Notes of a Newlywed

"We were both young when I first saw you..."

, Wednesday, July 14 9:02 PM

I have mentioned G.I. Joe in just about every post so far, but I have not explicitly said who he is. For those of you who are still confused, G.I. Joe is my husband. My fun, handsome, caring, adventurous, romantic, strong, sweet husband. Now that you are grossed out, I want to talk a little more about him. Actually, not just him, but our story. Yes, that horrible story of how a couple met. I am actually going to bore you with it on a blog. But, we happen to think that it is a really great story (especially because it ends with us and wedding bells!). Fortunately for you, I am going to stretch this out over several posts, intermixed with the everyday jazz. It is just too long for one post. So here it goes:

We both went to Liberty University as freshman in the fall of 2005.


Liberty has this cool setup for their boy and girl dorms - and no, they are definitely not co-ed. Each boy dorm has a "sister" girl dorm, and vice versa. Now you know what I am going to say. G.I. Joe was in my brother dorm. I honestly cannot tell you the first time we met, or even the second. He just became an immediate friend. Of course, I had no idea that he had intentions beyond friendship from the very first.

Pause. I have to tell a little about my roommate before I go on because she is very important to this story. My roommate and I, I'll call her Akeerisha, immediately became inseperable. She is still one of my very best friends. I would be much happier if we lived closer to eachother.


Go. So my roommate and I really enjoyed getting to know our brother dorm, but honestly were not interested in them except as friends.

Pause. G.I. Joe also had a roommate, who I will call Pics. G.I. Joe and Pics instantly became best friends as well. Pics also knew of G.I. Joe's secret intentions concerning me. (Pics is the one in the hat. G.I. Joe is in the middle.)


Go. Our brother/sister dorm was a very close brother/sister dorm. We did all kinds of things together. It also helped that Akeerisha, myself, G.I. Joe, and Pics were all prayer leaders on the leadership team of our dorms, which meant that we led small prayer groups every week. It also meant that we were even more connected to the dorm and were able to do even more activities with the brother leadership team. Hence, more time with G.I. Joe and Pics.

Every Christmas at Liberty is a very exciting time, not only because of the crazy Christmas convo (chapel) where everyone makes fun of the previous year's evangelists and happenings, not just because of the several weeks we get to go home, and not because the rot (the student's endearing name for the cafeteria) serves better food. There is one thing that stands above all else when Christmas comes to Liberty. That is Open Dorms. Open Dorms is the one time the boys get to go into the girl's dorms, and vice versa. First, the boys come and look at the girl's dorms. They have one hour to go to any girl's room they want. The girls have inevitably been spending the previous week decorating and cleaning and cooking to make their room the most memorable and exciting room. After that hour is over, the girls have one hour to visit any boy's room they want. The boys have been spending the previous week making their rooms as incredibly disgusting as they possibly can. (Okay, that's not true, but we wondered.) G.I. Joe and Pics, however, had been Christmas decorating. Their bedroom was covered in multi-colored Christmas lights, and their bathroom was entirely blue Christmas lights. Yes. Blue. I won't lie, their room was our favorite. Whether it was the Christmas lights, the hubcap collection on the wall, the fifteen million posters hanging, the pile of dirty clothes under the bed that was larger than the mattress, or the boys themselves, I could not tell you. But, I have a sneaky suspicion it was the last one.

We had no idea what was in store.