months, it was a friendship with an intent to get to know each other better. Well, let’s just say that I no longer live in NJ! PA became my home when I married my husband. I’m glad my friends did what they did, and they both admitted it was not something they would normally do- that was how strongly they felt we should meet! Guess they were right!
Jody, thanks for sharing the sweet story of how you met your husband. That unexpected encounter is encouraging to me as I’m 27 and still waiting on God’s miracle to bring my husband-to-be and me together. This year, I’m pushing myself hard to learn to be content with waiting. That’s one of the most difficult things I’ve faced so far, but if God can help me overcome my paralyzing fear of water (which He has, praise God!), then I KNOW He can (and will!) find a way to help me learn to be content with this current season in my life. I’m feeling a new wave of confidence in this process washing over me, so I’m praising God for progress. Thanks for listening as I shout out what He’s doing in my life right now. It’s wonderful to be able to share it with you.
Blessings and congratulations on 25 years of marriage to your sweetheart. That’s fantastic, and I wish you many, many more years of wedded bliss.
Andrea
I met my husband at a Youth Bible study at my friend’s church. He and his family were regular attenders and I had just started attending. We have now been married 27 years. While he hadn’t intended on having a career in Ministry a few years ago he and I both went back to school. He studied Pastoral Ministry and I studied Counseling. He soon became bi-vocational and I was our Church Counselor. The last few years the Lord has called us to minister in other areas in our community and always seems to call us to do something else when we least expect it 🙂
I have SO thoroughly enjoyed hearing all of your stories and thoughts! Thank you ALL for sharing!! For those contemporary writers out there, all of these comments are wonderful ideas for future stories! 😉