Prologue

**disclaimer** this story will be written as accurately as I remember it. details are admittedly from my own perspective... I think my husband is the most wonderful man I know and I am so thankful that the Lord has grown and changed both of us over the years and I pray He continues to do so.... now on with the story!

August 2006

High School is finally over, the braces are off and my eyebrows are waxed. I am going to college.
I won't go into all the details of how I chose Texas A&M as my school of choice... in fact, I mostly just said okay. There were too many choices and too many people with something to say about it and something invested in it and so I just made the most obvious good choice.
The summer before I was to attend my first semester at A&M the brochures started piling up. There were so many activities you could participate in and things to enroll in and choices to make. The main thing people tell you about is fish camp. At A&M fish camp is practically another religion. "Everybody" goes and "everybody" loves it and you won't have "any" friends if you skip it. I just had one major problem. On the brochure there were pictures of people with pies in their faces, straws up their noses and covered in mud or various other things. This was just not appealing to me at all... it still isn't. The thing I hate most about youth camp, every single year I went, was all the stupid games. I never thought it was fun to have gross things tossed, batted or smeared on my person. I never wanted to act like an idiot on purpose or have people laugh at me and I especially hated getting dirty... now I don't mind to sweat a little or get dirty when you are doing something productive like gardening, but I've never been one to enjoy putting muck all over myself for fun. So.... I said no thanks. I think people worried I would have no friends, was antisocial or not handling the pressures of college well... really those pictures on the brochure just haunted me. So no thanks it was.
Then we got a brochure about another kind of fish camp but it was a Christian camp thing run by students. It was a way to meet other believers, meet people from all the local churches and find organizations where other Christians were. I was still a little hesitant b/c any camp environment promises to have its quirks and mandatory weirdness but at least it seemed more beneficial to me overall than the previous. So I signed up.
So here I am August of 2006 among hundreds of other soon-to-be freshman of whom I only know one person and it was "complicated" between us... if you know what I mean. We sat in a concrete parking lot the size of many many football fields with the heat and humidity both well over 100. Finally the buses arrive and we are loaded on like cattle and just our luck, there is no AC on these buses either. I some how make it all the way to the back row where I am crowded between four other people. I am so hot at this point all of my clothes are soaked through. There is no water and I literally am struggling to hold back tears (some of which did silently slip down). I hated this place already. I wanted to go home and spend the last few weeks of my freedom with friends and family and an AC! I hated that the only person I knew was getting to know quite a few pretty girls and was leaving me all alone to my thoughts and fears. A couple of buses caught on fire and/or overheated and then finally we got there.
We were herded like cattle again into separate "camps" that were randomly assigned and given names of the tribes of Israel. I was yellow, Issachar. Who has ever even heard of that guy? haha After learning a few chants (nothing rhymes with Issachar) and other camp like activities that are supposed to get you pumped up (I think we were all just relieved to have some AC and water we would've let them do anything to us at that point) we were divided into small groups with in our "camp". So one by one all the counselors introduced themselves. Some were goofy, some were serious, some were girly and some were athletic. Then they showed us which ones were pairs and I noticed that one of the prettiest girls and the hottest guy were partners. I thought, "please do not let me be in that group". I knew I would be distracted and feel like a total loser in that group so I prayed that I would get some one else... out of like 10 small groups surely the odds were in my favor. One by one the couples called out the people in their groups. Half way through my heart started to sink again... this camp was really not working out for me thus far. The last group to be called was Mr. and Ms. Hottie's group and guess who was still sitting waiting for her name to be called, me.
So we divided up into our groups and the leaders reintroduced themselves and gave more details as they handed us our folders (my name was mispelled)... I'm Lindsay and this is my partner... Drew.