I have found the one whom my soul loves!

Rachel & Mandy met at Dunedin Brewery at a networking event for "Women who like women who like beer." Neither one was supposed to be there! Mandy was supposed to be hiking the Grand Canyon, and Rachel didn't want to go. Their first conversation went something like this. "What do you do, Rachel?" "I'm a minister." "Oh yeah, what denomination?" "Methodist." "What? I'm a Methodist too - I go to Hyde Park UMC! Do you know my pastor friend, Vicki?" At which point, Mandy snapped a selfie and texted it to Vicki - memoralizing that first conversation. It took Rachel a whole day after meeting for her to text Mandy after church on Sunday and ask, "How was worship?" And the rest, as they say, is herstory.

I didn’t want our first kiss to be in a parking lot. I told Rachel that at the end of our fourth date. She laughed and walked with me back to the water’s edge where she kissed me gently. Her tiny, rosebud shaped lips explored my big-Texas mouth. We held hands back to our cars. I breathed deeply as I watched her open her car door then turn around and walk over to mine. I rolled down my window and she put her hand around the back of my neck, giving me one more deep, incomparable kiss — in the parking lot. — Mandelyn Cloninger As published in the Modern Love: Tiny Love Stories series, in The NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/style/tiny-modern-love-stories-fond-of-the-little-fellow.html