his side

let’s start at the very beginning. a very good place to start…

it all began in august of 1984… the month of my birth…

just keeding. so forgive me for the long winded nature of this post, and for the duplication that is sure to happen between the both of us. in my defense I have not yet read what she posted as her side, in hopes to keep my post un-tainted or influenced by hers haha

the year 2007 was a pretty substantial redirecting year in my life. I transferred from UAH to Leavell College, the undergraduate portion of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary (NOBTS). in five minutes or less I could tell you how that transition happened, but it would take quite some time to explain what has happened as a result. ask me some time. I will bore you. 🙂

in the midst of that grandly transitional semester, I somehow ended up on facebook. who am I kidding. I was legitimately addicted to it. I ran from that blessed time waster for SO long and by that point was STUCK on it. there are only so many times you can log in a day seeing that you have no messages, requests or notifications – and still find entertainment value in it. so, being bored and addicted at the same time… I somehow decided to search “murder in the dark.” it’s a pretty crazy game that I thought Kathy Mendenhall had created… so imagine my surprise when I wasn’t the only one on facebook who had heard of it…

enter yashley.

SO. her picture comes up, and she has a ginormous leaf covering most of her face. I could see her eyes and that was it. I have NO idea what made me search that game (correction, HAD no idea. I know why now) but what I did afterward was even more… odd. I totally and completely creeped on her. I am pretty sure that with the exception of all of her wall posts, I read everything on her page. probably looked at most of her pictures too. sketchy? I know. creepy? yeah. agreed. so I messaged her. even worse. this is as close of a recreation to that first message as possible, given that we have conversed enough that facebook’s limited storage does not allow the original:

“so I know this is completely weird and I sound like a total freak and an ultimate creeper, but I just saw that you have murder in the dark in your interests, and I love that game! we play it alot and I never knew that anyone else did. so yeah. sorry that this was super creepy… I would fully understand if you never reply and I know I wouldn’t… just thought I would tell you.”

something to that creepy effect. haha imagine my surprise when she replied… with a much longer message than mine! shocker! that began a rather sporadic relationship of messages… and eventually wall posts. took a long time to realize that we weren’t even facebook friends yet… so we laughed about that… but that sporadic “hey its been a while! how are you?” kind of thing continued for quite some time, until about november of 2008. so for a year we would randomly say hello… and “look at xena pics! she’s awesome!” stuff. then… it got kinda weird again. understand that by weird I really mean awesome. but we started talking on our walls ALOT. a. lot. but it still even started small by comparison. I immediately had a bunch of friends asking who the heck ashley arnold was… and that was before it got crazy. by december we had discovered that each wall post had a limit of 1,000 characters.. and we continued the conversations until one side (as in her response to my post) would be up side of 25 posts. thats 25,000 characters worth of one side of the conversation.

upon that explosion… I got all kinds of questions about her and if I liked her, cuz if I didn’t I better be careful cuz I was “leading her on.” now legitimately I felt like I did already, and I will be the first to admit that every question I asked her was pointed in a subtle way, cuz I was fishing. haha but I felt so very creepy about it, it just felt like it shouldn’t be happening because I had never met this girl! how weird would it be for me to totally fall for a girl on facebook that I have never met?! so of course I told all of those friends “no! that would be weird!” the conversations progressed to the point where I couldn’t help but fall for her. I confided in a very select number of people… largely to decide if she was even legit. I mean, not to overwhelm you with details, but if you know me.. some of the things I laugh at are… a bit crude perhaps? of the stinky variety? and when it just so happens that a girl (a super, SUPER fine girl no less… it was no surprise that she was a model…) found humor in the same (stinky) things it just doesn’t seem like it could be real. also her musical variety was astounding – cello, guitar, piano, recorder, irish flute, clarinet, percussion/drums, mandolin… and in her words “whatever we have around the house” – pretty awesome. it felt too awesome. so I had just about convinced myself she was the creep… that she had suckered me into talking to her and then upon us meeting I would come to find some smelly old guy that would… yeah. you get the idea. either that or she would be COMPLETELY socially awkward and have some laugh that could penetrate ear drums the world over without the slightest effort… that’s what I had forced myself to believe.

cuz what was gonna happen next was again, even creepier. how do you tell a stranger on facebook, who is as stated earlier super fine, that you want to meet her? how do you say that and not sound like some creep (that I just described the alternate smelly version of her would have been)? one friend suggested I ask her to coffee… I couldn’t even dream of doing that. I would have barfed from nervousness within seconds of meeting her. plus that’s oober creepy. so… since she’s awesome and liked guitar hero… I decided to throw a guitar hero party. but, to ensure she could come, I had to plan it around her. so I pretty much told her I had one planned for a date (january 31st 2009 to be exact) and waited for her reply… to ACTUALLY plan the party. so if she said no, no problem. if she said yes, I better hope some other friends can come.

that happened. she somehow said okay… to which I jumped upon the opportunity to give her my phone number (again via facebook message) so she could text me in case she got lost… that was of course two days or so before the party. and I will never forget the look on james hardy’s face when I got the first text… in the theater… watching mall cop. no wonder its one of my favorite movies. and since that day, we legitimately have not stopped texting unless one of us has been out of the country.

from that point until june, I tried super hard to make social activities happen to which she could attend. still fishing. still not sure that she’s legit. I had already decided I wasn’t going to date until a certain time anyway, and of course I met her long before that time. that gave me a few months to try and dissect her personality… it was awesome. so june 16 2009 comes, and we both knew by that point it was gonna happen. I of course am skipping a lot of random info that just says we talked more and more via text and facebook until then. I called the day “d-day” and she knew for a while ahead of time that d-day was coming… and when that day arrived it was awesome. I was quite excited and nervous… and she was more than ready to accept the challenge of being my gf. we talked pretty seriously that day and both of us decided we were not into the dating for the heck of it thing… and if we were gonna go out we were gonna do it “with marriage in mind.” her words, not mine. 🙂 she’s good like that. but that’s what we wanted… cuz neither of us wanted to waste time and effort on something we didn’t want to pursue for the long haul.

and 9 months and 13 days later, we were still without a single fight. I know that doesn’t seem legit or possible, but trust me when I say its an awesome thing. I mean sure she cried a little when I hit her… HAHA jus keeding. this day marks the REAL d-day however… as I was making the second biggest decision in my life, accepting Christ of course being the first.

right before choir tour I hunted and hunted until I found a ring. I had to make some alterations cuz the stone shape wasn’t right… but other than that the ring was as close to what she had mentioned months before that she liked as I was going to get. the day I got back from tour I drove out to bridge street and picked it up… and from that moment on my stomach was in a turmoil. literally, I was wondering for a week if I had caught something. food was necessary but undesirable. if you know me, you know that’s not normal. haha

I knew I didn’t want her to know that it was coming, so I did what any good guy would do – I lied. alot. most of them sounding similar to “I’m really sorry it’s gonna be so long.. like, probably another 2 years at least. maybe more.” less than 3 and 1/2 had been the joke for a long time anyway… then feb. 20th I said less than 3 years. so I just had to make sure I sounded legit and she didn’t start to get suspicious.

six days before her birthday I met with her dad at chile’s, and you can ask him, didn’t have an appetite that day either. hahah I took most of that food home and thanked God for preventing me from vomiting all over him. I asked for his permission and blessing to marry his daughter – and he said yesh. obviously, otherwise this blog would be weird.

I knew I wanted to propose on her birthday for a long time – we wanted a fall wedding and a short engagement, her birthday is march 29th, so it just made good sense. let me just tell you… the stress level on my life skyrocketed that day. I had talked with some friends about making something epic happen… and due to several circumstances all of those plans had to change. in my tradition, I thought about how stressful it was to think about something more than thinking up what I was going to do. it felt like there was a ton of pressure to make it awesome so she’d remember it forever… but I had no idea what awesome was. with the help of david dye, james and katie, the following was pulled off:

grab ashley much earlier than expected
drive out to olive garden on university drive
while there james and katie set up easter egg hunt at ditto landing (david dye’s idea)
eggs led to a camera bought for her birthday
arrive at olive garden as close to five as possible (it was well after four by the time these plans were finalized)
eat in a hurry
drive back to ditto – made it there by 6:30
ash goes on an easter egg hunt
leads to a hidden dock – finds the camera
opens it… YAY happy birthday! (throw her off the trail)
here – practice with it! I’ll pose for pictures!
few random shots – noting that the sunset is juuuuust about right
pose in the fasion of dragon ball z – FIREBALL
ring in hand

boom. fianced.

and the look on her face was everything I had hoped for. granted I thought it would have been hilarious if she didn’t see the ring in my hand for that last picture and had just kept shooting… then we could review the pictures and see something shiny… SURPRISE! hahaha but it was perfect. at least to me… I couldn’t have hoped for anything better – as far as pulling it off anyway.

and now thats pretty much it. planning a wedding is the next step… and I can’t wait!
if you read the whole thing… touche.

seriously, she’s the best thing ever, and besides Christ, she’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me. pretty sure she knows that. 🙂

so be jealous! but not too much. 🙂