The History of Us (Part 1: The Beginnings)

Yesterday at the dinner table, Jeremy told the kids that he and I would be celebrating the "12th birthday of our marriage" on Monday. I asked them why they thought we got married and after a pause, someone said, "Because you loved each other?" and then all three kids started howling with laughter--or more accurately--impersonated hysterical hyenas. So, in honor of that conversation, I will share a short history lesson of how the two of us became one. Here goes Part 1: The Beginnings (disclaimer: the stories will be told from my point-of-view because that's the advantage of being the author).


I grew up in Orange County, CA (I learned to say that when I got to college and people made fun of the name of my hometown). When I got to NAU, I was kind of like this:

(Well, not quite as cute.  Or rich.)

I was definitely a member of this:

And maybe I was secretly hoping for this:

Then I met some really cool people and grew up a little and got more serious about my life and my relationship with God.  I began to want to be a woman with good character more than have a line of Friday night dates (which I didn't necessarily even have, just daydreamed about a lot).

My roommate, Sarah Warren, didn't flirt and was willing to wait for a guy to pursue her instead of foolishly chasing after him.  This was a strangely liberating idea.

She recommended I read books like this:

They changed my life.

(So what that really means is that I started to flirt more like this:)

Just kidding.  Sort of.

Meanwhile, Jeremy, after attending 4 previous colleges/universities and changing his major numerous times, transferred to NAU.  He was busy daydreaming about things like:

And:

We actually think our first "sighting" of each other was the year before when a group of boys from U of A joined our InterVarsity Lake Powell trip on Labor Day weekend.  I remembered them always playing football or frisbee, which would fit Jeremy and his brothers perfectly.

Sometime before we really knew each other, I took this picture at a friend's bachelorette party when a group of guys came and serenaded her in the restaurant.  I found myself often enjoying looking at the cute boy in the middle who smiled directly at me when I snapped the picture.

After I realized that my first impressions of Jeremy being a dumb jock were wrong (he was intelligent!), we happened to run into each other while getting mail on campus the first week of my junior year.  We became friends through "random" on-campus bumping into each other (though later we each admitted that if we had seen the other person in a certain place at a certain time, we were certain to be at that place the next week).

Probably the first time hanging out in my dorm room (with our friend Psalm, who was an important ally later in our relationship when Jeremy's unclear intentions became very frustrating to me)

We became really good friends on a spontaneous trip to my house in CA during the spring semester of that year.

We were unofficial swing dance partners.

Then there were the random dates-that-weren't-dates for Valentine's Day...there were literally three (all as groups).  First, the steam train to the Grand Canyon:

Then the homemade dinner at a random MOPS mom's house (Jeremy was a worker in the MOPS childcare program. I didn't even know what MOPS was.):

Then the dress-up scavenger hunt that the girls planned when we ended up in a cramped attic space above one of the dorms and somehow this picture was taken:

(There MAY have been a little old-fashioned flirting going on in this picture, I'll admit).  Jeremy would later find himself looking at the cute girl in this picture as he considered her place in his heart.

There were fun outings like hiking in Sedona, where even though Jeremy was smaller than he is now, I still wasn't able to hold him up on my shoulders even though he must have been trying to get me to. 

Then there was the clandestine Quad Ride in Mexico, where Jeremy must have been flirting with me even though he reminded me that we weren't dating right afterwards in a slightly heart-breaking conversation.

And shortly after this sunset picture (taken at Dairy Queen in Casa Grande), we got some things figured out...but you can read about that in Part 2:  The "Courtship"?