"You did it: you changed wild lament into whirling dance; You ripped off my black mourning band and decked me with wildflowers. I'm about to burst with song; I can't keep quiet about you. God, my God, I can't thank you enough." Psalm 30:11-12 (The Message)
Consider this your warning right up front for the rest of my story....it will be mushy, it will be lovey dovey, it will be beyond belief, it will be on the verge of sappy, but I promise you, it is all true and all God! I can stand back now and see all the pieces as one story, but understand I didn't see it that way when I was in the middle of it. I am going to write it from my perspective now, looking back over the entire thing. The amazing part is now that my story has completely changed, the old parts, the history, the past seem like a story I read in a book once. A book that is now on a shelf somewhere collecting dust, never to be relived again.
So consider yourself forewarned...here it goes....
Me and the girls were attending a fairly small church, and it was mostly young families, so the possibility of my meeting my "mister right" there was pretty slim. Plus, there were a couple of other single women who were like vultures at the door, waiting for every new man that walked in the door. That was absolutely not who I was, or wanted to be.
There was one\guy that I knew of that sat on the other side of the church. Had been going there for a while now. He seemed sort of strange though, I didn't know his story. I knew he had a son, but there always seemed to be other people at church with them too. I wasn't sure how everyone fit into the story. But honestly, he was really not my type. He seemed quiet, sort of reserved, not really into social things, so not really like me.
I was a flamboyant worshipper at the time, and he seemed to just sit there in quiet reverence during praise and worship, I couldn't understand that. He wasn't cut from the same cloth as me, so I really didn't even think twice about him. I knew that he noticed me though, not really in a creeper stalker sort of way, but just in a very observant guy sort of way. I just tried to avoid running into him at church. He had commented a few times on a blog I was writing, and I answered politely but never really got a conversation started. I knew that I was the"new single girl at church" and was really not up for living up to the term. So I just stayed out of his way. There was even one time when we were all up front at church, praying for a couple that was moving out of town, and I knew that Dean was behind me, I could feel him looking at me. Next thing I knew, he placed his hand on my back and said "hey, nice tattoo". I couldn't believe that we were getting ready to pray for someone and he was hitting on me at that moment, so I just said thanks. (Be sure to ask Dean his side of this story, he says I turned around, fire shot out of my eyes, and I said "yeah, whatever", and turned around like the snob that I was) Needless to say, he was not on my dating radar at all.
People continued to say, well Libby, remember there's Dean. He's a nice guy. He has a son. He loves God. He attends church regularly. He even helps with the youth. But all I could say back was "he's just not my type, he's such a dork."
One day, two of my single girlfriends were at my house handing out, and they convinced me to set up a profile on a dating website again. I had tried it before with not much luck, so I had deleted my profile. It would be fun, they said. Trust us, they said. We sat around laughing and cutting up, and finally I agreed. We put in all my information, added pictures, wrote a brief bio. The way this website worked, after you set up your profile and answered some questions about what you were looking for, it would give you a bunch of possible matches to talk to. My friends and I started talking about how to weed out the "Mr. Wrongs". We each had things that were definitely turn offs. Again, we were 3 women sitting around giggling like school girls. I said I wasn't interested in anyone too much younger or older than me. One friend said no rednecks, no cowboy hats. Again came the giggles. And finally my other friend said, "oh yeah, no jean shorts, anyone who wears jean shorts must be a dork Libby". So we all agreed, as we scrolled through these "matches", anyone wearing jean shorts in their profile was an automatic no. Understand, this website it huge, thousands upon thousands of people...I won't mention the name to protect the innocent. But we finally decided it was time to start looking at "my matches". I hit enter and what pops up.....a picture of Dean Allen, the guy from church. I was like "YOU ARE KIDDING ME??" Out of thousands of people that I didn't know online, THIS had to be the first match that the site chose for me?? The 3 of us started belly laughing at this point. Oh yeah, and to top it off....he was wearing jean shorts!!!
More tomorrow.....
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