How Did the Two of You Meet?

At a luncheon for senior adults, I found a table where half a dozen smiling seniors were preparing to eat. I slid into an empty chair next to Harry, a gentleman in his 80s known as a pillar in the church. Harry smiled at me and said, "I have a question for you, Dave. How have you been treating that sweet wife of yours?"

"I've been doing my best to treat her well," I replied.

"Well, you'd better," said Harry. "My wife has been gone for several years, and I miss her more than I can say. She was my best friend from the time I first met her."

"How did the two of you get together?" I asked.

With a twinkle in his eye, he said, "She proposed to me on our second date!"

I was surprised. "She proposed to you? Usually it's the man who proposes, not the woman. And did she really ask you to marry her on your second date?"

"Yep," he continued. "She said, 'You're the kind of guy I'd like to marry.' And I found it hard to disagree with her!"

Harry sipped his coffee and leaned back in his chair. "You know, Dave, I've often thought someone should write a book about the different ways married couples first met. It would make interesting reading."

Ever since that conversation, whenever I've had the opportunity, I've asked couples to tell me how they met. Their answers vary. Some met on mission trips, and others in bars. Some met in college, and others at work. Some met because friends arranged blind dates, and others come from cultures where their parents arranged for them to marry. Some guys literally married the girl next door, some found a bride miles away, and others met through the Internet.

Isaac and Rebekah's arranged marriage included plenty of drama when they first laid eyes on each other. "So she became his wife," the Scripture says with beautiful simplicity, "and he loved her" (Genesis 24:67). The young widow Ruth first caught the attention of Boaz when she was working in the fields harvesting grain, and ultimately a branch of their family tree included the Messiah himself.

Other biblical loves at first sight were filled with spiritual peril. Samson saw a lovely young Philistine woman and told his father, "Get her for me. She's the right one for me" (Judges 14:3). David saw beautiful Bathsheba bathing, and their relationship led to heartache for their family and their nation.

However, when the Bible talks about married couples it doesn't highlight how they met each other, but how they met the Lord. Whole families sometimes accepted Christ at the same time, led by husbands and wives united by faith in the Savior. After the Philippian jailer and his household were baptized, the whole family was filled with joy because they had come to believe in God (Acts 16:34). We don't know how Priscilla and Aquila first got together, but we do know they served the Lord together.

I will never forget the first time I saw the girl who eventually became my wife. Candy was only 15 then, and I was 16. I was sitting at a picnic table on her parents' backyard patio, and she walked down the wooden steps of the deck with her long blonde hair flowing down her back. We married five years later, and this year we will celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary.

I like remembering how we first met. But over the last 30 years I've met Candy again and again. I've met her in suffering and sorrow, in joy and laughter. I've met her in doubt and discouragement, in sickness and health. I've met her in ministry and prayer. I've met her in different stages of life—from the freedom of young adulthood to the quiet satisfaction of grandparenthood we're experiencing now.

And through the years I've discovered an important secret of a healthy marriage: The main thing is not how you first met, but how you keep meeting over and over again.