How I met my husband: the way a brilliant plan twists and turns

Danica Favorite here, and it's my turn to share my tale of how I met my husband. Or, basically, how God likes to laugh at my brilliant plans.

I'd been wanting to find a church for a long time, and when I was visiting a church I liked, they had a guest pastor come speak. I loved his message, so I decided to visit his church. Unfortunately, I kept getting distracted, and then one night, I made the decision. I'm going to visit that church next week. Fast forward a couple more weeks, and I FINALLY made it.

When I arrived at the church, this overly friendly guy was nice to me and tried to be my friend. My immediate response (mentally) was that I wasn't there for a boyfriend, I wanted time with God. So I blew him off. He was kind of cute, but I was not interested. (Side note: Had I gone originally as planned, he would have had a mullet, and I DEFINITELY would not have talked to a guy with a mullet: EVER.) After church, they had a meeting for people who wanted to volunteer, so I went. Guess who was there? Mr. Overly Friendly. Being an introvert, I find these people highly suspect. But he was persistent in his friendliness.

Fast forward a few weeks. Mr. Overly Friendly and I end up in a lot of church activities together. He wants my phone number. I say no. I finally accept his phone number so we can carpool to an activity. I call him to discuss the activity. Somehow, we end up talking most of the night. I still very grudgingly give him my phone number. We start talking A LOT and going to various church activities together with our group of friends. I like him, but there are a lot of reasons I am not interested in dating him. He becomes a very good friend, but I do my best to not encourage anything more. Especially because our pastor is giving a series on dating, and it convicts me that I do not want to date this guy.

And so, there we are, watching movies one night at his apartment. He kisses me. I am horrified, and let this be yet one more record that it was the worst first kiss in the history of kisses. He, of course, decides that based on our pastor's talk, that we must have the dating discussion. Aka... if you kiss, you're dating. I inform him that the kiss was a mistake, we will never kiss again, and we can only be friends. I have no plans to ever be with him. End of story.

Which leads us to the next evening, where we are at a function for his work and I am his plus one (as FRIENDS!), and to be clear, the name he gave for his plus one was some girl he had a crush on ten years ago. So we are clearly NOT DATING. At the end of the evening, somehow, he ends up kissing me AGAIN. As soon as the kiss was over, he says, "That's it. We're dating." I tried to argue with him, because dating is supposed to lead to marriage, and he was definitely not someone I wanted to marry, cue my very specific life plan that does not involve him. But he put his foot down (one of the few recordable times in our entire relationship this has happened) and told me we're either dating, or we're not friends anymore. Which made me sad, because at this point, he was one of my best friends.
So, I came up with a brilliant plan. I would date him long enough for him to realize that we were not meant to be, and then we could break up and be friends again. I know, I'm a genius. I just had to make the angle work. Because I could not lose him as a friend.

Fabulous plan, until the day came when I thought we were actually breaking up. We had a terrible fight, and he grabbed the soccer gear he kept at my apartment and left. Which is when I realized I didn't want him to not be a part of my life. What if I married someone else, and then that would be weird to be such good friends with this guy? Maybe I should have just worked harder to keep him in my life, and I don't know, maybe actually marry him.

We spoke later that night, and he did not think we were breaking up (to this day, he does not remember that fight, or remember a time when we were close to a breakup), so I charted the course to the goal: Marriage. That way, I would never lose him as my friend.

After 18 years, I can safely say, that plan has worked out pretty well so far. Even when there have been times when things were rocky, we've always found a way to remember our friendship. The picture is of us celebrating our 18th anniversary a little early at the U2 concert in Dallas.

About Danica:
A self-professed crazy chicken lady, Danica Favorite loves the adventure of living a creative life. She and her family recently moved in to their dream home in the mountains above Denver, Colorado. Danica loves to explore the depths of human nature and follow people on the journey to happily ever after. Though the journey is often bumpy, those bumps are what refine imperfect characters as they live the life God created them for. Oops, that just spoiled the ending of all of Danica’s stories. Then again, getting there is all the fun.
You can connect with Danica at the following places:
Website: http://www.danicafavorite.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/danicafavorite
Instagram: https://instagram.com/danicafavorite/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DanicaFavoriteAuthor

Most recent release:

Bound by a Child
Hoping to overcome her reputation as Leadville, Colorado's biggest gossip, wealthy socialite Flora Montgomery offers to help a miner care for an abandoned child. But her growing affection for the sweet boy's handsome rescuer could be a problem. Especially since her parents insist she must marry for money.

Undercover mine owner George Baxter is digging himself into a dilemma. The once-spoiled Flora has become a delightful, generous woman, and she'll be devastated by his deception. Yet if he can't discover who's sabotaging the mine, George will lose any chance of making a home for Flora and Pierre. Can the little boy who holds both their hearts help them lay claim to a new dream of family?