I stayed up drinking until 3 AM the night before my first day of classes in college.
Wait.
I've never written a more deceptive sounding sentence in my life. Contrary to what many may suppose based on the norms of college students these days, my drink of choice was actually chocolate milk (an entire half gallon, if I remember correctly - Hello Freshman 15! Nice to meet you!). And the "party" responsible for keeping me up until 3 AM was my word processor and a five page paper due the first day of class. I was blessed to get a scholarship that paid for all of my tuition and room and board at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, OK. However, part of this scholarship required me to take special honors/leadership classes, one of which assigned summer reading and a five page paper. Hence, I stayed up drinking chocolate milk and writing a paper until the wee hours of the morning the night before my first day of college.
My flight back home from the summer in Russia was delayed so I arrived back to Oklahoma only one day before packing up again and moving to Tahlequah to attend college. The paper was sort of the last thing on my mind while overseas, so I had a good excuse for putting it off until the night before (or so I thought). I kicked myself for this procrastination right about 1:42 AM when the exhaustion of jet lag kicked in and I longed for nothing more than a pillow and soft blanket.
The scholarship dictated where I chose to attend college because, really, how could anyone pass up free? Thankfully, the Lord saw fit to open doors for Joey to attend NSU as well. His acting abilities gained him some attention and even a scholarship offer from NSU, provided he major or minor in theater. However, he nixed the idea of a life of theater in favor of something related to medicine so he turned down the scholarship offer but still kept his enrollment at NSU. He likes to tell people that he followed me to school, but I'm confident the Lord orchestrated it as such.
Back in junior high school, I decided history was my favorite subject and I wanted to become a history teacher. I wavered only slightly in this ambition after repeatedly being told history teachers were a dime a dozen and that it would be rare to impossible to find a history teaching job that did not also require coaching. But in the end, my love of history won over my fear of finding a job and I declared my major to be social studies education. After four years of school, I would have a degree, be ready to find a job and (most importantly in my mind), eager to get married. Joey, on the other hand, leaning toward a major in pre-med, may not be done with school for eight plus years. I tried not to think about the implications and potential hinderances this might have to a desirable timeline toward marriage.
In keeping with our creative birthday gifting tradition, I pursued finding a creative way to celebrate Joey's 19th birthday while at college. I borrowed a dorm mate's little bistro table, got out my forbidden (but rarely enforced) hot plate, and cooked him a gourmet meal in my dorm room one night. After a month or so of eating cafeteria food (blah), a home (or in this case) dorm-cooked meal sounded divine. I am positive, however, that my meal was mediocre at best. I even burned part of it, rousing the suspicion of the RA toward my illegal hot plate.
Conversation over that birthday meal revolved around the changes brought on by life at our university - living in dorms, roommates, difficulty of classes, crazy professors, etc. Since classes had begun, we'd been bombarded with a case of the busy. Attending freshmen orientations, meeting new friends, keeping up with classes and trying to get plugged in to the ministry of Campus Christian Fellowship proved to be time consuming. I had an immediate group of friends among my fellow scholarship recipients with whom I shared most my classes and among the girls living on my dorm floor. Joey, on the other hand, was just beginning to connect with a few of the guys in his dorm. A bit of alone time to catch up with each other in the midst of all the busy was a welcome treat.
A few months later for my birthday, Joey took me out on a lunch date to a pizza place that makes heart shaped pizza. I distinctly remember sitting in front of the restaurant talking about our academic goals. Joey seemed to have his heart set on pre-med at this point. Secretly, I had my heart set on getting married as soon as we finished college. I knew Joey would be a good doctor someday and I wanted to be supportive, but I couldn't help shake the feeling that such a lofty plan might postpone any potential for getting married sooner rather than later. I even hinted that night that I thought Joey would make an excellent science teacher (which conveniently only required 4 years of college). Maybe we could even work at the same school someday, I thought. I didn't care about money and what a doctor would make vs. what a teacher could make. But my ideas are not God's ideas, so I had to leave my hopes and wishes in God's hands once again.
After our heart-shaped pizza, Joey wanted to stop back by the dorms for some reason. "Hey, check your mailbox" he said as we entered my dorm building. Obediently, I checked the box only to find the first of a series of clues. We would be going on a scavenger hunt date all across campus. Some stops held significance while others just proved to be silly locations in route to other clues. The second from the last stop provided me with a map of the campus with all the clues/stops marked, showing we had made stops in the shape of a heart with an arrow pointing to the final spot. Joey asked his good friend Jonathan to set up and keep watch over a picnic at the final location. Here, I found a small cake waiting for us. More importantly, I found the peace that this journey Joey and I were on together would keep my heart full regardless of how many years may have to pass before we could fulfill the dream of saying "I do."
