My Dream Girl, Part 3

Dan and Donna
Originally uploaded by paynehollow.

While still in college, Donna and I kept in contact. She'd come to Louisville every once in a while and I'd sometimes meet her while here.

She decided to attend the Southern Baptist Seminary and, during one trip here to investigate that, my parents invited her to spend the night at our house. I met up with her at the Seminary and, while I had moved past any interest in her (or so I thought), when I saw her that night, her eyes sparkled. She was aglow with energy and wit and I was entranced.

We went home that night and stayed up until the wee hours just talking and laughing in my parents' living room. She told me later, she was glad that we seemed to have moved to a better place in our friendship and was impressed with the ease of the conversation.

For my part, I kept thinking, "I wonder what she would say if I proposed to her right now?"

I didn't propose that night, but we did begin dating again, and soon we were discussing marriage and working on happily ever after.

One of the things I'm glad of is that we have managed to navigate the waters of our continued growth while mostly canoeing in the same direction. By that, I mean that we were both pretty traditional, conservative Christians when we were dating (she, being the more progressive of we two - I would NEVER have considered going to the SB Seminary back then, it was way too liberal for me!).

As we've aged and grown in our faith, we've moved away from the traditional somewhat, but we've moved together. Neither of the Young Dan or Donna would have married the Present Day Dan or Donna, our beliefs would have been too different (I was a Reagan Republican back in the day!).

But here we are, nearly half our lives later, still working on happily ever after.

Happy Birthday, Donna. I love you.