Here’s where a blogger who takes pride in his writing faces something intimidating, at least this is how I feel coming into the start of this. And the THIS is: Today marks 20 years since the day of my first meeting and first date (this was a blind date, you may have deduced) with my wife. Next year we will have our 20th wedding anniversary. This is a blog which I feel intimidated about doing (I’ve thought about it all day today since awakening, and giving Janet – my wife – a big hug). It’s intimidating because it is something I want to express well, and just not sure if I can, or if I really do it well, whether or not I will like it, even so. But enough of what I think my ability to “write it up”. On with what I’m all prepared (or not prepared) top write, which is what the last 20 years has meant.

Janet and I met as a result of a relationship that a friend of mine, Tony, had with a girl that worked at the same Pizza Hut with Janet. He and his girlfriend thought that Janet and I should meet. We set up a blind date, originally intended to be the four of us. Tony and Sue broke up THE NIGHT BEFORE the big date. Tony came in and said “Sue and I are never going to see each other again so if you want to meet Janet, call Sue and get her number”. I did. I simply asked if he she still wanted to go on with the date as simply us. There were fireworks downtown (a annual Labor Day weekend event in Cincinnati). Today we have a framed picture in our living room today of the night Cincinnati sky lit up with fireworks from one of the years.

It was going well enough by the end of the fireworks that we went for ice cream, then to the apartment Tony and shared (he was out doing on one of his music gigs – — he was and still is a musician/singer —- where I had a VCR (a rarity in 1982) which was hooked up to some of Tony’s huge amplifiers and speakers, so it was an early “Home Theater” (albeit on a 15-inch TV). Janet is probably laughing right now reading this, at the idea that I remember all these specs. We watched “Time after Time” (Malcolm McDowell and Mary Steenburgen) and we thus began a relationship that involved visits and dates nearly every day after a brief visit with my parents in Owensboro, Ky. This trip home was quite different in that I couldn’t wait to get back to Cincinnati this time.

I worked a part time Youth Ministry job, which included a small apartment built in to the back of the Church Building in Hyde Park, and found a job selling electronics at a local chain (now defunct) that was the BestBuy of its day for the Cinncinnati area (now defunct in the face of BestBuy and Circuit City etc.). For a couple of years at that point, I had resumes on file at the Seminary to declare my availability for a Youth Ministry position. By the time January rolled around, and a church in Iowa came calling, Janet and I had been spending so much time that we knew (at least I knew and/or hoped) that wherever I was headed after that, it would involve her, too. I remember seeing a hint of fear in Janet’s expression when I told her about the Church calling, and I stopped telling her about the conversation with the Church about that position and said something like “I want us both to go” —– although this wasn’t the marriage proposal, (we had already talked about it some) , it was the thing that set in motion the plans we had to make to make.

Janet made the second interview trip with me to Iowa, and we got engaged between the first and the second interview, and planned a June wedding. I was to start the job in February, while she stayed behind in Cincinnati, an 8 hour drive away, and continue her new job (day care at her Mom and Dad’s Church daycare center) in Cincinnati. Janet rode over with me when I moved in, and took the bus back to Cincinnati. She drove over once a month for the next 3 months, and then the 4th month was finally the time for me to head to Cinncinnati toget married (June 11, 1983)……with a brief , but significant pause to attend my grandfather’s funeral (my Dad’s dad), who died on June 5th.

We went back to Keokuk, Iowa, where we lived for the next 14 months, before moving on to what woudl be my last Youth ministry job, in Phoenix, Arizona in August of 1984. From there we moved back to Cincinnati after a brief and largely unsuccessful attempt to be a Youth pastor in a large church setting. I just wasn’t what they expected.

We moved back to Cincinnati in 1985, and our son Brian was born in 1989. I’ve still more to say, but can’t seem to find a good entry point in to the way to talk about , or write about this relationship over the past 20 years. I seem to ba able to write with ease about lots of my feelings, and my ideas, and even my theology, but this is hard. I think it best that rather than sit here and try to figure out what to write, I ought to go just be with her.

Janet has been a “people” person to the nth degree in the 20 years I have known her. She is a person who loves children and is loved by children. She cares for people. She listens. She feels for people, almost to a fault. I am sometimes embarassed when she reacts so emationally to something in a movie until I realize it is a part of who she is to open herself up to caring for people of all kinds. Fortunately for me, as well, she loves me too. She is the epitomy of a “better half”.