I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, the oldest of four children. When I was younger, I loved swinging from monkey bars, drawing, and bossing my younger siblings around. My father came to the U.S. of A. from Taiwan to study and met my mother, who grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, at school. My parents brought us up to work hard, study hard, pray hard, and give generously.

I never really knew where boys fit in that equation, so I essentially ignored them for a while ... they were just foreign to me. Then college came around, and I started to think about my ideal guy. He was tall, had brown hair, brown eyes, served God, loved children and animals, was close with his family, was a soccer player, and was left-handed. Little did I know how much some parts of this idea would change!

One Sunday in February 2008, there was a new visitor at my church. I didn't really notice him until he came up for Sunday School class after the service. I did notice, though, that he was slouching in his chair during class ... he had terrible posture.

A couple of weeks later, a friend from church invited me and a bunch of others out for sushi. That boy happened to be one of the 'others.' I found out his name was Lance, and after dinner we had a chance to talk a bit as the group tried to find a coffee shop to hang out at. I remember standing on the street corner, my gloved hands shoved in my coat pockets, asking Lance about his family. We actually had a couple of things in common ... we both had 3 siblings, weren't coffee drinkers, and were pretty frugal.

We began to email back and forth, and when Lance found out that I liked music, he invited me to a This Holiday Life concert (he knew some of the band members). He asked me a ton of questions, trying to get to know me better ... but I didn't say much. In the following days, we continued to email back and forth with what I thought was merely friendly banter. He seemed like a pretty interesting fellow.

Throughout the next few weeks, we started to see each other more and more ... I invited him to a Skillet concert at The Underground (our reception venue!), we were in the same small group at church, he had at a "Barbie Queue" at his house, we played some indoor soccer, we went salsa dancing with some friends, and a big group of us went on a weekend trip to a cabin in the Smokey Mountains.

At the time, I was in the middle of preparations for a mission trip to Ethiopia, so when Lance heard that I was scheduled to get a yellow fever vaccination, he kindly volunteered to drive me to my appointment so that I wouldn't have to drive with a sore arm. Afterwards, we stopped at a local park to play frisbee golf then had dinner at an authentic Ethiopian restaurant to sample wat and injera, a type of pancake filled with raw ground beef and topped with tasty sauces and spices. Throughout the day, I simply thought we were just hanging out, although Lance says he considers that our first date ... I think he just likes the idea of starting a relationship by helping someone get injected with trace amounts of yellow fever and by eating raw meat with your bare hands.

The hanging out continued for the next two weeks ... he came over to my house to celebrate my grad school graduation, we went $5 bowling, I did an observation in his classroom, we visited an Ethiopian church in Cincinnati, we played tennis with a few friends, and we saw each other at a big Memorial Day cookout. Then came the drive-in.

Lance had invited me to go see a double-feature up in Hamilton at the drive-in theatre, hoping to officially ask me out during the evening. When a few friends came along, the tone of the evening changed a bit, but we still ended up in the car together. We didn't talk much during the films, so he decided to ask me on the way home ... but because the second movie was over well after 1am, I slept the entire way back! When I woke up in the car in my driveway, he stepped out and handed me a rectangular box filled with flower petals that he had collected at a friend's wedding. I didn't know at the time, but he had tucked a small note at the bottom of the box, underneath the flower petals.

The next evening we had planned to go salsa dancing with a group of friends. Midway through the night, he asked me to dance, and while we were on the dance floor, he then asked if I had read the note he had given me the night before. When I told him that I hadn't even opened up the box, his response was, "Well, you have two choices." He spun me around before continuing, "I'm still trying to think of what those two choices are."

We continued to dance as I waited. Then he said, "Ok, you can either return the box or let me explain what the note said." Of course, I wanted to keep the box and its contents, so I asked for the explanation. Again, Lance spun me around before speaking. This time, he held me closer, looked into my eyes, and said, "You are beautiful and mysterious and I want to get to know you better."

The note at the bottom of the box said: