only help my unbelief

Every week until we get married, I’ll be posting a short installment of the story of me and Christian. They’ll all be compiled at  Love and Limeade Slushes as I write them.

It used to be that when I heard of someone meeting their significant other online, I flinched. Maybe it was because I was highly engaged in blogging, instant messenger, Facebook – and I was afraid that if I ever met someone online, no one would really be surprised. I wanted them to be surprised, to be happy for me, to get to know him along with me.

Sometimes when I would meet a guy who was particularly good looking and charming, I’d try to remember those first moments of conversation, because one day when we were married, I’d want to be able to say, “Remember that time when we first met? How delightful!” And we would spend every day together, and all of my friends would love him, and my parents would invite us over all the time to hang out with them. And then we would get engaged and married, and what could possibly be better than that?

It didn’t happen like that at all. It actually resembled less of a romantic comedy and more of a trainwreck.

The story really begins long before I ever actually spoke to Christian. It all began in the first weeks of my sophomore year of college. Every Thursday night, me and a few of my best girl friends – Roommate Emily, Katie, Katelyn and Arielle – would eat dinner together. We used to do it at the student union, but once we were sophomores and much more mature, we expanded to the Moe’s that was a few blocks from campus.

One Thursday night, someone invited another girl who would soon come to be known as Birth Control Emily, because  few people, including Roommate Emily, wanted to be mistaken for the Emily that wasn’t planning on using birth control.

I was intrigued by Birth Control Emily. She was quiet and fairly introverted, but if you got her talking about something about which she was passionate, she was no longer so quiet and you’d never know she was introverted at all.

She also called herself a libertarian, but I had no idea what that was.

Every Thursday night for that fall semester, me, Roommate Emily, Katie, Katelyn, Arielle and Birth Control Emily ate Moe’s together. After the first few weeks, though, no one was about to bring up birth control.

Birth Control Emily was an enigma to me. She really didn’t talk that much. We had a dance party once at our apartment, but she just sat on a chair in the corner while Katie and I choreographed Outkast’s “Hey Ya!” I wanted to be friends with her, but I didn’t know how.

But late in the semester, Birth Control Emily (who I know referred to as simply Emily)  invited me and the other girls over to her house to watch a movie and hang out. I don’t remember anything about that night, including who was there or what we did, except for when Birth Control Emily and I started talking and she asked me if I had read any good books lately.

Let me interject and say that I have a very difficult time engaging in conversation of the “How are your classes going?” variety. Of course, I know how to be socially appropriate, but I always feel empty after a conversation that never gets past that point.

Birth Control Emily immediately endeared herself to me with her question.

“I’m reading a book called What is Reformed Theology? by R.C. Sproul,” I said.

Turns out Birth Control Emily was reading that, too, and so for the rest of the night, we talked about that book and what we were learning about the five points of Calvinism and infant baptism and church.

Our friendship was sealed.

One day, Birth Control Emily told me that she was going to write a blog. I had used LiveJournal some to chronicle my daily goings-on, but I’d never actually tried to write something that other people might read. She said she was going to write about theology and birth control, and that because I liked to write so much, I should start a blog, too.

And so, following in the steps of Birth Control Emily, I did.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Which I will recount, in detail, another day.