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Once you get engaged, everyone wants to know how he proposed. I have told so many people that amazing story but I wanted to tell you the story before the story, the story of how we met and fell in love.

Jason and I met our sophomore year at Anderson University. We were in the same 8 a.m. Spanish class that met every day. We would all take our seats a few minutes before class would begin. About 10 minutes into class, we would hear a ba-bump, ba-bump sound down the hallway. Jason would clunk his way into the classroom with this huge boot on his foot from a basketball injury (I like to call it the Frankenstein strut). I saw him the first day and thought, "What a hunk! I'm gonna marry that guy.” Little did I know how true that thought would become.

I asked the girl beside me if she knew who that guy was; she told me that it was Jason Perry and he was in a relationship with some girl (whom I would later find out that lived next door to me). My hopes became so deflated because here I am in the back of the classroom looking at this unbelievably attractive, extremely unavailable guy on the front row.

Time passed and I found out that he and that girl broke up (woohoo!); we also ended up becoming friends through mutual friends and volleyball. I learned that he was a Godly Christian guy who aspired to become a successful accountant, so not only was he a guy with the same beliefs as me but he was going to be raking in the dough! ;) Well, as fate would have it, my best friend/roommate liked him and he liked her.

Super.

I crushed from afar, cringing every time he shared a joke and she would laugh. Taylor Swift's 'You Belong With Me' was the most played song on my iPod and I would find myself daydreaming about Jason running towards me on a beach somewhere with his arms spread out wide.

I was in deep.

As Christmas started jingling its way around the corner, my friend and I went shopping for gifts. Next on the list was Jason and my friend didn't know what to get him. I, who had been in love with this guy since that 8 a.m. Spanish class sophomore year, knew the perfect gift: a Green Bay Packers knot-tied blanket. We got the materials and I started making the blanket for him; I was so flippin' excited about seeing his face (as always) but especially when he would open this gift. We all met up and exchanged gift boxes. My friend's present was not much larger than an index card and when she opened her gift, it was a box of chocolates. I was thinking to myself that that was an odd gift to give someone you had been talking to and hanging out with all semester but I just shook it off. Jason then reached behind him for my gift and when I saw it, my jaw dropped. Now gifts shouldn't be judged by size (some of my favorite gifts were smaller than a box of chocolate) but I started getting anxious about this one. It was a tall, long box beautifully wrapped with a red ribbon bow. I postponed opening it because I had no idea why my gift would be so much larger than my friend's. I wanted to open it but at the same time I didn't. Jason and my friends were all urging me to open the box and when I finally did, inside was the most beautiful arrangement of flowers-daisies, lilies, and roses. Jason had remembered my favorite flower (daisies) and had the entire arrangement made up with them. How and why would he remember that??

I started getting extremely excited and nervous all at the same time. What did this mean?

A couple of days later, I realized that Jason and I needed to talk. I felt that because of the flowers, I needed to tell him how I felt and how exaggerated my thoughts had become; I had begun to think that he actually liked me! I didn't want to wreck what he and my friend had been building and needed to let him know that despite how much I loved my gift, it was too much and that I needed to get confirmation that he didn't like me so I could move on.

I'll never forget that night we took a walk around campus.

We talked about how everything was going and the weather (you know the small weird conversations you have before the real stuff). He finally asked me what it was that I wanted to talk to him about. I took a deep breath and spilled out my heart. I explained to him that I had had a crush on him since way before when and that I had taken the flowers to mean something that they didn't -- that he liked me. I then proceeded to tell him how much my friend liked him and how I didn't want to get in the way of that. There, it was out in the open and I felt better. Now he could tell me how the thought of him and I revolted him and I could move on.

Well, that's not exactly what he said.

He told me how he had begun to develop feelings for me and as much as he liked my friend, it was only as a friend. For the second time, my jaw dropped. He smiled that beautiful smile that I had fallen in love with and he began saying how this was a tough situation because he needed to figure out where God wanted this to go. He asked me if it would be okay if we could take the Christmas vacation to pray about where God would have this to go. While I thought it was a great idea and the right thing to do, secretly inside, I was bummed. I wanted us to be an 'us.’

Okay, this is where I'm going to leave you in suspense. Will we end up together? What will he say after vacation??

Not much of a suspense seeing how we're getting married next May but hey, you don't know what's left in between. ;)

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