surprise

I'm officially home now for Christmas and therefor plan to start back every day with #reverb11, although it will definitely take me a few days to catch up. Today has been crazy for me-- I packed up as many of my belongings as physically possible and moved out of the apartment I have spent the past three years in. I'll be back-- that much is sure, but I drove away today knowing full well that it would never be the same again. Throughout my life I've had a lot of great friends, but rarely any to the level of my college roommates. They will forever be my sisters and while God is calling me to great things right now, I'd give anything to pack them in my backpack and take them with me. Did I cry on the way home? Only a little. It's nice to be home, but it won't be long before I miss it fiercely...

On a side note, I like writing from home. I'm currently writing while all curled up in my bed with a sleeping, snuggly little puppy. That sounds so idealistic-- let me rephrase: Finally. A finally sleeping puppy. Today I was reminded how not ready for parenthood I am...

The prompt: Who surprised you?

If you know me, it's about to be completely obvious what I'm going to say. In fact, it's going to be so obvious that I'm almost hesitant to tell the story again... but it was the first thing that I thought of. This might not be the most inspiring blog post you've ever read, but if you're a sucker for a good story then hang on because I have one for you. I've alluded to it a lot of times before, but I'm not sure I've ever written it all out.

See, I love to be surprised. Love it. But generally it isn't the easiest thing to do and throughout the course of my life I feel I've somehow figured out the majority of my surprises beforehand. It's rarely intentional but I blame it largely on two things: my vivid imagination and the fact that my mom is the worst at keeping secrets. I mean, come on... she once threw me a surprise breakfast party for my birthday but got out all the muffin tins, platters, and pitchers the night before. So silly.

You can imagine my surprise, then, when literally almost everyone I know kept a secret from me for well over a month without my having even the slightest suspicion. 

I hadn't been home from college in months, literally months, and was just about ready to explode to just be home for a weekend. Our girlfriend, Chelsea, was coming into town for the weekend and as much as I love her, I'd decided that I was so ready to be home that I was willing to miss the weekend with the girls. Besides, Season was going to be out of town that weekend anyway and if she could be gone, I could too, right? 

So I called my mom who, in far from her normal state when hearing I was coming home, insisted that it was a bad weekend and she wouldn't have much time to hang out with me. ...What? But I was going to go anyway until my best friend, Season, took me to lunch early in the week. As we sat on the patio of Chickfila, Season did the most uncharacteristic thing I've ever seen her do, even to this day. She looked me in the eyes and told me I was being selfish for going home when Chelsea was coming to visit. Was I surprised? Absolutely. Was I caught off guard? Definitely. Was I a little offended? Maybe. Did it work? Yeah...
 
I'm easily guilted so I decided to stay. 

Fast forward a few days to Friday, when I'm still a little bummed that I wasn't going to get to go home. To cheer myself up, I spent a few hours that morning sitting on my back porch talking on the phone to a boy who I was really beginning to like. And I was pretty sure he might like me too. The problem was that he lived eight hours away from me and while we'd talked about him coming to visit sometime, it was clear that our schedules were both just too busy and it wasn't going to happen. We wouldn't see each other again until summer time. So he told me that morning all about the weather, about his morning trip to Barnes and Noble, and about eating Chickfila for lunch. My roommates could always tell by the look on my face that I'd been on the phone with him and at least hearing his voice was a bright spot in my day. Still always is.

So evening rolled around and if I can be honest, I was in an obscenely bad mood. We'd gone to Home Depot to get new blinds for the living room (ours broke, like most things in Pineview) and gone for a random walk around the neighborhood, and then it was decided that we'd all get dressed up and go out to dinner. Something to understand about me is that when I get ready to go somewhere, I'm ready to go. I begrudgingly changed out of my jeans (I was told I looked bad. I liked my outfit...) and we sat around for about two hours with everyone getting frustrated that not everyone was ready and no one could agree at ALL on where we were going to eat. I'm actually getting a little stressed just remembering the tension in the room. It was so bad that I sent Daniel a text that my roommates were driving me crazy (something that never happens) and took him up on his fake offer to come punch them all for me, followed by his text: "Okay, I'll be there in twenty minutes."

About twenty minutes later in the midst of all the crazy and all the frustration, someone bangs loudly on the door. Really loudly.

Patrick. It has to be Patrick. It's always Patrick.

A good Southern lady might have politely opened the door and greeted our visitor. A polite person would have least walked to the door and opened it. But what did I do? With every bit of pent-up frustration I yelled "Come in" in a very, very angry voice.

I wasn't Patty.

It actually wasn't anybody I expected it to be... it was more like the last person I ever expected it to be. I did the world's biggest double-take and literally had no idea how to react. To this day, Daniel will tell you that I yelled at him. Maybe I did, it's all kind of a blur to me. In my mind it was more of a surprised "What are you doing here?" than a yell but whichever :) All I really remember is hugging a cute boy in a plaid shirt at my front door and him melting me with a smile and saying to me "All of this? This was for you. You're not going out with them, you're going out with me." What followed was the greatest first date I could've ever dreamed of and a great weekend of coffee, scrabble, a wedding, a roadtrip, waterfalls, pictures, and some unbelievable time of worship.

It took me a long time to grasp that weekend what was really happening, partially because it was all too good to be true and partially because I was still trying to piece together everything. For over a month, this boy had been plotting with my roommates to come and take me to dinner. Suddenly it all made more sense-- my mom, Season calling me selfish, the insistence that I dress up, the new blinds in the living room (I tend to watch our driveway like Mrs. Kravitz...), the stalling for time, the time Anna made me take a "what's your favorite flower" quiz... Hindsight is 20/20.

I was literally speechless that day. Not just anybody can surprise me, but that day Daniel surprised me in a way I couldn't have even dreamed of. He continues to do that. I remember that next Sunday morning at church Spencer looked at me and knew something was up by the look on my face. Months and months later he told me that look on my face hadn't changed. What more can I say?

I'll leave my sappy story with the video that Julie took of the moment he came through the door. She missed the beginning of it, but it's okay. She also cut the camera off before she finished the line "You have no idea how difficult you are to surprise." Just listen for yourself and see how she really feels ;)