Thursday, November 13, 2008

how i met your father: our love story, part viii

if you're just jumping in to this crazy saga, catch up here:
we had a wonderful summer. we enjoyed the sunshine at the park, watched old movies, hung out a lot with our friends, attended a young adult bible study together at ken & barb’s. we drove a lot. michael volunteered to chauffer a friend who was in a wheel chair. he lived 45 minutes away with his parents. each week, i would ride with michael to take scott home and then michael and i would drive to my parents’ house, 30-minutes in the opposite direction.

as we drove along the dark highway, michael would often reach down to grab a penny from the change console of his car. penny for your thoughts? he’d ask, handing it to me. most of the time, i couldn’t articulate the things i was thinking, how i was falling in love with him as we drove around the city and sat on blankets at the park.

we had fun together, laughing and playing games. michael is a leader and his friends look to him to set the pace for what they do. and yet, he doesn’t care what others think. he’d do what he thought was right, even if no one else followed. his relationship with the Lord was foremost in his life and he lived a life of integrity and conviction.

and he was hot. i still remember when i first realized how insanely attracted i was to him. it was sometime during my senior year. i was talking to a group of girls after sunday school when out of the corner of my eye, i saw michael walk into the room. close your mouth, katherine, i distinctly remember telling myself when i’d realized my mouth was agape.

the skinny runner i’d liked two years earlier had filled out and was strikingly handsome. wow.

i also remember the first time i spoke about one day marrying the skinny runner. out loud. i was driving with my parents. while i couldn’t bring myself to actually say the words, because michael had yet to use the word love toward me, i told them our relationship was serious. the real-deal serious.

from the amount of time we spent together, i think they got the idea.

at the end of the summer, right before michael moved back to school, our family took one last family vacation before we girls started moving out. we had a fabulous time on the beach in south carolina. i sat on the beach several evenings watching storms far out at sea, wishing michael was sitting next to me.

before we left for south carolina, he took me on one last summer date. he gave me a dozen roses. i gave him a framed pencil drawing of a castle i’d worked on for weeks.

even if i couldn’t say it out loud, i was in love. madly in love.

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