Matt and I met second semester of my freshman and his sophomore year at our hometown high school in biology class. Although he immediately began crushing on me I was not at all interested. I found him to be silly, obnoxious and annoying. For the next year and a half we talked in passing, he gave me a hard time. I put up with it because although I was not at all interested in dating at the time, he was starting to grow on me. He even offered one time, "I'll break up with my girlfriend if you will go out with me". As "appealing" as that sounded I tried not to laugh out loud and politely declined.
In late summer, 2003 I went on a trip with my youth group to Washington DC. It was not till the end of that trip that I started to realize that I had really began to like Matt. I hadn't seen him all summer with school not being in session and I could not get him out of my mind. I bought a post card and sent it to him out of the blue although we had never corresponded outside of school. When school started back up in mid August I remember somehow prom coming up and me saying that I would probably never go to prom. I didn't every really have guys interested in me and I would never ask a guy to prom because it just wasn't proper. He very frankly said, "well just go with me to mine." I kinda laughed it off secretly hoping he was serious. After all this was August and his senior prom was not until April.
By september we were flirting at school nonstop. I was so confused. I had never had a boyfriend and was very intent on the fact that I did not want to date just to date. If I was dating anyone or rather courting, I wanted it to be because I was looking to get married. The more I thought and prayed about it, I realized that a courtship with Matt was exactly what I wanted. He was a strong christian guy involved in leadership at his church youth group, had a call on his life to preach and adored me. Our first "date" was dinner at his house followed by a trip to dairy queen. He drove me home and missed the turn multiple times even getting "lost". He admitted later, "I just didn't wanna take you home".
Matt and I hung out almost entirely with other couples or at his parents' homes. I had had some bad experiences in the past getting emotionally taken advantage of. I did not even kiss Matt until we had been dating for over 6 months. I wanted to be sure that the feelings I felt for him were not an emotional reaction based on a physical intimacy. By this time we were already discussing marriage and even though I was still a junior in high school I wanted to be engaged more than anything. By June of the following year Matt proposed to me with my parents blessing and we were more in love than ever. By that fall Matt was working full time and we even bought a puppy together. (We still have him by the way.)
We were married in June 2005, two weeks after I graduated high school, and moved to Columbus, OH where Matt had already accepted a job as an assistant manager for a mens retail store.
