April 4th, 1997.

I was freshly 19 years old and walked down a church aisle to say forever to the man I'd felt connected to since I was 10 years old.

We were 6 years apart; and our relationship started out as friends on a church campground in Tioga, Louisiana.

We were both Pastor's Kids, spent the majority of our early lives in church, and thus knew each other from those circles.

My heart would skip a beat when I would pass him inside an office, on the softball field, or at church; and society presented the notion, at the time, that it was incredibly inappropriate for a woman to initiate with a man, but...My little rebel heart, once I became a mid-teenager, would flirt in ways that most would not catch. But he caught it.

Finally in January 1996, he mustered up the courage to ask me if I was sensing what he had always been sensing between us. I crashed that beautiful advance with the, "I think you need to talk to my dad." comment. Can you imagine?

Fast forward to August, we were...