“Emma Wall. As in cutest-girl-in-the-world Emma Wall.” That’s what my friend Madison replied to my request for clarification – we had like four Emma’s in my high school class – after asking me for a favor. The favor was that I take some paper with me up to Chemistry and hand it to Emma Wall, back in junior year of high school. I vividly remember the first time I saw Emma, back in my first day of my freshman year of high school. Even though she wouldn’t have a significant part in my life until a couple years later. Desks were arranged in a U-shape, and she was across the room in Mrs. Moehlmann’s class. I remember catching us in awkward eye contact, a couple times. She looked very reserved, not very comfortable… quiet. I knew nothing about her; I didn’t know that she had just moved to Idaho from North Carolina, away from her friends. Nor did I know that she was intimidated by the atmosphere of such a small, private school as Cole Valley Christian, where everyone knew each other: years of history that left her at a social disadvantage. Of course, she knew nothing about me. She didn’t know that my mom and I had travelled with my natural-born Idahoan dad all the way from Venezuela to be where we are today. And neither of us could have even imagined that in a few years we’d be on opposite endpoints of the globe, talking on the phone about marriage (we’ll get to this phone call later). I don’t even remember the first time I talked to my best friend, but I remember the first time I saw her with more clarity than any other person I know.

Madison had a good point, it was very hard to argue her observation of Emma’s cuteness. I remember thinking the same thing when I saw Emma walk out of our friend Sammie’s house for our senior homecoming. I was simply floored when I saw her in that sparkling, red dress, and her smile was intoxicating. I thought to myself that I had the most beautiful date at the dance. She hadn’t been my girlfriend yet, but by the end of that night, after holding her on the dance floor under the fluorescent lights (holding may be a bit of an overstatement, we were no less than arms reach but still), sharing laughs and stories at Solid Grill & Bar, and TPing my boy Josh together on the way to drop her off from our group homecoming after-party, I knew she was going to be. It took a while, for many reasons. But we came around. My mother had always told me to only date someone I would marry. How do you know if you would marry someone until you date them? Once you find out you would want to marry them, how do you know you are ready to marry them?

It was my first relationship. A “high school relationship” would be a better way to phrase it. The meanings change… really. The former implies potential, meaning the goal of traditional dating is reachable, while the other describes a finite (while gratifying) experience. Our dates were fun, our talks felt real, but only to a point where we could maintain the façade we would cling to, the one that hid the elephant in the room. That one day, after we graduated, she would go to one college, I would go to one college, the end. I was always one that wanted to enjoy the present experience and let tomorrow exist only when it becomes today. But eventually, that elephant was too big, and one day, we both faced and acknowledged the fact that this relationship is void of potential, as everyone knows high school relationships are. She told me she was certainly going to Alabama, and I knew I had a heavy leaning to WSU. Ironically, that ended up being one of, if not the most, positively pivotal moments of our relationship, because it was the first time we acknowledged a dire problem in our relationship, and more importantly, it was the first time we were telling each other the full truth of what we believe. And it shattered the fake myth of all the “I love you”s we had told each other before hand, and eventually, real ones started to float in. Well, we didn’t tell each other the full truth yet. I had no idea her dad went to WSU for his graduate school. I also had no idea that she was waiting to hear about scholarships from the school before making her final decision. All of that into account, with a longer story in between that we won’t have time for, we ended up taking high school graduation pictures together on May 22nd, 2016, as matriculated WSU students (Go Cougs every day).

Emma had always been a good gift giver. Most of my music on the road came from CD’s, if not the radio, just from my desire to be old school, even though my car supported an aux cord. My birthday of our first year together, she gave me a CD. It was packaged in some used CD case, and the cover was made out of a large notecard, the hinges were wearing, the disc itself had a title drawn in with a marker. It was perfection. She burned the CD herself, with a list of songs that had significance to our relationship. Track 4 was Night’s on Fire, by David Nail. She played that song when I was driving her back to her car from Nampa, ID. We had gone to a drive-in movie together – I don’t even remember the movie because I spent the whole time talking to her – with the pretext that we were friends. But I liked her a lot, and apparently so did she. I could feel the underlying tension in all of our laughs, in the ending to each of our conversations that night, as both of us were wondering what the other was thinking about. I still feel like an idiot to this day. That should have been the night I asked her out. The night would have truly been on fire. Track 8, Don’t Stop Believin’, by Journey. In the notecard, Emma’s description to this song is, “The night we went to Enrique’s. We were driving and I asked you if you ever sing to music. To prove that you are in fact fun and you do sing, we sang to this.” Track 11, I Don’t Dance, by Lee Brice. The last song we danced to in prom together. I remember staring into her eyes throughout the entire song, watching her radiant smile. I knew what my mom meant in that moment. I knew that this relationship was not a waste of time, and that it didn’t have to be some temporary, high school illusion if we took ourselves more seriously as people. She was nervous when she gave me the CD, hoping I would like it. I didn’t just tell her I loved that gift, I told her I loved her. This was the first time we both genuinely believed it.

“Marriage is a financial statement.” My second birthday, I unwrapped my present to find a craft book, hand made by the love of my life. Every few pages contained a picture of us, but every page had a Bible verse. Every page also contained a line from a song. The book was long enough only to include each line from Love Like Crazy, another song by Lee Brice: “They called them crazy when they started out Said seventeen's too young to know what loves about They've been together fifty-eight years now That's crazy…” The first time that I remembered that song distinctly being played when we were hanging out in my dorm, our freshman year at Washington State, that night she had asked me if I think we are going to “make it.” I fumbled with my words more than I would like to admit. Somewhere inside of me told me it was a bit too fast and a bit too “crazy” to make such an outlandish prediction like us actually getting married after starting our relationship off in high school. I would have taken myself a bit more seriously if maybe I listened to those wise words of my mom a little bit closer, because I don’t think anyone else had taught me that it’s not only okay to have the responsibility of an adult in all areas of your life before the age of 25, it’s best to be in that place. I told her that we were going to make it. Even though I said that we were going to make it, I know now it was just words without action to go alongside it.

Summer 2018. We both had finished our sophomore years of college, our career paths sending her and I to Nanjing, China and Lexington, Kentucky respectively, a perfect 12-hour time zone difference, the first time since we started dating that we had truly been apart. It ended up being the start of our most important journey. Just before the summer, the present she gave me was a stack of letters. Each letter was dated for me to open every two to seven days, for the entire summer, until the last day of my internship, until the day we would be reunited. Twelve hours away from her, I’d be awake while she was asleep, but I’d have her letters to keep me company. With every letter, the voice of truth crept deeper and deeper into my eardrums. “You have a girl who writes you letters when your away. You’re some random, nerdy computer science student who by chance moved to Boise all the way from Venezuela and landed yourself with the sweetest, kindest, godliest, most uplifting best friend you could possibly find. You are blessed with a girl who not only makes you happy, but makes you whole. You say you two are going to make it, yet you aren’t married.” My rebuttal was the cliché. I need to talk to my family first, but it needs to be in person… and I need to talk to my friends… and I need to be graduated from college for some reason… and I need to take her mom out to pick the ring with me (okay that probably is actually good advice, or at least her sister).

I have siblings of my own, and I will tell them the same thing I discovered when I decided I was not going to make excuses any longer. Society will tell you marriage is a “financial statement.” Society will tell you that you are simply not responsible enough for marriage, until magically, your brain pops into marriage-ready when you reach your late twenties. I discovered that summer that singleness is a beautiful thing, but when you find the love of your life, treat her like the love of your life. If the back door is always unlocked, you will most certainly take it when things are harder than you are willing to deal with. If you are not ready to dispense with the back door, then grapple with the part of you that struggles with commitment instead of hanging for the ride and letting the future do the work for you. Because if marriage has to be a “statement” of anything, it is a statement of responsibility. And never before have I been more excited to responsibly care for, love, and cherish every moment that I get with my future wife Emma. I called her that night to talk to her about marriage, it was morning for her. We talked for a long time. Eventually, I asked her, “So… just so that I don’t have to spoil anything in the future when I do decide to ask the question… why don’t you just tell me your ring size right now?” I knew she would have never imagined that I would actually go the next day to as many ring stores as I possibly could to find the right engagement ring. Don’t believe me? Look at the shock in her face from our proposal pictures. We had been dating three years and it still happened quicker than anyone imagined. I am so blessed that I will get the rest of my life to keep surprising that girl like I did on September 9th, 2018, and I am excited to have you all join us. - Omar Finol-Evans A wife of noble character who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. - Proverbs 31:10