Jane Austin began Pride and Prejudice by saying: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.”

While I was never in possession of good fortune, I had forever been in want of a wife.

I really didn’t date as a I grew up. It was a conscious choice, not really mine, but a choice nonetheless.

While I had several friends who thought of themselves as romantic experts, they really didn’t date much either. I never realized the far-reaching effects of this no-dating reality until one day I was riding with my parents. The subject came up and I tried extremely hard to stop the conversation.

Finally my mom said to me, “I just feel like you have deprived me of the opportunity of seeing my son date.”

My response: “Mom, it’s going to take 20 hours and $100 an hour for a psychologist to help me work through that statement.”

Of course I was wrong, the psychologist charged me $150/hr.

A Pastoral Ministry major heads to college with two facts in his head:

1. Single pastors rarely exist so I would not have the job I wanted until I got married.

And…

2. Seminary is not the place to find the girl of your dreams. The old story about women at Georgia Tech applies more to seminary women—”the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

Knowing the clock was ticking to find a wife, when I went to college I was feeling great pressure.

Thankfully it was there that I found Jenny.

She loved me from the start.

On our first date she told me she would:

• Never marry someone younger than her
• Never be a preacher’s wife
• Never move for a boy

As a younger than her preacher who was planning to attend seminary in a place no one ever intentionally moves to without a reason, I found this to be a challenge.

However, within a few years, her “nevers” were out the window as my older than me girlfriend said “yes” as I proposed to her in a town she followed me to.

All of this occurred because we ignored what most young Baptist kids believe is God’s primary way to speak to them—just the right song being played on the country radio station.

I’m not sure when country music radio replaced the Word of God for God’s primary source of revelation, but when I was in junior high and high school, the number one plight upon young relationships was hearing the wrong song at the wrong time.

So it’s no surprise as I began to plan my first kiss to Jenny that I wanted the right song to be playing. Our song was Eric Clapton’s Wonderful Tonight so when the time was right and an important conversation was happening, Clapton started playing so I made my move.

I said my line, moved in for the kiss and she….laughed in my face.

Hard.

Loud.

Embarrassingly hard and loud, she laughed in my face.

Having never made a move on a girl, my first move was rejected with the girl laughing hard in my face.

She felt horrible she claims. It was hard for me to say because she was laughing so hard in my face.

I began to consider Catholicism. Maybe the priesthood wasn’t so bad.

Thankfully, she repented.

She stopped laughing.

Got serious.

Made her move.

And kissed me.

It was amazing. It was so great that I can still hear the song that was playing.

The first words I heard from George Strait as my lips connected to Jenny’s were:

“We really shouldn’t be doing this and we both know why…this kinda situation has to pass, the chance encounter has to be the last. To take it further we would be remiss, we really shouldn’t be doing this.”