Sam and I met while working at a Christian summer camp called Pine Cove in the summer of 2015. I honestly don’t remember the first time we met since I met the 50 other people I would be working with on the same day. My first memory of Sam is when our whole team was in a meeting and we were passing around papers, and I tried to get Sam’s attention to pass him the paper and I touched his arm and it was unexpectedly rock solid. From then on, I told him that he reminded me of Spiderman, super nerdy but weirdly athletic. We became friends that summer, worked more closely the next summer since we were both on the leadership team and finally spend our last summer together working even closer as Program Director and Assistant Program Director. By the end of summer 2017, I considered us best friends. And there were multiple moments sprinkled throughout those 3 summers that I really had a thing for him. I thought he was so wise, driven and goofy but to my great disappointment, at the end of that final summer, I was really hoping that he’d ask me out, but he never did. Obviously a little crushed, but quickly brushing it off like it was no big deal, I decided from there that we were just meant to be good friends and nothing more. In my mind, since we just spent every day of the past 3 months together getting to know each other and he didn’t have feelings for me at the end of it, that meant that it was never going to happen.

It wasn’t love at first sight. Or second, or third. It was more of a weighty realization of “oh no, did I miss my chance with one of the kindest, most caring, beautiful women I have ever met?” But that’s getting a little ahead of the story. Without going too far back, I was a student at the University of North Florida studying Electrical Engineering. I got the chance to work that summer as a counselor at a Christian summer camp called Pine Cove. It was a wild experience and when I arrived there it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. There were so many people and so much training that went on during orientation. I remember hearing a lot about all these people that met their future spouse at Pine Cove, but also that we definitely should not think about dating at camp. Sometime during that week, I met Maddie. I don’t remember what our first meeting was like, which isn’t a big surprise. What is a big surprise is that Maddie doesn’t remember either. That summer came and went. Maddie and I became friends and I went away thinking that Maddie was smart, cute, and engaging. It also worked out that we would work the next summer together as well, this time I got to be Maddie’s boss. It was another whirlwind summer with a lot of new challenges and friends made. That summer ended and Maddie and I were closer friends, still nothing happened. I decided to go back to camp and Maddie didn’t know what she would do. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks before camp started that Maddie’s situation worked out that she could come to camp. I was so incredibly excited that one of my very good friends would be at camp with me again! This time Maddie got a promotion and we were coworkers again! We worked incredibly close with one another so this time, at the end of camp, nothing happened again.

We continued our friendship for the next 3 months, after all he was a best friend to me. He was in Jacksonville, Florida and I was in Austin. I thought nothing of our texting and occasional phone calls since that’s what friends did. Then November 30th, Sam came to Austin for a job interview. He had always wanted to move to Texas, so I was truly just excited to see my friend. I picked him up from the airport and we ended up spending the day together going around Austin. We went to several awesome locations that were super beautiful and Sam didn’t give any hints that in his heart, he wanted to be more than friends. I sincerely had no idea, and he thinks it’s wild that I didn’t know but what was I supposed to do, putting my heart out there for a possibility that might not happen? I don’t think so. I note that the locations were super romantic because come December 1st at a little after midnight (I worked night shifts so this was “after work” for me), we decided to stay up all night since he had to be at the airport at 5 am and I didn’t have work the next day. So, we ended up going to a bar, since we promised to get margaritas together to celebrate the end of our last summers of camp but that never happened in August, so we did it then and there. While sipping margaritas, I asked him the very normal question of, “So if you had to choose between the job in Dallas and the job in Austin, which one would you take?” since he had just interviewed in Dallas a week prior. After the longest pause ever, he finally answered, “I’d choose the one in Austin, because I’d want to be closer to you.” Cue my whole body getting instantly hot. He went on to say some other stuff about wanting to pursue but in my head, I was telling myself to just play it cool and say something normal. So, I replied, “But really, if I weren’t here which one would you choose?” I then proceeded to ask him if we could take a walk and ended up unpacking what just happened.

We continued to talk after camp, at first on and off and then more and more frequently. I really began to wonder “Did I blow it?” “Did I miss my chance completely?”. That probably should have been it, but of course there is more to the story. We continued talking and my feelings for her grew. During this time I was looking for jobs and happened to get an interview in Austin, where Maddie was living. I was really excited for the interview and to see her. I was thinking about how exciting it was because we both know that we have feelings for each other and just haven’t said anything. Why else would we talk on the phone? Maddie picked me up from the airport the Thursday before the interview and explored Austin. I was pretty nervous about the whole thing so even though we went to some really romantic spots, I didn’t say anything so I could focus on my interview the next day. After all, if I didn’t get the job we wouldn’t be able to see each other ever because I lived in Florida. The interview for Friday and Saturday went well. Saturday night, after Maddie got off work late, we got to hang out and finally get some margaritas. We talked and she asked me which job I would rather have from the job I applied for in Dallas or Austin. I paused for a brief moment. Then I told her Austin. Because I would want to be with her. It was the perfect time to tell her what she already knew. Come to find out, she had no idea. In her head that idea was so closed that she didn’t even think about the fact that we talked on the phone and texted consistently. Wild. That began our buffer month, a time for Maddie to reopen that door and think about dating me. And so it happened that on January 1, 2018 Maddie and I started dating. It was wonderful. I got to know her so much more and talk to her all the time and grow closer and closer. We never got to actually see each other because I was in Jacksonville and she was in Austin. But we had June in our sights, when I would be moving to Austin.

We spent the rest of the night meeting up with our other friend at Kerbey Lane (24-hour diner) and she knew nothing of what just happened, which gave me time to think. We then drove around Austin, dropped her off and started heading to the airport. It was pretty silent on the car ride; I just remember really wanting to take his hand but also thinking about how dumb that would be since I haven’t even figured out how I felt about him. I then asked him about what all this meant and where we would go from there. It was then that he realized that he didn’t even ask me anything. He said that he would call me later to talk about everything. Monday night came, Sam called me and basically said that he was ready for me to be his girlfriend. While me, 20 steps behind him still figuring out how/when and why he liked me, was not ready for that. So, I asked for a month, we ended up calling it the “buffer month,” where we’d call each other and facetime to see if I could see him in a romantic way. Since, in my mind, that door was closed in August. I ended up not even needing the whole month, but he wanted to stay committed to the month-long period that we settled on. So, January 1st, 2018, we began officially dating. Skip on over to November 2nd, 2018, we had been together for 10 months and were very set on getting engaged soon. I was so confident that Sam was going to propose in December and even narrowed it down to two weekends that it would happen. We were going on a date that night to celebrate the 10 months we’ve spent together, and I was so sure of myself that I didn’t suspect a single thing. And I’m a nosy person, so I thought I was totally right. He would ask me what kinds of rings I like and everything, as if he didn’t already have one since October. My roommates, who completely knew, didn’t act weird or say anything special about what I should wear or anything.

Maddie was able to come to Jacksonville for my birthday weekend in February. She got to meet my lifelong friends at a birthday party they threw for me and since Maddie is such an incredible, social person, she fit right in. I had been crushing on her for months prior to seeing her in Austin and now that we were finally dating and all my friends loved her, I was sold. It had only been a short while of dating, but I told her “I love you” for the first time that trip. She wouldn’t say it for several more months. June finally came and I moved to Austin. We continued to date and get to know each other and I eventually got the opportunity to ask her father for his blessing to marry her. After he said yes, I began planning. Maddie suspected the engagement sometime in late November/early December. I was able to play into this by continually talking about my hopes to get a ring soon, even though I already had it. When the day finally came all the pieces were in place. My friends, and her sisters were arriving early the next morning and we were going on a regular date to celebrate dating for 10 months. We went to a nice italian place then I told her we were going to a movie later that night but had a couple hours to kill so I prepared an activity. We went to a park by the theater and I brought hot chocolate and bundt cakes for dessert while we looked up at the stars. After that, I told her there was one more thing. We walked over to a nice area overlooking a lake and began to read through a journal that we had kept, passing back and forth, while we were long distance. Maddie was the last one to have it so she made a photo album of pictures we took while long distance. After getting to the end I told her there was one more page. She flipped it and was greeted by a picture of the ring box. I gave her a second, then got down on one knee, and asked Maddie, the love of my life, the most compassionate, thoughtful, fun girl I know, if she would marry me. She said yes.

So, we went to dinner and then he told me that we were going to watch a late movie, so we still had some time to kill. We went to a park close to the movie theater. Sam brought a duffel bag of stuff as we walked through the field and ended up taking out hot chocolate, mini bundt cakes and a blanket for us to stargaze. We had always talked about stargazing, so I thought it was a sweet gesture but thought nothing more of it. Sam said that there was one more thing he wanted to do before the movies. So, we packed everything up and walked over to the pavilion area near the lake. He had our long-distance journal in his hands. Back story on the journal, throughout our 5 months of long-distance at the beginning of our relationship, we would pass a journal back and forth. I had the journal last and ended up making a scrapbook in the last pages of the journal so we could look over our first 5 months together and remember all of it. So, the journal ended with that scrapbook. Again, I was still not expecting anything since this wasn’t the first time we had revisited the journal. So, we went through it slowly, read our first entries and began to flip through the scrapbook page by page. We finally got to the last page of the scrapbook, where I had ended all of it, but Sam said there was one more page. I made the scrapbook, so I knew there wasn’t another page, but I flipped the page over and there as the last page of the journal, was a picture of a ring box. Before I could even think, Sam went down on one knee and said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me and asked me to marry him. I was COMPLETELY shocked and after double checking that he was serious multiple times, I finally said yes. His best friends and my sisters flew in for the weekend to celebrate and I honestly felt up in the cloud the whole weekend. Sam is truly more than I could have ever asked for and I am honored to get to marry him.