A Decade of You

March 24th, 2012.

That was the day that my life would be irrevocably changed.

It was on this day ten years ago that I very first asked Logan Dunn if she would like to be my girlfriend.

We disagree on the time of day. I swear that I had just finished an interview for a college scholarship and my dad was driving. I was on my purple sliding-keyboard cell phone (I think it was an LG… we might have even still been under the Alltel label).

We had had a bit of a shaky back and forth later the year before. We both knew where things could head. But it was our senior year of high school - we would have had to have been out of our minds to start dating four months before heading to college.

Somehow, we decided to lose our minds along the way.

We went to school two-and-half-hours apart (yet commuting to see each other on the weekends would somehow only take two hours… weird). She went south, I went north, but both still in North Carolina.

We would then enter into four long years separated by I-85.

She knew right away that I was the one. The trickier part was convincing this knucklehead. Being so vehemently independent, I needed verifiable proof that it was the right time to propose.

So we dated and she tolerated my stalling. We were in school, we had the time to stall.

I remember when I first realized that it was time. I was laying on my XLT college mattress provided by the school. She was busy doing something. No new video games had been released. I had time and an empty brain for pondering. I went through the rigamarole of questions - why now? Am I really sure about this? What if it’s too soon? Too late? How will this work with my plan to pursue the ministry? Is that fair to her?

It hit me very suddenly that the questions no longer mattered to me. There was a more important reality that had set in - there was no longer a future for me that DIDN’T have her in it. It wasn’t a matter of dependence or introversion or work or life. It was just her and me and wherever we went from there.

I couldn’t - literally - imagine a future where Logan wasn’t by my side. Where I didn’t get to tell her lame jokes. Where we didn’t give each other looks. I even enjoyed sitting with her in the silence on our phones - even that was better with her.

So, it just made sense. And now, here we are, ten years later.

I’ve changed a lot. No more purple phone. I’ve got three degrees more than I did when this thing got started. I’ve made a lot of friends and lost plenty, too. My thoughts have changed. My opinions have changed. Even the way that we interact has changed. We almost have two babies - who saw that one coming? Woof. Times change and people do, too. That’s just real life.

But one thing remains the same - the only future that makes sense is one with us. It stopped being me a long time ago. Ten years, to be exact.

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March 24th, 2022