Because love doesn't always have to be on the same page...

I first met Sarah during Leadership class at Living Stones late spring of 2016. I've seen her around beforehand but never went out of my way to introduce myself, despite the multitude of mutual friends we had. Sarah would read scripture to the congregation from the pulpit from time to time, and I noticed how nervous she would get while being on stage and I would find myself praying for a peaceful heart and mind for her as she read. This went on until July of 2017 when I got to church late from having to work a mandatory shift, so I chose to sit in the foyer and listen to the sermon instead. Sarah had been floating around helping with miscellaneous tasks before sitting with me and we started talking. I found a kindred spirit in her; she's hard working, intelligent, compassionate, and funny. We hit it off and had an amazing conversation sharing our personal struggles and growths with each other. We would talk in passing at church until late January of 2018, when she offered me a table for the house I had moved into. We ended up sharing a dinner that night and really enjoyed our time together. From that point on I felt like she was everywhere. She sat with me during the Ash Wednesday service that incidentally landed on Valentines day this year, and we went out to eat or made each other meals periodically. We'd have late night discussions about music theory, games we played, the music scene in Reno, philosophy, and theology. I was enamored with her. She was always on my mind, close friends were asking how things were going for us, and I took that as the green-light to make my intentions known. We started dating March 11, and made the promise to take things slow due to previous experiences. Getting married a little over a year after we started counts right?

I remember seeing Troy around church. We were in deacon class together and he seemed like a loner but a solid guy. He had good answers and seemed to be strong in faith. One day I was going to pray through the 6pm service at church when Troy came in while I was chatting with a mutual friend. He ended up sitting down with me and we talked through the service. The conversation went from casual, “how was your day” to real deep fast. I remember leaving the that night thinking how easy it was for me to open up and talk to him. From then on, I made it a point to be his friend. I would awkwardly say “hi” and trying to sit with him at random church events. Things changed when he moved down the street and one of his roommates invited me to hang out. Troy was there and chatted with us. We had a few more times where we hung out, and had long conversations that went into the late-night hours. After a while, I decided to ask Troy to dinner. We had a good time but when it came time to pay the tab, he had made a comment that we are just friends hanging out. I left thinking “well that sucked, but okay. We’re still friends.” We kept hanging out and would have the occasional dinner together but we were still pretty casual. Then he invited me over for dinner at his place, at first I was being a butt and kept saying we are just hanging out. Until he made his intentions clear that he wanted to be more than just friends hanging out and wanted to date.

When it became clear that a long courtship was not desirable, Sarah and Troy started planning a wedding. They had already chosen a time frame of when they wanted to get married and even started the wedding planning before Troy even proposed. Needless to say after a while Sarah got a little anxious of when the proposal would happen. Troy tried his best to keep things a secret, but she is excessively curious and almost impossible to surprise. Troy had ordered the ring and was told that the package would ship through UPS and anxiously waited for it to be delivered. A short time later, Fedex had stopped by but no one was home. The deliverer chose to leave it at a drop box at a Walgreens on Oddie. (Seriously the most ghetto Walgreens to leave it at!) The delivery slip did not say who the package was for or even who it was from, so the roommates all thought it belonged to someone else. Finally after some pushing from Sarah, Troy went to pick it up. Sure enough she was right and it was the ring and he had to play it off like it wasn't. Sarah then had to wait an agonizingly long week for Troy to deploy his plan to propose. That Sunday was their monthly "post church" game night with a small group of friends and he proposed while playing the game "Fibbage: Enough About You." It was during the last round where players are to share a truth and a lie about themselves and the other players have to discern which one is the truth. Troy popped the question using the prompts and worded it carefully knowing that whichever order it came out it would come out grammatically correct. It was a sweet and cute proposal done with good friends around us. Sarah suspected that it was coming, but was not sure how it was going to happen. In a way, Troy got his wish of surprising Sarah.