Couple wants to amplify love

Nicole Thompson was perusing the bookshelves at a local Borders Bookstore one day when across the aisle Khalil Thompson caught her eye.

She was a 34-year-old transplant from small town Anderson, South Carolina, with her own Atlanta law firm, and he was a 25-year-old mortgage broker who decided to call Atlanta home after fleeing the wrath of Hurricane Katrina.

Love at first sight can seem like an overused platitude, but there is really no other way to describe their encounter that summer day in 2007. Just three hours after a mutual friend introduced them, Khalil called to invite her on a date.

Nicole agreed to share a movie, but she purchased her own ticket and popcorn. Soon thereafter, Khalil called again.

Would she join him for a book club discussion at his church?

That night, they happened to be studying Bruce Wilkinson’s “The Dream Giver,” a guide for rising above the ordinary, conquering your fears, and overcoming the obstacles that keep you from living your dream, a theme that would show itself over and over in the life they’d soon share.

“They were just talking about faith in a way that I hadn’t talked about it before,” Nicole remembered. “I was like, OK, this is somebody I can grow with, that I can learn with. I realized when he said he wanted somebody to build a legacy with, he meant it.”

Lance Ferrell, that mutual friend who made the introduction in the bookstore, had told her as much.

Khalil is the one, he’d said. In September, Nicole introduced Khalil to her mom. He’s the one, she told her.