As you can tell from the post title, I'm a married man. I don't post about her mostly due to her reluctance to be mentioned and my respect for her concern. I guess today is a day to go against the grain due to how proud I am of her. But first let me give you some background information to set the context.
My wife, Christina, and I met while still in High School. Our fathers were both in the Air Force and happen to be stationed at Cannon AFB in New Mexico at the same time. While I had been at the school for a few years, remember that military families move frequently, she did not arrive until mid way through our senior year. Anyway, since the base was a good distance from the town we all had to ride a bus or drive. Seeing as I didn't own a car I had the wonderful experience of bus riding.
It just so happened that on one of those often boring bus rides that I spotted a pair of girls sitting together near the front of the bus. They looked new and one happened to be where a letter jacket from Spangdalem, Germany.
[Quick aside -- I spent most of my schooling, to include the first year and a half of high school, in Germany at Bitburg HS - a sister school to Spangdalem]
As any confident young man would do, I approached the girls and proceeded to do my best to make a good impression. To make a longer story only long, Christina and I realized we had been in the same band class in 8th grade and started a friendship. I did do my best to impress her with my great dating skills, they had worked on many girls before, but it seems I was doomed to failure with her - our first couple dates landed flat.
So, as many will, I moved on to other opportunities but remained friends. At the time something about her struck me and I just couldn't figure it out. It is easier with the benefit of time to understand what I saw then - a geniune lover of God. Her faith was the basis for all other things in her life and it truly made her desirable. But friends it would be.
Fast forward to the year after graduation and I had just finished basic training after enlisting in the Air Force. I decided to contact Christina and see how things had been going for her. After HS she struck out for Lincoln Christian College in Illinios so I hadn't seen or heard from her in quite a while. That contact turned into deeper friendship that I would come to rely on in the days ahead.
You see, before joining the service I had a fairly good idea about God and had indeed been saved as a teenager. But somewhere along the way church become more of a chore than a joy. Once in the service I was free to do whatever I pleased and unfortunately that included women and booze. It is not a time that I am overly proud of outside of serving my country but within that cloud of darkness there always remained one beam of sunlight - my friendship with Christina. I could not help but be attracted to her and her faith. I called her frequently, the $400 to $500 phone bills showed me that (its only money), and while deployed to Turkey/Iraq I wrote more letters than I have written in the whole rest of my life.
So, two years passed and Christina and I were pretty good friends by this point. When it came time for me to move to California (next duty assignment), I called her up and we worked out a deal where I would pick her up in Illinios and take her to New Mexico (my parents place) for her spring break. Wow. If God had ever planned anything in my life it would have been that week. We laughed, drove, and talked of old times. It was the most amazing time and at the end of the week I took her back to school and said goodbye.
At this point you may be thinking the same things my parents actually said when I got back to New Mexico - what a fool!! I did the best thing I could at that point and asked her father for his daughters hand in marriage, and when he approved called her next. Yeah, I know. Not the most romantic way to propose but who was I to argue with God's will!
Next Up - Part II - Her Service in Ministry
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