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At the first meeting, I listened in awe for two hours to this man's brilliant advice. When John's meeting was winding down, I worked up the courage to ask, "Do you ever help small paper companies?"

Calvin was interested enough in Mrs. Grossman's to give me one half-hour of John's weekly two-hour appointments. I was thrilled at the opportunity to learn from him.

But there was something even more exciting going on in my life—a rekindled relationship with the Lord. Although I could remember attending Sunday school as a little girl and bubbling over with love for Jesus, as an adult I had done very little to pursue the relationship. But the 1978 Christmas Eve service at Calvary Church in the Pacific Palisades reawakened my spiritual longing.

I began attending church regularly, thrilled to hear God's Word preached. As much as I wanted to share this special time with John, he wasn't interested. Our spiritual differences may have been the beginning of the rift in our relationship. But at the time I was too happy to notice.

Driving back home from Los Angeles one afternoon, an enormous rainbow filled the sky from one horizon to the other. I felt I was passing through a gate into a future bright with promise.

And I was.

Shortly after our return, a client pulled me aside in her stationery store in Sausalito, California. "I need something special for Valentine's Day," she said. "Can you make me some hearts people can stick on envelopes?"

That's not my usual thing, I thought, but she was an important customer. So I designed a heart sticker, about an inch-and-a-half across, shiny, plump, and vulnerable-looking. I sent the order off to a local label printer, not knowing what to expect.

When I opened our first shipment of beautiful shiny red heart stickers, I was excited! Instead of flat sheets of stickers, I was surprised to find them on rolls—1,000 of them per roll! Seeing my artwork transformed into stickers made me think, We've got something here! I slipped a roll on each wrist to show John and ran off to phone Calvin.

Calvin and I thought this idea could turn into something very big if we were the first gift sticker designer on the market. Our goal was to have a display ready for a Long Beach gift show. We rushed to produce a whole line of stickers—ducks, teddy bears, lips, clouds, suns, stars, clouds, men in the moon, lightning, rainbows, and—of course—vulnerable hearts. John was an enthusiastic part of the team, doing most of the design work.

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