happy birthday to my tru luv!

august 9th is a special day at our house! it is my very best friend. one and only lover, rob lewin's birthday today! this is also the day, 21 years ago that rob proposed to me, ON HIS BIRTHDAY!
back in the dark ages of the 80's i went to urbana, the intervarsity christian fellowship missions conference held every three years at the university of illinois. that year there were way too many volunteers to be bible study/small group leaders, so they put all the "bench warming" bible study leaders in the same dorm on the edge of campus. i was dating this guy named billy at the time, and he and his friend jeff were rooming together at the conference. they happened to meet this great guy from seattle named rob...and billy said, "you need to meet this guy." so after dinner the second night of urbana, billy introduced me to this tall, preppy guy with a great smile...as i shook rob's hand, all i could think of was "billy, you shouldn't have done that, cause this is the guy i'm going to marry"...it was truly LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT!
rob hung out with my group of friends from unc the rest of urbana, and one night while walking home late through 10 inches of snow, i asked the "how did you meet jesus?" "where did you grow up, go to high school, etc " questions....turns out his sister had gone to camp greystone in north carolina, accepted jesus there and started praying for her big brother...camp greystone happens to be where i accepted jesus. then the high school questions...rob grew up in cincinnati, but went away to boarding school for high school...so i asked where...and rob said it was in indiana and i probably had never heard of it....ok what's the name of it i asked again...when he said culver military academy i had one of those holy spirit dejavu moments...because my dad went to culver and i had heard about it my entire life! we even had needle point pillows and dishes with culver on them!
rob was the first guy i'd met who could out talk me and who wasn't intimidated by me... and i made sure he had my phone number and address, and that started a long distance romance from washington state to chapel hill. sadly those were the days before im ...so we had long phone dates and we saw each other in person about every six months or so. my grandparents even gave me rob for my graduation present!...they flew him nashville, and he drove over to unc with my family for my graduation! then we drove back to tennessee in my car, reading "leading your church to growth" out loud to each other...the beginning of a tradition that continues to this day.
a couple of weeks later, my brother and i drove cross country to seattle...i moved in with two girls from our church there...that was in june...and by august 9th we were engaged and by december we were married!
i'll save the actual proposal story for another day...my apologies to the romantics reading...i know those of you who aren't hopeless romantics stopped reading this post long ago...
for me it's still TRUE LOVE!
so happy birthday rob! i love you!
(photo is rob in the kitchen at the cottage...he's the chef at our house too!)

Comments

[djchuang]

What a great story! I know how valuable it is to be with a partner with whom you can be comfortable and have no pretense.

It'd be a little easier on everybody if you weren't so intimidating :) j/k

[will]

What a stud! Happy Birthday, Rob.

[Lori]

That is sooooo sweet! Gives me a bit o' hope, it does!

[bobbie]

oh wow - liam's birthday was yesterday, and our stories are so similar! happy birthday rob!!