When I hit 2,500 Twitter followers (I refuse to refer to the site as X), I decided to do an anonymous AMA (Ask Me Anything). After some fun conversations with friends, I checked the anonymous messages one last time before calling a close on the situation. To my surprise, I found a short message--"I'm a 28 year old Christian writer who works remotely and is entirely willing to move for a relationship. We've interacted a few times on X. Would you be interested in talking?" After a week of messaging on Twitter, we had our first phone call. We talked about everything--our faith, our writing projects, our goals for the future. We've talked to each other every single day since then.

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, 2024, Clayton flew out to meet me in person for the first time. It was quite the experience--we both had a good bit of shock over the notion that "the person who lives in my phone has a body attached to them"--but we enjoyed ourselves. We kept in touch with texts, phone calls, and Discord movie nights. We had a couple more in-person visits before Clayton moved to Durant, Oklahoma in August 2025 to be with me forever.

When Clayton and I first started talking, I got my non-negotiables out of the way quickly. I was somewhat surprised that we agreed on almost everything. God willing, we'll be buying a house shortly after we're married--a house that's out of the way but not too far from the supermarket. A house with a kitchen table big enough to homeschool a handful of kids. A backyard big enough for a vegetable patch and maybe some chickens. A library office for writing future bestsellers. And most importantly, a porch with a couple of rocking chairs, so we can sit and watch the sunset for years to come.