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So much had already happened in September, and now Jason’s birthday was coming up. He was turning 22. I had been working on a card for him, using my Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator skills. It wasn’t anything special, but I was excited to give the “handmade” card to him.

We weren’t official or exclusive or whatever term you’d like to use to define that kind of thing. We joked that when/if we were ready to move forward there would be a middle school note to make it official—we’d simply have to circle yes or no.

The day of his birthday there was a youth event that night at the Weibels’ home. I helped out. With the youth. Maybe this was Jason’s plan all along. Scoundrel. Making me like him so I would feel obligated to help him with the Lord’s most challenging work—teenagers. He should be ashamed of himself.

We had a great time with the kids and other volunteers, and by the end of the night, he once again drove me back to my dorm. We switched our Coldplay for Paul McCartney’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard album and it would become a soundtrack of our early days together.

Earlier that night he had handed me a folded, sealed envelope. It just said “Allison” on the front. “That’s to be opened later, ” he said. So we said goodnight and that we’d see each other in church the next day.

I walked into my lobby and spotted my roommate, Carly. My “Roomy Baby” as we called each other. We sat on the couches and I opened the envelope that seemed to be burning a hole in my jacket pocket from pure curiosity.

Tiny clip-art hearts colored in with red marker bordered the neatly typed up note. I’d need to work with him on the Photoshop skills. It read:

Will you be my girlfriend, not just my ‘date buddy’? Check the best one (only one, please).

__YES

__NO

__Maybe

__I can’t decide right now cause I have a debilitating disease.

At the bottom it read: Allow the dollar to influence your vote.

Included was, you guessed it, a single dollar bill.

Now some girls might be offended and think, “Ah, a single dollar for a guy who will now also remain single.” But I thought this was pretty funny. I just had to act calm, not be too quick to mark “YES” with my No.2 Pencil. Maybe I should sleep on it. I mean there were four options to choose from. And he did give me $1. (Which I still have in the pages of my journal from that time.) Likely it was probably the dollar I gave him back from the movie theater flop.

So, as I wondered what people would think, and how that shouldn’t matter, I continued to really decide about what I wanted and what deeper thing might be going on. “Leap of faith”…so about 10 minutes into my deep thinking I checked “YES”. I mean I didn’t want to rush it and just take 5 minutes…

I sealed up the envelope and pondered the right time to give it to him. No matter how I thought to give him the note, I saw an awkward outcome. I didn’t sleep that well and as morning came, I got ready for church and tried to calm my nerves. As I parked and walked in the doors, I still had no idea how I was going to approach this. I couldn’t just ignore him, he’d think that I obviously checked “NO”. I placed the envelope in my purse and focused on finding my mom to sit with her. The service got started and someone announced “I’d like you all to take a couple minutes and find someone that you don’t know and say hello!” Ah, the meet and greet. Perfect.

I marched towards the witty, ambitious Virginian standing in the back, folded envelope tightly in my grasp. I held out my hand and confidently announced, “Hi! I’m Allison Lawrentz! Here you go—it’s nice to meet you!” I smirked at him, placed the note in his hand, spun around and marched straight back to my seat. I heard his signature laugh as walked straight back to my mom. Deep breath. It’s done, you’ve done it now, Allison. No looking back.

But I didn’t want to look back. This felt right.

And because he was still standing back there. Looking back would be awkward.

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Watch for the eighth installment of “How We Met” coming soon.