When Life Comes Full Circle, Part I

This is going to be a series of posts highlighting some Fisher family history until the present. Continue to check for the next installment.

About 19 years ago, a young girl of sixteen moved from the only home she had really ever known in Louisville, Kentucky, to live in Jacksonville, Florida.

It was my senior year of high school, and a very hard transition. Thankfully, I immediately met some friends, some of whom I keep in contact with to this very day. A year later, I made the decision to attend a small college in Pensacola, FL to major in secretarial administration. That decision had a big part in forming who I am today. The friends I met and the memories made are ones that will stick with me for years. During my sophomore year, unbeknown to me, a guy who was a freshman was "watching" me during my lunch break. We had a mutual friend who was supposed to introduce that guy to me, but he never did. Besides, I had a boyfriend "back home" at the time, and I wasn't really looking to date anyone else.

The next summer, I ended up breaking up with my boyfriend, and looked forward to going back to school with an open dating life. Right before school started, my friends and I went to a promotional program for our college in a little town outside of Jacksonville. The group putting on the program had been in our town the day before, but we were unable to go see them. The next night, we walk into this very, very small church with about maybe 15 pews to see the group perform. Now, this was the next to the last time they would perform, so we just squeaked in on being able to see them. In this group was four guys including one: Josh Fisher. We met all of the guys that night as hardly anyone came to the program, and we ended up talking and singing at the piano after the program. Little did I know, but Josh was that guy who had been "watching" me in the lunch room the year before. The only thing I really remember about him from that night was that he told a story about having a large family with some adopted brothers.

Back to college I go. Not long after arriving, I kept getting calls from this guy named Josh. I was never in my room, so I was very hard to get a hold of. My roommate, who also happened to be one of my very good friends, grilled this guy on why he was calling. He told her that he wanted to ask me out. The funny thing was, I didn't even remember that I had met a Josh at that program. I thought it was a guy named Josh from my computer class.

Well, finally, Josh was able to catch me in my room and he asked me out. We went out and had a blast together, laughing and really just getting along really well that first evening. Meanwhile, he asked me to go to a formal event at our college with him later that week. The only problem with that was, two or three days before the event, I got a call from his friend that Josh had broken his leg playing soccer and that he would probably be going home. I thought to myself, that was that. He was a great guy, but nothing will come of that if he is going home.

A few weeks later, I see Josh slowly crutching his way into our common hang-out area at school. I asked my friend why he was there, and she said that he didn't end up having surgery on his leg and that he was back. To my surprise, he walked up to the group of friends I was with. Something inside me told me that this may be the beginning of something new. As you can guess, we started to hang out and do everything together, but for the whole rest of the year, we really decided that we were just friends. We really truly were. We were dating in every sense of the word, but we never said those three special words, "I Love You". We both decided that we did not want to officially say those words and be boyfriend and girlfriend until we knew that we were really serious about our relationship. In May, before Josh left for traveling with the group again, we decided that we were ready to say those words and be more committed to each other. He was going out west to travel, so I got a map and traced every part of his trip, so that I could follow along. We didn't get to talk often, but when we did, it was always very late at night for me and as long of a conversation as we could have.

In August 1994, I went to visit Josh's family for the first time. They lived in Reed City, Michigan in a large farmhouse. I was extremely nervous to meet his family and experience a little bit of his life. I was a city girl, so the whole country living was pretty foreign to me. I fell in love with his family immediately, and that experience endeared him more to me. When we went back to school, our relationship grew and grew. We really didn't know what the future held for us as I was graduating in May and moving to Atlanta, Georgia, where my parents were moving that summer. Josh on the other hand was going back to Michigan to help out at home.

Check back in for more later. . .