Happy Wednesday, friends! This week my mind is whirling with topics to discuss and share with you all, but I want to get to know each other a little better and start with the story of how Joe and I met.
If you read our first post where I gave short introductions of the two of us, you may recall that we are pretty opposite of one anther in terms of personality. You may wonder how our paths crossed, and how we started dating and ended up getting married?! Well, how we met all starts with my twin sister, Erica.
It was the summer of 2004, we were 17 years old, and Erica had gotten a job at a local grocery store, Stop & Shop. After a few weeks I remember she came home one day and said she had met this cute guy who has reddish hair, freckles, a spider web tattoo on his elbow, and a labret piercing. Yes, she had a bit of a crush on this guy. Turns out his name was Joe Jacobs. Joe was a pretty subdued guy, a little shy, but eventually a manager told Joe that Erica had a crush on him and he decided to introduce himself.
[Ok, I’m going to insert a little back here: At this point in Joe’s life he had been going to church for a year and was serious about living a God-centered life. Erica was at a point where she was no longer fulfilled by typical teenage antics, partying, drugs, and filling voids with temporal things. She was searching for something bigger, and thought God could be an answer. I was in a place of just living my life which I really liked. I had a boyfriend, enjoyed school, loved my friends. I was living in the moment.]
I still remember when Erica came home excited that this “Joe Jacobs” introduced himself. That would be a choice that changed the course of all of our lives.
So, Joe and Erica hung out a few times, but he was very upfront that he wasn’t in a place where he was interested in dating, but that they could be friends. I think Joe was aware that Erica was searching for God and didn’t want to get in the way of that. Her search for faith, truth and God outweighed her interest in dating, and so their friendship grew.
I was on a different level. From my perspective at the time, I couldn’t keep up with the shifting feelings and paradigm within Erica. I couldn’t believe some guy knew my sister liked him, but was cool with “just being friends”. I wanted to meet this guy.
One night that summer I had been drinking with my friends, and was just plain drunk. #stupidteenager. All of a sudden a green Mazda 626 pulled up and parked on the side street to the right of my parents house. It was Joe dropping Erica off home. In my drunken state, I ran into the front yard, ran across the lawn to the parked car, and knocked on the window. I think my sister probably had a look of embarrassment mixed with fear on her face, unaware of what I was going to do or say. She rolled her window down, and I remember shoving my entire upper body through the window and exclaiming, “I’VE HEARD SO MUCH ABOUT YOU.” Joe laughed and shook my hand, and probably uncomfortably fumbled with the gauge in one of his ear lobes. Erica helped me back out of the window, and I went back to join my friends. I had expected him to be this saintly, perfect guy, and wondered if he would judge me. But walking away I was struck with how normal, kind and funny he came off.
Even though it would be years away, I had no clue that I had just shaken the hand of the man I would marry, who would be the father of my children. I had no clue my life was just a couple of months away from completely turning upside down, in the best way. Meeting Joe Jacobs changed my life.
