Marriage on the Rocks

In January 2001 I was living at Victoria Place apartments on 500 north in Provo. I was midway through my year as a student body officer in BYUSA, and I was having countless amazing experiences with wonderful friends. It was a good time.

One day, not long after the semester had begun, I went to visit my friend Will in his apartment. Will and I often engaged in verbal sparring, and on that day we were having a heated discussion about who knows what--something extremely "intellectual," I'm sure. Well, out of the back of his apartment walks this tall, skinny new roommate of Will's, and he introduced himself as Jeremy. Jeremy had been home from his two-year LDS mission to Singapore and Malaysia for less than a month, and my first impression of him was that he was cute, but a bit stiff. All right, I thought he was--as Clara would say--super-de-duper stiff. He just didn't even seem quite normal. But he was pretty good looking.

Of course, first impressions go two ways, and Jeremy thought I was some sort of crazed lunatic "femi-nazi" who was obsessed with arguing and being "right." But he did think I was pretty cute. At least I like to think he did.

Fast forward about five months. Summer had arrived in Provo. I was done with BYUSA. For any of you who have ever lived in Provo in the summer, you know it's a pretty idyllic time. I was working and taking some classes, but I was also more relaxed than I'd probably been for more than a year.

One afternoon, Jeremy and I found ourselves washing our cars together in the parking lot behind the apartments. It was a beautiful sunny day, marred only by the fact that I was stuck washing my car with the stiffest guy in the ward. And he was stuck washing his car with me. But we made the most of it, and at one point Jeremy made a joke that, as I recall, was slightly off-color and very surprising coming from someone who seemed to have absolutely no sense of humor. I laughed out loud. And suddenly I saw this guy in a very different light. He was no longer a humorless robot! How exciting!

Over the next several weeks, we started bumping into each other more and more often. I wasn't exactly stalking him, but I did become more aware of his comings and goings. Soon he started asking me to join him for dinner and for other outings, always as friends. I remember we used to frequent a really quite underwhelming hot dog place--a total hole in the wall that Jeremy loved. I can't remember what it was called--Tommy's?--but it specialized in greasy chili dogs topped with cheese, mustard, pickle, and fresh tomato. Romantic, I know, especially when perched on the restaurants only two mismatched stools. I was in heaven.

I remember one auspicious night in particular: a trip with a group of friends out into the desert for the August Perseid meteor shower. Imagine my elation when he lay down under the beautiful summer sky and invited me to rest my head on his folded arm. It had to be the most romantic group outing I'd ever been on.

Of course, the real problem with Jeremy at the time was that he was absolutely petrified of officially "dating" me. He told me much later that he knew if we were really dating, we would get married, and he just didn't feel ready to get married. So he did an amazing job of keeping me at arm's length while spending every moment of available time with me.

Stuck in this somewhat depressing state of limbo, I decided to move forward with my life. I was 21, almost done with school, and decided to take some time off to serve my own mission. The night I submitted my mission papers to be sent to Salt Lake, Jeremy came to meet me to walk me home from campus. What I didn't know is that the day before he'd driven to southern Utah to meet his parents, who drove up from Phoenix, where they were living at the time. While he was waiting for them, to counsel with them and figure out what on earth he should do about me, he parked his car (the trusty Golf!) and walked out into the red rock desert. He found a large rock to sit on, and sat fiddling with a few small rocks and pondering what he should do. He knelt to pray, and as he prayed he said he knew he would marry me. He put the small rocks in his pocket, met with his parents, then drove back to Provo.

When Jeremy walked me home that night from campus, he seemed unusually quiet and agitated. I kept asking him what was wrong, and finally, as we were walking east along 500 north, he said, "I don't know why it's taken me so long to realize this, but I love you." I was floored. I assumed he cared about me, felt a fair amount of affection to me, but this was big news! I didn't really know what to think, but I did know how I felt, so I told him I loved him, too. I was having a hard time, by that point, just putting one foot in front of the other, so we stopped to sit on the steps of Joaquin Elementary School. We spoke about nothing in a kind of awkward way, then I said, "I just don't know what you want me to do, Jeremy. Do you want me to not go on a mission because something's possible here?" He paused, looked at me and said, "No, because something's probable here.

He then proceeded to get down on one knee. He took my hand in his and asked me to marry him. I said yes.

Three months later, on February 16, 2002, we were married in the Oakland LDS Temple. That was nine years ago today, and not a day has passed since that I have not been grateful I said yes. We have weathered countless storms together, always with the conscious choice to let our struggles bring us closer together. We have traveled all around the country together. We've had three beautiful children. We've seen the darkness of death, made lighter by the bright promise of eternity. We've laughed, we've argued, we've cried, we've teased. He's been my best friend, my confidant, my truest love.

A few years ago, I was dusting off Jeremy's desk and picked up a few old rocks that had sat there for as long as we'd been married. "Jeremy," I said, "Why do you keep these rocks on your desk? They make it a lot harder to keep your desk clean." He looked at me and said, "Those are the rocks I picked up in the desert the day I prayed about asking you to marry me. I like keeping them around."

So do I, Jeremy.

Happy 9Y, JB. I sure do love you.