Where we began...

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted. I need to dedicate more time to this. Hopefully there won’t be such a time lag next time.

Brian and I met in study hall. He had just moved to our school that year. I was a freshman and he was a junior. I remember seeing him at the front of the cafeteria (which is where study hall was) on crutches talking to our football coach. He had broken his ankle (I think) during football practice and was in a huge cast. I don’t remember if we talked that day or not, but thru mutual friends we quickly became very good friends.

I’m not very good with dates and details – sometimes I wonder if I have some sort of memory loss or something. It’s something that I’ve had trouble admitting because who wants to admit that they don’t remember something exactly how it happened. Brian seems to remember everything and in great detail. So I’m going to tell you what I remember and how I remember it. But please remember there are two sides to every story - and this is my side. I’m sure Brian has a completely different version but I’ll tell you what I was thinking and feeling at that time in my life.

I say we became “very good friends” and to me it was just that. He was one of my best friends. We hung out all the time with a big group of people. We always did stuff together. He drove me and our friends around everywhere in his blue car!! Sometimes, if there were only 3 of us, we would all cram in the front seat because no one wanted to sit in the back seat by themselves. Every weekend we were doing something…hanging out, going to movies, going to get coffee, whatever. I could talk to him about almost anything. I say almost because I stayed out of the arena of boyfriends. I knew at the time that he had a “crush” on me but I never saw him that way. He was just a friend and his friendship meant a lot to me. I didn’t want to ruin our friendship by starting a relationship that I didn’t think would last and would eventually end our friendship. We never really talked about this at the time though…it was just understood (with the help of friends) that it wasn’t going to go beyond friendship – at least for me.

We each dated different people but we never really talked about each others boyfriends/girlfriends to each other. Our school was very small and everyone knew everyone. So it was inevitable that he dated some of my friends and I dated some of his friends. We went to his senior prom together – and this is one of those memories that I remember one way and he remembers a completely different way – but after he graduated, we pretty much lost touch with each other. He went off to college and I finished high school.

This is where I can say that I know God had a plan for me and I chose not to follow it. I had a wonderful guy who was one of my best friends and I let him go – on purpose!!! Instead, I got married three months after high school, moved 1,200 miles away from home to a place where the only person I knew was my husband and into a life of military living that I had no idea about. But…I was living my life the way I wanted to and I had a plan…or at least I thought!