Day 3

This is post is part of a 30 day series.
Day 3: Your First Love


Well, now this is an interesting topic, isn't it? Is this the first boy I *thought* I loved, or the first boy who I truly loved? Hmmm I'll do both!

The first boy I thought I loved was Tim. I was in 8th grade, and my best friend Nell was in love with his best friend Bob. We went roller skating together on Thursday nights, and I sometimes called him...obsessively. Sometimes he and I would talk on the phone in the middle of the night without our parents knowing! HOW DARING OF ME! I got my first kiss at Valley Fair, and then we broke up 2 weeks later. LOL Tim is now a hotshot attorney in central Minnesota.

I really didn't have a clue what "love" meant in 8th grade. I remained free and single until my Junior year in high school when I met David. David and I dated 3 times, and I'm pretty sure my relationship with David caused my mother a few gray hairs! The first time we dated there was lots of lying involved, and not coming home, and getting found at parties in the middle of the night.  We broke up during my senior year, and he started dating a girl named Debbie. My heart was broken. Truly broken. Shortly after we broke up I graduated early and joined the army. When I got home from basic and training 6 months later and went into the reserves, he and I dated again for a time. But David's life was taking a very different direction than mine at that point. One that involved habits I refused to have anything to do with. Still, I missed him.

After my first divorce David and I dated again. I don't remember how we met up again. During those several weeks I even brought him to church with me once. My mom was out of the country and a friend of hers told her, "Leah brought a man to church with her while you were gone! He was very good looking. I think his name was David." My mom knew right away who it was, and immediately started praying that God would put and end to this.

David was really good with my kids, but I was suddenly able to see the things my mother saw years before. He was a super nice guy, he just wasn't getting anywhere in his life. I was raising 2 kids on my own, and going to school full time, and he could barely hold a job and take care of himself. One night he and I met at a local hang-out a girlfriend of mine and I frequented. He came in, obviously buzzed, and asked if he could borrow a couple hundred dollars from me, "to get my car off the tow truck. I just got a DUI."

Yep, done with that! I had no room in my life for someone who was going to bring me down. I wanted to go places in life. This time it was David who was heart-broken. I think he thought I was good for him. His brother called me several times, "What happened? Please talk to him, he misses you." No. I was done. Moving on!

Fast forward several years. I was doing adoption reunion searches, helping adult adoptees and birth parents who wanted contact with each other to reunite. A birth mother contacted me with a child's birthdate that was SO familiar. And the baby's birth name...I knew that name. I searched the Minnesota birth index, pulled up the date, and there was the birth certificate for David. I was going to have to contact him again.

I was able to reunite David with his birth mother, something that I knew he'd always wanted to do. He had questions. They spoke with each other quite a bit, and then one day he just disappeared. About 3 years later his birth mother contacted me asking if I knew what happened to him. I didn't. As a favor to her I did do some investigating and found nothing of him anywhere. I even called his dad, who said he hadn't talked to David in several years.

I have no doubt that God brings us through various experiences in life to prepare us for what's ahead. I needed to date David more than once, because God had some things to show me about myself. There were lots of paths I needed to walk to become who I am today. I needed to become who I am now in order to meet Dean. My TRUE love.