Our Story
I first met Nathan in 8th grade. I was the “new kid” at Bob Jones Academy, having just moved nearly 1,000 miles from Michigan. After three weeks, my math teacher moved me into the Honors class, my first class with him. It didn’t take me long to realize that he was the “smart kid” in our class. Even in 8th grade, we all thought he would be the valedictorian. At the end of the year, he was “that kid” who wins multiple awards. Honestly, I thought he was stuck up.
Very little changed in ninth grade. He was in Honors Algebra I with me. The only distinct memory I have is when we were assigned to work with partners, and he was so far ahead of me that he was done before I was half finished, and the only talking was me checking my answers against his. At the end of the school year, his sister Amanda married Caleb, a guy from my church. Now we had a connection. Tenth grade was similar. We were in Honors Geometry, but that was about it. We chatted occasionally, but we were still barely friends.
At the beginning of 11th grade, Caleb and Amanda became our youth group leaders, and in January of the that year, Amanda had a baby. In addition, the two high school bands had combined, so we were in the same band again. Since the trumpets sat right behind the French horns, we would often talk in the mornings before band. In fact, we talked a lot. We were required to attend six Bible Conference services, and we sat together for three of them. When I showed for Drivers’ Ed a couple weeks later, he was there and we sat together since neither of us knew anyone else. We did all our driving together (and he mastered everything in half the time it took me). It was an important time of growing for us, and God used this time to bring us together in ways we never expected. At the end of the year, he asked me to Artist Series, and our first date was on May 8, 2014, and we went to Twelfth Night.
We did not see each other over the summer. I got back to school in August with no idea if he still liked me. The first several weeks of school were awkward as we tried to figure out where we stood, but eventually things straightened themselves out, and by the senior trip, our classmates were starting notice that we were acting like a couple. On Class Spirit Day, our classmates voted us the cutest couple in the senior class. From that day on, I saw us as a couple. We attended the Junior-Senior banquet together that year, and we graduated together (he was the valedictorian, just like we all thought).
Freshman year we took a bunch of classes together. We spent the first three years of college getting to know each other better, and growing in our love for each other. We spent two summers apart, after our freshmen year when I went on the Musical Mission Team for eight weeks, and after our junior year when I worked at a camp for seven weeks. When I got back from camp in August 2018, I knew he was going to ask me soon, but I didn’t know when. A week after I returned, he took me to Falls Park, let me pick a quiet place, and asked me to marry him. And of course, I said yes. It was August 11, 2018. We’ve been engaged for almost six months now, and we’re happily anticipating our wedding, on May 11, 2019.