Melissa Earley

So I'm a pastor, and when I was a young pastor, I tried to avoid at all costs anyone in my church knowing anything about my dating life.

I would get comments on Sundays as people would leave and do their handshake about my hair and my shoes and where I was going on vacation and some hymn I choose.

And so the last thing I wanted to do was open my dating life to their scrutiny.

I didn't want speculation about my personal life getting in the way of my professional life.

And church people can be really weird about, you know, sex.

So I didn't talk about boyfriends.

If I went on dates, I would insist they were at restaurants 10 miles out of town.

If a guy stayed at my house for any length of time, I insisted he park around the corner or in my garage.

So many churches and many, many years ago, when I started dating Corey, another pastor, I didn't tell anyone.

And I really didn't tell them when six months in, Corey suggested we go away for a few days before Christmas.

He said, well, we'll just go during the week.

We won't miss a Sunday.

No one has to know.

We'll go skiing in Colorado.

No one has to know.

So we made our plans, and I told the couple people that I had to tell that I'd be out of town, you know, just in case of disaster.

And I told them I was going skiing with friends.

And we had a fabulous time.

The weather was gorgeous, that bright blue Colorado sunny sky.

The skiing was gorgeous.