Never The Same

I found a treasure the other night. Since our water heater died several weeks ago, the contents of our attic are in the bonus room. I am waiting for some cooler weather before I put everything back in the attic. Remember I don't really like to sweat and the attic makes me sweat.

Anyway, I was looking through some of my old boxes that I brought with me into my marriage. They were mainly filled with pictures, scrapbooks and several very random things. But I did find a little treasure disguised as a Garfield diary.

The diary was started back when I was in the sixth grade. To this day, I am not much of a journaler (I think I just made up that word) which is apparently the way I have always been. The diary was started in the sixth grade and I continued to write in it on up into high school and I wasn't even half way through the diary. I guess I just reserved it for what I thought were major events.

The diary started off with my feelings for a certain boy in the sixth grade. The entries made me giggle because they were just so innocent and such huge events in the life of a sixth grader. You know who you like and who likes you are life altering events!

I knew it was about to get good when we got to 1986 and the ink color changed. 1986 was a very big year for me. I was 13 years old and I went on my first mission trip that summer. My youth group went to Virginia Beach, Virginia. We did back yard Bible clubs in very poor areas and we also had to stay in the homes of complete strangers. The stranger part was huge to me.

My friend, Heather, and I stayed with this young 20 something woman whose husband was away in the millitary. I just remember she had dogs and she left us alone in her house everyday when she got up and went to work. Here we were just 13 and 11 and a stranger is trusting us in her house. It was a big deal to me.

That was also the summer that Top Gun hit the theaters. We went as a youth group and one of the chaperons (a.k.a. my mother-in-law) got up and walked out of the theater because of the bedroom scene. She then got mad at us because we didn't follow suit.

Today I think back to the movie and the bedroom scene is really nothing, but back in 1986 it was alot to be showing on the big screen.

Well, my life changed at the end of that trip or atleast my heart did. We were on the church bus heading home and this fairly new guy named Cliff was getting all the attention. He and his family were fairly new to our church. I thought he was kinda cute but he was two years older than me and he really didn't seem to notice me. That was until the bus ride home. We were goofing off between our naps and then all the sudden Cliff stops in front of my seat and grabs my hand. He gets down on one knee and begins to sing "Sad Songs". The chorus goes something like this..."They'll be sad songs to make you cry. Love songs often do...They will touch the heart of someone new..." (That last line may or may not be accurate)

Here is what my diary said about this..."It may have meant nothing to him, but MY LIFE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!"

While reading this the other night, I had to put the diary down because I was laughing so hard. I thought to myself, "Honey, you have no idea!"

One month from today, I will be celebrating my 17th wedding anniversary to that same Cliff that sang Sad Songs to me on the church bus in 1986.

I can tell you that when my little 13 year old heart flip flopped in my chest that day, I knew that one day he would be mine. I honestly knew it. I told my friend Heather as we got off the bus that one day I was going to marry him.

I finished reading the diary and then headed to bed. I curled up next to Cliff and thanked God that he still makes this thirty something heart do flip flops!