We first met as dance partners on the band practice field during my sophomore and his freshman year of high school. We both played the French horn during concert season and would compete for first chair in the symphonic band. This little rivalry meant we sat by each other everyday and started to become good friends. I would draw little smiley faces on his arm while he let me pretend I was a better French hornist (he was way better!). We never dated because I was too busy wasting my time with other boys. At my senior band banquet before graduation, Matt gave me a big hug goodbye thinking we probably wouldn't see each other again. Little did we know that our paths would cross again in the near future...

Fall 2013. Welcome Week at Mississippi College has begun. As Jarvis (groomsman) and myself are exploring the campus, I notice a familiar face. Lo and behold, it's her. "You should hit her up and see what's up," Jarvis mentions. I snickered as an initial reaction, but the thought still lingered, "What if?" Fast forward to a BBQ at the reservoir that evening. Again, I see her from across the way. It's a sign, gotta do it now. Conversations were started, and a meeting on the Quad was arranged for later that evening. Upon returning to campus, we sat on a bench in the Quad and spent all night talking and catching up. Before we went back to our dorms for the night, we rekindled the spark with a big hug. That night, I knew that I couldn't let this moment escape me. After a few weeks of talking back and forth, we finally had our first date at McAllister’s. That date led to a second date at the 2013 Backyard Brawl, my first (and only) MC football game. We took our first "couple picture" and from then on, our journey began. Throughout our time together at MC, we were both so immersed in new love and happy memories that we could not imagine a world without each other. Being on campus allowed us to spend almost every waking moment together. This strengthened our relationship even more as we learned how much we could depend on one another. In the years that followed, I would look upon this special time together with appreciation as life after graduation outside of the MC “bubble” would not be quite as easy and simple. Stressful times hit our relationship hard. Between deciding our future career plans (medical school, graduate programs) and our future together, we mutually decided that it would be best to go our separate ways. Sitting on the swing set outside of the pods after a night of tears, we “thought” things were ending. But I remember specifically telling Lauren, “We'll cross paths again if we're supposed to, and you'll do great things." Then, I kissed her on the forehead for what I thought would be the last time, praying that my words would be spoken into existence.

During our graduate school years, we didn't reconnect until COVID happened. Matt came home from Auburn, and I was on leave of absence from UMMC. Due to quarantine, we couldn't hang out much in person, but we started texting again. Then we both started playing a new game called Animal Crossing where we would visit each other's islands to go fishing, catch bugs, and other silly stuff together (He just bought the game because I liked it 😉). We would talk on the phone all night while playing and realized how much fun we have together. We were starting to become more than friends again. After several serious talks about what we both wanted our futures to be like, we knew that we wanted to spend it together. So we started dating all over again, but in a different and better way than before thanks to the growth that we both had while we were apart.

Some say that one of the most nerve-wracking decisions that a person can make is the way in which they choose to propose. For me, I just thought of all of the things that were integral to us during our relationship. One of those being music. During my time at Mississippi College, I was in the symphonic winds. After returning home from Auburn, I always wanted to go back to a concert. Coincidentally enough, there was a fall concert being put on within weeks of my proposal decision. Since both of us were involved in high school band and that is one of our earliest memories, it made perfect sense to start the night off there. After the concert, to me nothing would be more "romantic" than taking a stroll down memory lane--or memory quad for a lack of better words. As we passed the different buildings on campus, we reminisced on all of the old things we used to do, places we used to go, and times we had. Then, we arrived at “the bench.” Remember the bench where we spent hours talking during our first meeting freshman year? Yeah, that one. We sat down on the bench and took a second to reflect. This moment for me seemed like hours as I built up the courage to ask the person I adore the most to spend the rest of her life with me. I had an inkling that the answer would be “yes,” but the nervousness was still overwhelming. So, to break the tension, I pulled out a pack of Pokemon cards, which we love to open together. At the end of each pack of Pokemon cards, there is a chance to receive a “rare” card that could be of value. However, the “rare”card in this pack was a card that I drew myself and then had professionally made. The title of this card was “The Proposal" and was a visual representation of what I was about to do. Lauren's real suspicion started as I pulled the Pokemon card pack out of my pocket, but there was no going back at that point. As she revealed the final card, JOY is the only word that can express the feeling we both shared in that moment. I went down on one knee, and she said “YES!” And the rest is history... in the making.