Our Story (Part 1)

Once upon a time there was a family of 7 moving from Hood River, OR to San Diego, CA. This happened to be my family. My Dad took a position as the family ministries pastor at the church Brian grew up in. Here we are on our first Sunday in El Cajon. (My brother Jake is still the one with the funny faces in the family pictures...I guess some things never change).I am the gorgeous one in the ankle length wild print green skirt with the fabulous hair cut. Yikes. This would have been the first or second time Brian saw me. We don't exactly remember "meeting." We happened to move a few days after my 8th grade graduation and a few short days before my 14th birthday. Meanwhile this hottness had just finished his first year in college at Point Loma Nazarene. Brian helped my Dad as an intern for the Junior High youth group. When we first moved I begged my Dad to please let me go right into the High School youth group. He did. In hindsight this was a very critical decision as we only narrowly escaped Brian technically being my youth leader. Whew! That would have been awkward.

Brian and I knew each other from my freshman to junior years in High School. We saw each other at church and youth group but really that was the extent of our relationship. Brian always had girlfriends and definitely wasn't about to be interested in someone roughly the same age as his younger sister. I always thought he was so OLD. I mean he was so old he actually considered my dad his friend. I like to give him a hard time now about not being madly in love with me from the beginning. His response, "You've seen the pictures." OUCH! Actually we do both think it is best that the 19 year old church intern didn't have the hots for a 14 year old.

This is how I remember Brian back then. Cute but way too old for crush consideration. We were around each other at youth group events (like summer camp) but the memories of our interactions are few and far between. Brian swears one time I drove in his car home from Forrest Home. He remembers this because of how car sick I got. Lovely, right? I have no recollection of this event, but probably true knowing how well I do on mountain roads. Then, I remember one of the beach days we went to. I drove back with Brian and actually somehow got to sit in the front seat (he doesn't remember). We chatted the whole way from the beach to the church. Dumb conversation really about him preferring to drive barefoot rather than in flip flops yet somehow he made such an impression that he made it into my journal that night. Yep, that was the first time I recognized how nice Brian was and wrote all about him and his "niceness."

Here's Brian at my 16th birthday party. Don't give him too much of a hard time about the outfit. It was a luau themed event.

The next memory that sticks out about Brian is when he was part of plan that involved me sneaking into my first rated R movie. I don't know if it was Lori's first time sneaking into a R movie or not but we were definitely both not 17. We went to see Billy Elliott. On the drive home Kevin gave me the synopsis of another movie currently out in theaters which would not include my need illegally sneak in. We had the perfect story just in case my parents asked about what movie we saw. I'm too old to get in trouble right, Mom?

Brian moved to Washington DC to do a semester exchange at American University. Apparently there was a whole going away event for him. I would have been there but don't recall any of it. The only memory of him I have during that time was a conversation I had with his brother. Kevin and I were talking after church and he was asking me what I was interested in studying in college. I told him I really wanted to study International Relations and maybe one day work in embassies all over the world. Kevin told me that was what Brian was interested in and the kind of stuff he was doing in DC. That was the first time I realized maybe I had a crush on the wrong Gossett brother (hahaha, sorry Kev).

After 3 years my family moved again. This time we moved about 20 minutes away to a small town where my Dad became the senior pastor. In December of my senior year in high school my best friend and I ran into Brian and Kevin. We ended up grabbing Mexican food with them. I thought Brian was so cute and was surprised that he actually seemed to be somewhat interested in our conversation. I thought maybe after I got my braces off I would look older - maybe even old enough... :) Oh the braces.

My senior year continued on without Brian. He tells me now that he was interested enough that he wanted to run into me again. There was a birthday party that I was supposed to go to. At the last minute it ended up not working out. Brian had heard I was going to be there and was secretly really excited to see me. He was bummed when I didn't come (had I known he was going to be there things might have been different, maybe not, we'll never know). Boy would he have been surprised at the Autumn minus braces and a bad hair cut. It was probably best though because I was on my way off to college.

To be continued...