THE SULLIVANS

I was not - and I repeat, NOT - looking to date anybody! With plans to graduate and move back to Texas for more school, I was content spending senior year with my best friends and sister. Because we were still in the midst of the pandemic, I was living and doing school from Malibu in an old house with 13 other people—weird, I know. Disclaimer: the CDC would NOT have approved. COVID-times were odd and I didn't leave the house much, but life was good. And I was happy. I didn’t know I was missing anything. One day, I went downstairs and recognized this boy, the thing I was missing, from one of my online classes. Sweet Joshua introduced himself and I learned he lived practically 50 yards from our front door. Desperate for some sense of normalcy, I asked if he wanted to start Zooming our New Testament class together. So we did! Every Monday and Thursday he’d come over to the house and we'd plop ourselves down on the couch for class. We started talking less about the New Testament (oops) and more about our lives, families, hopes, dreams, heartaches, etc. I felt so safe with him, and he always made me laugh. That being said, I remained adamant I didn't want to date anyone. One day, I saw Josh (who was falling madly in love with me at this point, DUH) going downstairs, and I could tell he was so sad. I asked him what was wrong and he told me he was just having a rough day. It turns out that he was coming from one of my best friends' room *cough, Jaylene* where she pretty much told him there was no hope we'd ever date. A few weeks later, we went out for ice cream with friends. When I mentioned the idea of going for a drive on PCH, he was the only one down. We got all the way to Oxnard when I decided we should probably turn around, but Josh asked if I wanted to go to the beach. So we did! I was pretty easily convinced to spend more time with him. Once we were at the beach, Josh talked me into getting on top of a lifeguard tower to watch the stars. Laying up there with him, mesmerized by the combined vastness of sky and sea, I asked Josh if he would ever go to space. Without hesitation he said, “Not if I met the love of my life, I wouldn’t leave her for anything” … After that drive on the beach, I realized I had spent the past few months falling in love with my best friend. What started as neighborly kindness turned into the truest friendship I've ever known. At some point, we agreed to share some of our writings with one another. I’ve always enjoyed writing poetry, and Josh has a beautiful way with words (keep reading and you will see), so we thought it would be special to give each other a glimpse of that side of ourselves. We went on the porch the night before our six-week long Christmas break, and Josh shared with me this beautiful story of a nervous boy giving a poem to the girl he loves. It was precious, and it was his move. We sat there in silence until I fearfully and hesitantly confessed I had been developing feelings for him, too. I was graduating and moving back to Texas, so we decided to pray about it and revisit it after the break. I missed him terribly during those six weeks. The day I got back to California, we took a bunch of Indian food to our lifeguard tower and he officially asked me to be his girlfriend. Now, when people talk about going to space, we just make eye contact and smile. Neither of us is going anywhere.

Falling in love is a strangely involuntary process. It’s easy to look back now with rose-colored glasses at those first few months of knowing Morgan. But I remember that in the moment I felt deeply unsettled, full of a strange anticipation and a fear that what I hoped for would never come to pass. Morgan and I met rather inconspicuously in her living room one August evening. My roommates and I were introducing ourselves to our new neighbors, and Morgan was particularly welcoming and invited me to take a Zoom class with her. I learned very little about the New Testament that semester, but I learned a lot about her. And the more I learned, the more I loved. For us, there were never awkward pauses or strange breaks in conversation. Morgan made me feel deeply seen and deeply known, and just as importantly, she was someone who I wanted to truly know. I found myself, quite unexpectedly, falling quickly for this girl who had stumbled into my life just a few weeks ago. At some point it hit me: I was completely enamored with Morgan. And then the anxiety began. Because once you admit to yourself that you love someone, there’s no going back. I remember talking to my friends, their encouragement, but also subtle skepticism. They too understood that a girl who was about to graduate and move across the country would probably not start a relationship with a directionless sophomore. I also heard, through the grapevine, that Morgan had no interest in dating me. I was crushed, and decided I would have to start distancing myself to “get over her.” But I didn’t try that hard. She was just so interesting, so fun, such a joy to be with; she made everything lovely. I couldn’t stay away. The end of the semester brought a cascade of events. Morgan and I were spending more and more time together, and I started to believe, against my better judgment, that maybe there was a chance Morgan might be interested in me. That drive along PCH was such an important marker for us. It’s hard to put words to those moments. The feelings and memories are so vivid, and there was an experience that night that can’t fully be communicated. It was the first time, I think, that Morgan and I stepped back from everything and created a small space where it was just us. Our “little private universe,” we call it now; a collection of feelings, thoughts, and experiences that are all our own, that cannot be adequately described, and that no one else would quite understand. I caught a glimpse of something that night, on top of a lifeguard tower on westward beach, with waves crashing on the shore and headlights illuminating the rock wall behind us. Something subliminally beautiful that I can only describe as the beauty of Christ in Morgan and our blossoming friendship. And I knew that I wanted to pursue that beauty and goodness wherever it led. I had always rather cynically laughed at the claim that “when you know, you know.” But with Morgan, I knew. There was never really any doubt. I’d tried to ignore or suppress the knowing, but it was always there. On a cold night on the deck of her home in Calamigos, Morgan and I shared how we felt about each other. We shivered from fear and cold, and then with laughter and excitement. We sat, side by side, in iron wicker chairs under the same stars we’d seen from atop the tower a week before. I reached over and put my arm around her, partly for the warmth, and partly as a recognition that something between us had changed. It was terribly awkward. The chair was hard, the gap between us too large, the closeness not yet there. It was a reminder that the vision I’d seen on the beach was very real, but not yet a fully realized reality. Now it is the same, the vision is a little quieter, a little clearer, a little more beautiful than it was on the beach, or the porch, or the field where I proposed, or any of the other places we’ve brought into our joint life. With her, it just keeps getting better. We were, and are, becoming.