three

next wednesday is seth and my third anniversary and im writing about it now cause i feel all lovie about it now....

its weird because on one hand it feels like we've barely been married enough time to be two months away from being a 4 member family but on the other hand it feels like we've always been together... i'm sure part of it is normal but part of it is because we were together for so long before we got married. not dating, but together. i'm sure a lot of you know how seth and i came together, but i'm guessing many dont... so i thought i'd tell you.. lucky you.

seth and i met in 2001 right after i moved back up here from thousand oaks. he remembers meeting me at church, so if you're interested in that version... ask him. i remember meeting him at my high school. it was the last christian club of the school year, and i never had been and was not the type to be going but my friend carissa knew a guy who was speaking at it (turned out to be joel limpic, the brother of seth's now business partner. or maybe it actually was jeremy.. i dont know) anyway we got there late and missed it but carissa saw seth and said hi and introduced me, he was with steve anselm. we walked out and carissa was like 'isnt he cute?' and i was like 'sure' and she was like 'but he has this weird girlfriend he's had for like 4 years' and i was like 'oh bummer' thinking of him for her not me... i know we saw each other at church and stuff but the next time i remember seeing him was an evening service he was standing with jamie (which i didn't know at the time, but know now) and he had left over lasagna with him and i was like 'can i PLEASE have a bite of that?' and finally after lots of begging he let me have it and it was the best lasagna i thought i had ever had... again didnt know then, but know now that it was flo's lasagna! he had just had dinner at her house and then brought it to church... it was meant to be. after that its kind of a blur for a bit.... we somehow became really close, really fast... hanging out every single day. having josh perrish drive us everywhere because although i was 16 and he was 18 neither of us had a drivers license. we went to the same homegroup so we got to know each other there...

anyway it was perfect timing to be in each others lives, he had just gotten his heart broken by jamie, like BIG time and i was a complete mess. i had moved back with my mom because i had overdosed on tylenol pm and benedryl while living with my grandparents and as soon as i moved back i just started getting wasted and having sex and... then going to the burn service on sunday... smelling like alcohol. yikes. i had never known a guy i could trust, in walked seth, and it was so weird because he didn't have to do anything. i knew he would love me for the rest of my life and i knew i could trust him with anything. it wasn't romantic at all, it was just true real love for the first time. one night we went to uptown with danielle felger and amy stumph and probably other people too but somehow the subject of me liking seth came up and i said 'he's like my brother' and he was like 'why do i have to be like everyone's brother' and i was shocked...cause it had never even crossed my mind that we would like each other... i was crushin on luke so i was a little distracted...
we stayed friends, and we just ignored that comment... i wasn't really sure if it even meant that he liked me, i just forgot about it.

then me and luke went out. november 2001... this was our first trip down sucky relationship lane and it was fast.. only a month. while luke and i were together i went to mexico with a group of friends including seth and the whole time i treated him like crap, because i thought maybe he liked me and i didn't know what to do, it was dumb. we faught. i asked amy robinson, amy stumph, carissa and danielle what i should do and they asked me if i liked seth and i was like 'i dont think so, i just love him a lot' and then CLASSIC i love it amy robinson was like 'i think if you care more about what seth thinks, like if you get dressed and think 'seth would like this' and not luke, then you should break up with luke' and i just said 'oh' but inside i was thinking 'well of course i do that, but its not cause i like seth its just cause he's more important to me than anyone and he has good style'
so we came back from mexico....

luke didn't want me and seth to be friends, so i wrote seth a letter and told him we couldn't be friends. we were both heart broken and SUPER dramatic about it. awesome.

i went on a trip with luke's family to disneyland, our relationship was really awkward..i mean there was nothing to it, we didn't even talk, we just thought each other were cute and we kissed... that was it. he told me one night on that trip that he was 'falling in love with me more every day' we got home and he broke up with me... awwwwwwkward. i still liked him. i thought i loved him, please dont even ask me why. i dont think even God knows the answer to that one.

me and seth hung out after this and he was on vicodin. when seth is on vicodin he just gets really honest. ... and prior to this conversation seth and i had gotten in a kind of fight about abortion on the phone... that meant we had faught twice. we were sitting outside thomas odenwalds house. i was excited cause we could be close again so i said ' this means we can be best friends again' and he said 'no we can't. i thought you were the one, but things you've done lately have reminded me of jamie so i know you're not the right one.' and something about how we couldn't really be close either i was completely shocked that he had thought i was 'the one'.... i'm not sure exactly how it was immediately after this, the next thing i remember was that i thought i had a crush on seth, but he had just started liking bess! haha. i felt like i had to tell him i liked him because otherwise i would be weird around him... so at a show at slo nazarene i told him i had to tell him something, he knew what i was going to say and he even told me he did. so i said 'ok then i dont need to say it' and he was like 'i want to hear you say it' what a punk! so i did and the second i said it i knew it wasn't right and it was gone. i had liked him for like a week. after all this i realized that seth was just meant to be my very best friend and i knew that sooooooo many people were constantly coming to him with their problems and just taking from him. so literally one day i woke up and thought 'i'm going to be the best friend i possibly can to seth, and i dont care how he ever treats me' and that's what i did. he didn't remember my birthdays, he didn't really ask a lot about me but i didn't even care i knew he loved me and i felt like he deserved a really good friend that didn't expect anything in return from him. we continued on as best friends for a long time, always talked on the phone, i would spend the night at his parents house, we almost spent 24 hours a day 7 days a week together.

then... i started dating luke again. i know, what the hell? i had liked him throughout this whole time, i dated someone else named nick but i still thought i was in love with luke the whole time i was with nick and thats essentially why him and i broke up, twice.... so then luke and i became friends, real friends and would talk on the phone and hang out with seth, cameron, skye and danielle.... one night i remember us talking about 'dating' not us but just in general and i said 'i want to marry someone im best friends with for like 5 years' and he was like 'that's a long time' and i was like 'yea but if you didn't know you were going to marry them, it wouldn't seem like a long time'. the thought that seth was my best friend did not even cross my mind. this was 2003, towards the end of the summer. me and luke started dating at the end of august and at first it was good seth was also really close friends with luke so the three of us would hang out, i thought i was great... until luke told me that when we hung out he was the third wheel. he didn't want us to hang out anymore, and at this point luke and i thought we would probably get married, so i felt like it was more important to make luke feel ok. so seth and i tried to not really be friends... it didnt ever really happen. we went through phases of not talking a lot, but i'd always call him cause i couldn't live without him and he would be like 'its not fair to tell me we cant be friends and then call me' plus he wanted to respect luke even though he thought he was being lame. (in lukes defense seth and i were super weird best friends, holding hands, staying at his house, kissing on the cheek) but that's the only time i will defend him.

ok so anyway the next year 2004 i moved to florida. luke and i were sure at this point we were gonna get married. his mom tried to tell him i wasn't right for him and he got annoyed (but parents know)... if me and luke had an issue and i would tell my mom she would say 'what about seth' and i would get sooo mad.. seths parents thought i was gonna marry him the night they met me at his 19th birthday party, even luke's dad thought maybe me and seth should be together....

not me and seth.

we would randomly remind each other out loud that we would NEVER marry each other. just like 'i'm never gonna marry you you know' and the other would be like 'uh duh'. when i was in florida was the first time that actually marrying seth crossed my mind. we weren't allowed to talk and i just felt like i couldn't live without him, he felt the same... and i was just thinking about marrying luke and how i would be able to live my life without being close to seth... (i know, now its like HELLO freaking idiot) but we were a little slow. i called my friend tamika and told her how i was feeling she said 'have you ever thought that maybe you're supposed to be with seth?' and i just said 'no, i'll figure it out' and got off the phone, i was sitting by this little lake and i just had this weird feeling that was so real and it hit my heart like a ton of bricks and in my mind 'i'm supposed to marry seth' and i prayed. (seth hates this part) i prayed that god wouldn't make me marry seth.... and it was weird because it wasn't that seth wasn't more than what i could have ever wanted, cause he was, it was just that for whatever reason i wasn't in love with him and i was in love with luke, and i didn't want god to 'make' me fall in love with seth. what a weirdo.

i ignored it.

i moved back from florida and luke and i were great at first but the more i started to not really be ok with mercy church the more strained, obviously, our relationship became... he didn't understand that church isn't everything... i felt like if we were going to get married than our relationship was more important than 'church' not god, but church... so we broke up. it was probably the worst time of my life. i felt dead and alone. i didn't have close friends, i didnt have seth, i was confused about my church and luke was all of a sudden gone. i had to tell myself out loud 'get out of bed' every morning just so i would do it. i called seth after a little while. at first i was afraid to be friends with him because i wasnt sure if luke and i would get back together, but once i knew it didn't matter i was back to talking to seth every night.

it was the best.

this was december 2004.

seth was in seattle recording with jason, he came home in january and seeing him at the airport was the most amazing thing in the world. we hadn't seen each other in sooooooooooooooo long and we were free to hug and be best friends. the best.

we just hung out, a lot. and we started to flirt. weeeeeeird. then at the end of the day sometimes we would say things like 'i kinda liked you today' ....

once we knew we liked each other i wanted to kiss... but we both knew that when we did, it would be life changing.

we went on our first date on valentines day as friends with roger tompkins, margy, my friend erin (not one anyone of you knows now, yet ANOTHER erin), and jason. none of them spoke like a single word. so it was just seth and i talking the WHOLE time. haha. we went to vienni vai.

we kissed on february 20th 2005 and it was definitely life changing. i'm not a mushy person, and i'm not even very romantic, but that kiss felt like it made the world stop and lightening shot through our bodies... it was the end of the most amazing friendship and the beginning of the most beautiful life together at the same time.

the best part was that we kept thinking we were gonna shock all our friends when we told them but every time we told someone they would say 'yea, finally' uh hello???

from there we got engaged around june i think? i never remember what month it was.. haha... and then we got married september 3rd 2005....

i'm so thankful for seth, i can't even imagine life without him.. i can't believe i ever did live life without him. he has made me a better person in so many ways. the way he has loved me has healed me and changed me, has made my heart whole again. i know that there are so many people who wish for a love like we have and never find it and i am so grateful that for whatever reason we were able to find this. he really is a part of me, i'm not the 'soulmate' believing type, but there is no other way to describe what seth is to me... he is so much more than my husband, so much more than romance, he is the very best friend i have ever known and he has always shown me the truest love that anyone could since the day we met. i would not understand anything about love from God if i didn't know the love that seth has shown me. i never have to be afraid that we could be torn apart because even if romance left and one of us failed, our marriage is built on a mountain of friendship and a deep foundation of trust. i know who seth is inside and out, no matter how much he grows and changes he is so a part of me that that will never change.

and how funny that i married someone who was my best friend for 4 years without me knowing he was my husband, just like i wanted. ... minus one year :)