Robin's Nest: {Show and Tell Tuesdays} Winning Your Heart

Linking up with Andrea today for Show and Tell Tuesday: Winning Your Heart

Andrea wanted to pick a love-y theme for February, but I have to say this topic makes me cringe a little :) - I am just not sappy. Maybe even to a fault. I can remembering exiting the movie theater after seeing "Ever After" with my high school best friend, Kathryn. She looked dreamily at me and said, "I can't wait for my knight in shining armor to come sweep me away on his white horse!" And I was like, "What? Ewww - if my boyfriend tries to propose with any sort of horse, I'll say no!"

Don't get me wrong, I loved the movie, wanted to fall in love and all of that, but felt silly about being rescued on a horse, or won over in a dramatic way. I wasn't an outward romantic to say the least. Since I missed last year's Show and Tell Tuesday about how Taylor and I ended up together, here's that story instead...

If I could tell my fourteen year old self that ten years later I would marry Taylor Ince, I'd have died right there on the spot. We attended the same school, but he was big man on campus: senior, Student Body President, star of the musical, State Championship basketball team starter. I mean the 8th grade girls at our school had a Taylor Ince fan club for goodness sake, and his little brother, who was in the 6th grade at the time, capitalized on this by selling his hunky big brother's school picture around the middle school (our school was K-12).

State Championship Basketball Team (Taylor's standing on the far left)

Taylor's senior picture
photo credit: Cindy Crofford

I on the other hand was a lowly freshman. I knew who Taylor was (everyone did), but he had no idea I existed. And to be honest, I was perfectly ok with that. I wasn't the kind of girl who chased boys or who was even interested as a freshman to date a senior (not to mention my parents wouldn't have let me anyway!). I had the best freshman year: I was a cheerleader, played basketball, had great friends, and was perfectly content admiring Taylor from afar when I watched the school musical, and when I got pulled up to varsity during basketball playoffs and ate in the same restaurant as the boy's team. That was about the extent of our time together in high school.

I am in the crease (left base of the right stunt) - lame picture, I know, but most of my old photos are in our attic!

Me and Kathryn circa 1999

The funny thing is our moms were in a prayer group together, our brothers being one school year apart knew each other, and our future brother-in-law was my Sunday school teacher.

Taylor went off to Wake Forest, and I eventually went to Texas A&M, and the weirdest thing was people were always filling me in on what Taylor Ince was up to. This was completely unsolicited, and I remember thinking, Why are you telling me about Taylor Ince? I don't even know him! We were from a small community where everyone knew everyone else's business, and apparently I needed to know Taylor's - haha! After I graduated from A&M, I embarked on my first year of ~~teaching~~ babysitting in a rough school, unexpectedly lost a cousin I was close with, broke up with my long-term college boyfriend, and pretty much lamented life after college. I needed a change. My high school Bible teacher, Hurley, had just been given the position over the youth ministry at the church I grew up in and interned for during college summers, and Richmond, a friend who interned with me, had just been hired as the high school pastor, so I called them up and asked for a job. They hired me immediately, and I was set to start the day after school got out in May.

Simultaneously, Taylor was going through some big life changes too: he started his first year of law school, proposed to his long-term girlfriend, broke it off a month later, quit law school after finally surrendering to the call to ministry, applied to seminaries all over the country, and called up his former Bible teacher, Hurley, and good friend, Richmond, from his graduating class of high school (like I said, small community) for a job. He was also hired immediately. Taylor's best friend from high school, Brandon, also got a job there, and once word got out, everyone was asking me if I was excited to be working with them. And I was like, how shallow do you think I am? I don't even know them! :)

But secretly, I might have been a little excited.

I can remember the first time Taylor and I officially met and thankfully unlike high school, he remembered me. I interrupted a meeting the youth staff was having. I had come straight from school to finish up some new hire paperwork, and Hurley called me into his office to meet everyone. It was brief, but according to Taylor after I left he was thinking, so that's the Robin I've been hearing about. Our next encounter cracks me up. Our staff was meeting on the playground for some youth event. Taylor was wearing a polo shirt, khaki shorts, and loafers with no socks (he probably would have had a sweater tied around his neck too had it not been May in Houston and 100 degrees outside). I was wearing a graphic t that said, "I like green eggs and ham, " khaki boys cargo shorts, and rainbows (I was angst-y from my slam dunk into the real world - haha). At this point, we were both thinking, who is this guy/girl?

Soon after that he, he began his pursuit. He was asking his brother-in-law about me, buying me end of the school year presents, watching Star Wars episodes 1,2 and 4-6 to prepare for Episode 3 (which was about to come out in theaters) with our staff at Richmond's condo, playing a lot of ultimate frisbee, floating the Guadalupe River, bowling weekly - pretty much whatever you would typically do all summer with a youth group. It was the best way to get to know someone well without the pressure of dating. He left presents on my doorstep with poems he'd written for me, asked me on an official date to a friend's wedding (his mom totally tried to talk him out of this, you're moving to Charlotte for seminary for the next 3 years - what are you thinking?!, and at the end of the summer, he skipped his Summer Greek course so he could stay in Houston for 3 more weeks. We dated long distance that school year, in April he proposed, and in September we were married. It was a whirlwind, but when you know, you know.

These are pictures of our staff from that summer - don't miss the awkward photo of Taylor and me together - I'm pretty sure this was the first picture taken of just the two of us. It always makes us roll with laughter! We're on Lake Travis about to cliff jump. Our friends down in the boat were trying to embarrass us by asking for a picture...

At our engagement breakfast, my dad, who met Taylor before I did, revealed to us that the day they met, he told my mom, "I met the guy Robin is going to marry."

Back at Lake Travis - this time getting engaged!

The Lord used many things about our courtship to shape our future. The fact that Taylor skipped Summer Greek for me meant that he started with Hebrew unlike most freshman seminarians who begin with Greek; this gave Taylor the ability to take more Hebrew electives, be the TA for the Hebrew professor on campus, and ultimately get his PhD in Hebrew and Old Testament. Life has been an adventure!