The Story of John and Jen, Part 2

(See Part 1 here)

October 1998. John and I had become friends serving together on both our church's young adult worship team and our church's volunteer youth staff. One night after youth group, a group of us youth staffers went out for dessert to celebrate another staffer's birthday. John sat across from me in the hopes of getting to know me better. However, his efforts were thwarted when the youth minister sat next to John and proceeded to ask him question upon question about politics and culture.

However, John did give me a ride back to the church afterwards, so we did get a chance to talk. He learned that I was casually dating another guy on youth staff, but since all I did was complain about the guy, John's hopes were left intact.

The next Sunday, while the guy I was dating was around, I went up to my friend John and gave him a big hug around the neck. I probably did this to make the other guy jealous, but God used it to give John hope: John saw it as flirting and decided to make the next move.

Two days later, I got a carefully-crafted email (it turns out that John enlisted the help of his female intern in writing an email that was cool and casual). In the email, John said he was going to Sunny's birthday party that Friday night, and would I want to go with him? I ran over to my coworker Kristi's desk and showed her the email. "Is he asking me out?" I asked her. We decided he probably was.

Since I obviously wasn't too happy with the guy I had been seeing, and since I was impressed that John had the guts to ask me out, I decided I'd give him a chance. However, I had already made plans for Friday night with the high schooler I was mentoring at church (now one of my closest friends, Kim!), so I had an excuse to keep the outing brief. I turned down the party invitation but told him I'd meet up with him afterwards. We made plans to meet at Bennigan's at 10 pm on November 6, 1998 -- a date that would forever change my life.