our story [part 2]

Read Part 1 here.

At age 18, I moved away to college at Arizona State University.  It was only two hours away, but it was the hardest transition of my life. 

New dorm.  New friends.  New life.

 

Exciting, yes, but also positively terrifying.

Time flew by, however, and I dated quite a few boys throughout the months away from home.  I didn’t date any of them very seriously except for one, and I got him ready and sent him off on a church mission, determined that I would be there when he got back two years later.

Sometimes I think about those times now and imagine Heavenly Father giving me his knowing smile and maybe even chuckling slightly, because my life wouldn’t turn out anything like I’d planned.

And I’m glad it didn’t.

During the summer before my senior year at ASU, though still faithfully writing that missionary I’d worked so hard to get out there, I started to have small inklings that maybe I should start dating again.  I pushed these feelings aside, bound and determined that I wasn’t going to date anybody right then.

The inklings came and went throughout the summer months, but I mostly managed to squelch them in the midst of all my letter-writing and adventure-having.

On one evening in June sometime, I went to go hang out with a group of my guy friends at their house.  I was having trouble finding the place in the dark, so I called my friend Jon.  He walked out to my car to show me inside.  As we were walking up to the front door, I saw a darkened figure sitting on the bed of a truck in the driveway, talking on the phone.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“Oh that’s just Tim, our roommate.”

I dismissed him without another thought.

A few minutes later, however, this “Tim” walked through the front door, and to my utter surprise, I recognized him.

“Hey don’t I know you?” I asked in shock.

“Oh yeah, you’re Jeff Sparks’s little sister, aren’t you?”

Of course, I thought.

He spent the rest of the night in the same room with my friends and me, but he didn’t say much.  A short sentence or two, here or there.  They showed me their band’s website.  To my surprise, they were pretty good.

“Who’s singing?” I asked.

“Oh that’s Tim,” Gary said.

“Really?” I asked.

“Yep,” Tim said.  And that was it.  So he’s the silent musician type, I thought.

As soon as I left their house, however, Tim exclaimed, “Well Katie Sparks sure has grown up a lot!”  After which his roommates all tried to discourage him by telling him I was waiting for a missionary.

When I got home, I asked Tim to be my friend on Facebook, and then quickly forgot about him.  Again.


Read Part 3 here.