At church a couple of days ago, my teenaged girls were in their Sunday school class, and the lesson was on choosing a good husband to make a great family. (Good lesson topic, right? Way to go, Sunday teachers!)
When my 13yo told me that, it made me think of how Gary and I met–our “meet cute” as they call it in Hollywood. It’s not super fancy, but it still makes me smile, all these years later.
I was 24 and working for the U.S. Senate in Washington, D.C., and I attended church in a large congregation. There was a big choir, and they sounded really good, and one time when they performed, I saw this baritone, and he was singing with great feeling. I thought how cool that was. But I was moving, and I’d probably never meet him.
A few weeks later, I had moved and needed to attend church at a smaller congregation closer to my house. I was the new kid, and it was kind of scary. (You know, like the first day at a new school.) After the meetings were over, a baptism was happening, and I stayed to watch it, and the person being baptized was a guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (at Arlington Cemetery). When it ended, I went out in the hall, and there was that guy–the singer–from the other church building. I was so excited. (But I tried to play it cool.) We talked for a long time. Then we talked some more. And that week we talked more. And by the end of the following month, I’d shared more words with him than with anyone else ever in my life. He’d thought about things, guys. That was cool. And he cared about life and goodness and family. And he’d worked hard, gutting fish in Alaska, tying re-bar in swimming pools, in a factory, and other places, to earn money for law school. He was the real deal.
True love! Church was a great place to meet mine.
