Nine Years

Nine years ago, Ben and I had our first date. For some reason, that has hit me as a big milestone - a huge celebration of where we've come from where we started.

A few weeks back, Ben and I were dragging our kids through the Dayton airport to make a flight out to New York. As we were finding the elevator (since Simon is deathly afraid of escalators) we passed Gate B2. All of a sudden, a wave of nostalgia flooded over me.

Ben and I have a history with Gate B2. When we were dating, far before I met his family or we had ever heard of Athletes in Action or talked about anything serious, Ben went on an AIA tour to Kazakhstan. I was going to school in Indiana, and he had to fly into Dayton for training camp. Since he'd be only 2 1/2 hours from me (as opposed to a half a country), I borrowed a car from a friend, and decided to meet him at the airport.

There was a super snow storm that day. His flight got canceled and I spent 12 hours at the Dayton airport, greeting other AIA players that arrived for the trip.

Ben eventually made it in, and we had a nice dinner before he left for Kazakhstan.

But it hit me, that that day, though I liked Ben enough to spend 12 hours sitting at Gate B2, we had NO IDEA of the future that God had for us. That someday we would be living in Dayton, flying out of the airport with our 2 kids. That we'd be on staff with AIA and we would be leading tours of players around the world. We were just kids when we met, and we didn't know that on that day God was giving us a small window to see into our future.

Someday, Dayton and Athletes in Action would be home.

So, I've been taking a trip down memory lane by reliving and writing down the story. And I'm going to begin to share it with you. To celebrate the 9 year anniversary of our first date and the window God gave us into our future, I am giving you a window into our past.

Just keep in mind, this was 9 years ago. I was 20. A lot of maturity has happened since then. So don't judge, just laugh!