Part Four: Romance - Finally!

The rest of that summer was just weird.

Josh and I talked on the phone. A lot.

I moved back to Grand Rapids before school started, and he came to visit me at my parents' house. We talked all night long. I drove to Ann Arbor to see him -- I mean, to see a bunch of friends.

Had it been any other guy I would have been sure there were feelings there. But Josh? He'd made it pretty clear where he stood just six months before. I had no idea what was going to happen when I moved back to Ann Arbor (into a house just 3 doors down from Josh, no less) for my junior year. And what about Carrie? She and I would be roommates in the 710 Catherine house.

I remember taking a trip to Meijer with Chris (a good friend of mine and a roommate of Josh's) the day I moved in. I started talking about the summer's saga and asked him for his male perspective on it all. His response:

Josh is an idiot if he doesn't date you.

The very next day would be life-changing. It started out ordinarily enough - unpacking, cleaning, reading, and watching a movie with friends. After the movie was over Josh and I decided to go for a walk around campus. And walk we did. All the way down to the football stadium (which from our side of town was almost 2 miles) and back. We sat down on the steps of the Nursing School and kept talking. Eventually the subject turned to us.

Josh was completely silent for about ten minutes. No joke. Come on buddy, spit it out! Then he told me that he had feelings for me, and asked me if I still felt the same way. I did. Of course.

He hadn't exactly planned on telling me that night. He had wanted to wait, talk to Carrie, and let our friends see that we were headed down that path. But he knew I needed to know what was going on (remember? I'm not a patient person) and told me. Yes, it was a complete 180 for him!

Carrie wasn't pleased, at first. That was partially due to the fact that she heard about us through the grapevine. That was my fault - I was so totally excited that I told everyone in sight and the news spread like wildfire. She got over it pretty quick, thankfully, and we remained good friends. She stood up in our wedding. So did Boeve.

We dated for about a year-and-a-half before Josh proposed. We were married 6 months later, and now we've been married for over 3 years. Amazing how things turn out, isn't it?

Me and Josh on our first date! He took me to TGI Fridays and we rented Top Gun. That night I told him he wasn't allowed to kiss me for a month!



After he told me he liked me for the first time - 5 years ago - he walked me back to my house. He told me later that this was going through this mind:

I just told the girl I that I'm pretty sure I'm going to marry that I like her. Whoa.

Crazy enough, marrying me was in the back of Josh's mind from the start. He knew we were great together, and that if we ever started dating we would end up married. At first, the feelings just weren't there for him. But it all changed that fateful summer! Josh describes it as a cloud lifting - like God was saying okay, here you go! She is perfect for you!

I don't really know why it all had to happen that way, but I see God's fingerprints throughout it. Perhaps had we started dating right away our friendship wouldn't have had the chance to develop like it did. Maybe God wanted Josh to try things out with Carrie first, so he wouldn't wonder later if anything could have happened with her. I don't think I'd have had the same experiences with building friendships and doing ministry had I been dating Josh from the start. Who knows? But I am so very thankful that everything worked out like it did. It has been a blissful five years together.

Praise the Lord.

Part Three: Best Friends

We really were. The parties, movie nights, birthday dinners, and Thursday nights in front of Friends continued on as usual.

Many of you commented on my maturity at handling the whole Josh likes Carrie situation. Believe me, any maturity on my end was completely God-given. My previous track record with relationships, although extremely short, was void of much maturity or class. It is almost like God didn’t want me to mess things up permanently with Josh. Oh wait, I believe that to be true! And the night after my date, I’d never felt so supported and comforted, both my Him and some friends He’d placed in my life.

A few months later, Josh plucked up the courage to ask Carrie out. She accepted. I was more or less comfortable with it, but thankful I would be spending the summer on a mission project with Campus Crusade in Virginia Beach. Not a bad time to move 12 hours away. But I kept in good touch with both of them all summer, and soon learned that things between them weren’t going so well. I never got the impression that they didn’t get along, but more that they never really clicked. I remember when they told me separately that they wanted to end things. They lasted all of a month, but ended things amicably.

A few weeks later Josh made plans to visit me in Virginia Beach. I didn’t think it meant anything, but was extremely excited to see my friend. We mostly spent time in larger groups that weekend, but did get the chance to borrow a car and randomly visit Colonial Williamsburg. And then we did take a couple of long walks along the boardwalk in the evenings.

The jpeg files of that trip were the unfortunate casualty of a busted hard drive (stupid Dell computers) but here is a scan of a scrapbook page I made later:

Top picture: On a bench at the VA Beach boardwalk.
Bottom picture: Doing the cheesy tourist thing in Williamsburg.

But it wasn't anything romantic, I told myself. It was only a friend thing. Only a friend thing. We were just best friends. That was it.

But the hug he gave me at the airport was a little different. I think he caught my hand on the release. I wasn’t sure. And then I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Cried all the way home. Cried at work all morning. Tried to put it out of my mind, but it was impossible.

I knew liked him. Again.

But what kind of idiot falls for a guy that has already told her he doesn’t have any romantic feelings toward her?

Random Tangents

Okay, a couple of tangents.

First, I was looking at a picture in this post and realized that Josh still has that shirt.

No shirt from Steve and Barry's ever lasts that long. And yet that was my 19th birthday and I'm almost 25. It has GOT to be paper thin and fraying in several places. Perhaps we should replace it (for all of $6.97) when we're in Ann Arbor this weekend.

Second, props to the folks at Maize N Brew for their series of posts - 100 Reasons To Love Ann Arbor. Any of you blog-stalking Wolverines out there? Check it out.

Updates: Josh claims that his current light blue Michigan shirt is a newer one. I have my doubts.

Also, Jamie tells me she actually took that picture at California Pizza Kitchen that day in September 2002! It totally seems like another lifetime.

Part Two: Just The Three Of Us

Yup, turn up the soap opera music.

I liked Josh. Carrie liked Josh. Carrie and I were close friends and lived in next door dorms. We'd even signed up to be roommates the following year. The three of us were virtually inseperable. All the fixins for some good drama.

And the big question at that time was of course, who is Josh going to pick?

And then Josh asked me to dinner. Me! I was on cloud nine.

Soon into our "date," however, I realized that something wasn't right. We didn't make it our of the parking space when Josh uttered these words: We need to talk. He then proceeded to tell me that although he truly valued my friendship, had no romantic feelings for me. More than that, he told me he did have feelings for (who else?) Carrie, and wanted to ask her out.

Not exactly the first date I'd had in mind. In retrospect, Josh realizes that asking me to dinner wasn't the best plan for such a conversation.

You see, he wasn't completely clueless and knew I harbored a crush for him. I know that telling me he didn't feel the same way was really hard for him. We were extremely close and he didn't want to hurt me or our friendship. But he cared about me as a friend too much not to tell me, and I appreciated it. I later found that he'd agonized over what to do for months.

And you know what? I was initially devastated, but felt a God-given peace about it all pretty quickly. I was mostly worried about losing my friend to "weirdness" between us. I remember talking to some friends about it all the next day and they were like, wow! you're in much better shape than he is! I realized I'd need to be the one to extend the olive branch and assure him that I was really okay with it all. And so I did.

Josh calls that day, "The Day We Became Best Friends."

Weird? Totally.

But when you think about it, if a friendship can withstand kind of drama you know it is for keeps.

And thankfully I left for spring break in Turkey two days later, and got a breather from it all. Things hadn't worked out they way I'd planned, and I was determined to move on.


Dont worry, there's more to this story! :)

Part One: The First Time We Met

It wasn't love at first sight.

I was an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Michigan. That year I went on a spring break trip with Campus Crusade to Daytona Beach, FL and returned back to campus on a Sunday afternoon. As the bus was pulling into Ann Arbor, I started asking around to find out if anyone had dinner plans. The dorms weren't open yet so we'd be on our own. A few of us who lived close to each other decided to do the classic college thing and order a couple pizzas when we got back to school.

There was this guy, Matt Boeve, that I'd met on the trip who I really didn't care for. As I remember, he was pretty arrogant when I played cards with him on the bus ride down to Florida. But I knew he lived in a nearby dorm and thought I'd be nice and invite him to join us.

Little did I know Boeve lived down the hall from a very cute guy who he'd end up inviting along to eat pizza with us.

Josh had just returned from a spring break trip, too - skiing with his parents. He has never been one to pass up pizza, and readily agreed to head down to South Quad (my dorm) with Boeve to meet me, and some others for some Cottage Inn.

I remember thinking that Boeve's friend Josh was both funny and attractive. I was a teeny bit intrigued by him, but it wasn't anything major. Just the huh... the new guy is cute feeling - the kind I'd felt a number of times when meeting attractive single guys. Josh remembers that I had short hair and wore a striped sweater. Nothing earth-shattering.

It would be awhile before we started dating. Like a year-and-a-half. It seemed like a looooong time, to 18-year-old me. I'm not a patient person, and my crush developed pretty quickly.

Soon after spring break, we started hanging out in groups of friends. I'd often eat dinner with that same Cottage Inn Pizza group. Josh's dorm was notorious for terrible food, so he and Boeve headed to South Quad many evenings for something decent. We were both involved in "Cru" on campus, and our two groups of friends started to mesh. Boeve started to grow on me, and we became friends pretty quickly too.

I admit, I'd sometimes ditch my girlfriends (sorry DeeDee, Jess, Jamie, & Becky) for video games (the shoot 'em up type) with Josh and the "East Quad boys." Not my proudest moments. But I liked being with him. He was funny, articulate, and generous, and we always had great conversations. We hit it off as friends right away.

But he wasn't interested in me in that way. Sigh.

Patrick, Me, Carrie, Boeve, Josh - headed to the Counting Crows concert.

Summer passed, where we saw each other a few times (always in groups) and IM'ed a bit in the evenings. Sophomore year started, and we found ourselves living on the same side of campus again. Our group of friends grew closer, and we enjoyed frequent barn dances, parties, and movie nights all year. We even had a puzzle streak going there for awhile. He and our other friend, Carrie, made me a birthday cake that fall. Ten of us or so went on a ski trip in Northern Michigan that winter. All the while, my feelings were growing.

His were not.

Out for lunch for my birthday: Matt Roe, Carrie, Me Boeve, Josh

Ski Trip to Boyne Mountain: Erin, Me, DeeDee

Random cookie baking at Josh's house


Things continued on this way for awhile, with frequent card games, group dinners, and football games. But then things started to get really interesting when Carrie confessed to me that she, too, had feelings for Josh.

To be continued...

Happy Five Year... Uh... Dating Anniversary?

Do you celebrate the anniversary of when you started dating? We usually don't, especially since it is only a couple months after our wedding anniversary.

However, this year, we both have our eye on something we'd like to purchase that isn't exactly a need. For Josh, it is DVDs of old Michigan games. For me, an ICKY bag on Etsy! Actually, I'll get two of these - one big and one small. Both have waterproof liners and I intend to use them for makeup/toiletries when I travel. Who knows, maybe it will help! So we're calling them five year anniversary of being together presents. Convenient, right?

I'm totally excited for my ICKY bag set! Here is what they'll look like:

Side one:

Other side:
If you, too, are dying for an ICKY bag, check out:

http://www.petunias.etsy.com/

Kelly, who owns and creates the products for Petunias, is actually an old co-worker of mine. Her stuff is adorable!

And while we're on the subject of Josh and my five year dating anniversary (which will be tomorrow, by the way), I think it is about time to tell our story. Stay tuned!

Next Generation of Books?

For all of you bookworms out there...

Do you have any interest in "going digital" with your books? Do you have, or plan to get one of these?

Sony's Reader Digital Book

Amazon's Kindle

Or perhaps you'd be interested in reading books on your iPhone or Blackberry? Or maybe, for you, a book will always consist of printed words on paper that has been bound up.

From both a personal and professional standpoint, I'm extremely interested to see how technology will continue to change the way people purchase, use, read, view, and think about books. I mean, there has already been a significant shift to online book perusing and purchasing. Libraries have also gone digital in some respects, and many have great websites with a lot of capabilities.

And then there's music. I mean, iTunes has significantly influenced the way people consume music. Is it a stretch to think something similar might happen with books?

A Sony Reader is currently on its way to me, and I'm wildly excited about it. I travel a lot and look forward to a time where I can just bring along a slim little machine instead of 4-5 heavy, bulky books. The reader can hold about 160 books, which is great for someone like me who is always in the middle of 4-5 books at any time.

I'll let you know what I think! In the meantime, what are your thoughts on all of this?