I’m picking back up right where we left off at the end of part one.
Click HERE to catch up if you missed it.
Very soon after arriving home from camp, the emails began. He would email me at least once a day and I would reply. Many of our initial emails were about our summer and how our ministry was going with the students. Eventually, he asked me for my AOL instant messenger name so we could message each other more often. And finally, weeks later, he asked me for my phone number. Baby steps! 🙂
We were both very busy, but enjoyed getting to know each other “safely” via emails, instant messages, and phone conversations. As the summer winded down, he made a couple of day trips to Baltimore to visit me and my former youth minister’s family. I think it was part of his strategy to use them as an excuse to come to Baltimore for a visit. From the very start, he was a pursuer.
As I continued to get to know Kev, I prayed very intently. While it was fun to have someone show so much interest, I did not want to get attached unless it was the person I was going to marry. I was very cautious the whole time and extremely prayerful. Though I was still young by the world’s standards, I was not interested in any heartbreak.
Eventually, the summer ended and Kev flew back to his home in Mississippi. Within a few hours of landing at the Memphis airport, he informed his mom that he would be driving back up to Baltimore to see me before I went back to college at the end of August. As the story goes, she was not happy about that idea since he had already been gone the entire summer. We laugh about it now and she says had she known then what she knows now, she would have TOLD him to drive up to see me as soon as he could. 🙂
My parents were agreeable to him visiting me and even offered to let him stay at our house. So needless to say, they met him early on. It’s a little crazy looking back.
Our first official date was during that visit. After seeing a movie, we made our way to the Inner Harbor of Baltimore. The night ended on a park bench in Federal Hill, overlooking the harbor, with us talking about where we thought our “relationship” was headed. That night, we decided to pursue a long-distance relationship. We knew that we both needed some level of commitment if we were going to put all the time, effort, and money into seeing where the Lord was taking this. In August 2001, we officially became a couple.
