The Love Story by Jeremy.

Mallory and I both graduated high school in 2006. She went to Shannon, and I went to Mooreville. Both, obviously, in Lee County. That proximity brought us together in three ways. The first was that both our graduation honors announcements were in the same section of the Daily Journal. She was valedictorian and STAR student at Shannon, and I was STAR student at Mooreville. She’s got a better story about the newspaper part than I do. 

Anyway. She saw me in the newspaper next to her, so she added me on facebook to offer her congratulations to me on STAR student. Once again, our proximity brought us together because it made it easier for her to determine which “Jeremy Haynes” I was on facebook. I remember her messaging me on facebook and I remember thinking it was just another random girl adding and messaging me on facebook, which was more common back then when I was in football shape than it is now that I’m sort of oval shaped! We messaged back and forth a time or two and I sorta blew her off.

I looked back on my facebook messages and I blew off several attractive and available girls that summer that tried to flirt with me on facebook. I’d learned a lesson or two about crazy facebook girls, so I wasn’t in a hurry to meet her.

The third way that our Lee County Schools education brought us together was that we both chose to go to Lee County Schools 13th and 14th grade at the same place, AKA Itawamba Community College. Most everyone in my senior class from Lee, Pontotoc, and Itawamba counties went to ICC. 

The Lord worked it out that she and I both had the same majors’ biology class together. So the first couple days of Dr. Lay’s class I remembered hearing the name “Whitehead” and thinking it sounded familiar (and a little odd). Somewhere in my mind tho, I remember being facebook friends with a Whitehead girl, but I couldn’t remember her name. Seemed like she had two names or I was getting her confused, and since that was pre-iPhone days, by the time I made it back to a computer to match the face with them name, I forgot about it. I eventually realized she did have two names, Mallory and Megan. That was why I was confused. I’d prolly looked at a different twin each time I saw the name Whitehead on facebook, and if Mallory hadn’t mentioned it earlier, I wouldn’t have ever remembered she messaged me on facebook over that summer.

"Chick-getting Shirt"

Keon, who seems to be connected to every significant life story I have past the 10th grade, knew Mallory and Megan from the spring 2006 tennis state championship in Jackson. He and his doubles partner were competing and the Shannon tennis team was there as well. Like he does with strangers, he made friends and had fun. So, lo and behold, the first Wednesday or Friday of college I can’t remember which, Keon and I ran into his shannon tennis buddies from Jackson. We were walking towards the Grill on the sidewalk opposite the parallel sidewalk in front of the ICC library, Mallory and Megan were walking towards us, away from the grill. He introduced us and I finally got to put a face with the Whitehead name from Biology that I neglected to look up on facebook.

She sat in the middle of a group of boys and girls in that class that she was apparently friends with, or at least she wanted to create that illusion. Dr. Lay however, wasn’t one for any kind of foolishness, and when one of the boys in her group started acting up in class, Dr. Lay called them all out in the middle of his lecture! So we met on a let’s say Wednesday, I assume Dr. Lay called them out on a Friday, since that would have been our next class together, and Monday when I sat down in Biology, Mallory came and asked if she could sit next to me, so she wouldn’t get in trouble over there talking. So she talked to me instead, but just not rudely during the lecture. 

We had that class from 11:00-11:50 on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and the BSU luncheon was kicking off that same Wednesday. So, since I’d already planned to go, and we were getting used to sitting together, we walked across campus together. She still claims credit for inviting me to the BSU for the first time, but I was planning to go anyway. Either way, that’s how our love started.

I got them digits, texted her up and then we went to the first ICC home football game together on a Thursday night August 31, 2006. She joined me up to the same Small Group Bible study a the BSU, and our first date was Fulton Burger King where she wrote our names in mustard on the burger paper. I kissed her on the banks of the Tennessee Tombigbee on September 21, 2006. We became “facebook official” on October 2, 2006, and I told her I loved on November 2 on our one month anniversary.

2006 ICC Football Schedule

We spent most of our free time together for those two ICC years, we survived our year of separation when she went the the “W” and we made it back to Starkville together. God didn’t make either of us patient but both of us long suffering, and we’ve held together through thick and thin. We made a deal when we first started dating that we would never “take a break” and that if we ever broke up it would be for real, not for just a day or two. I guess that’s like saying we’d give our love every opportunity to succeed, and if it did not succeed we would break up, but only after every ounce of patients and long suffering and love and forgiveness we could muster was exhausted. And we came bad close a time a two. There were times that we were both about tired of each other, but we knew that if we broke it off it was over, so we never did. 

They say that once a bone has been broken, when it heals, it is stronger than it was before the break. People try to apply that to relationships, but I think mine and Mallory’s relationship is strong today because we never took a break. You don’t get breaks in life. You don’t take timeouts when things are hard, you work through them, and with the Lord’s help, we always have. She’s my ally and my best friend, and outside of the Lord Jesus, she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. She’s everything I ever wanted, and everything I need. She’s like the Eve to my Adam, she’s just what I was missing. She’s a help that is mete for me. She makes my blood flow.

These weren't the original profile pictures

I never delete my messages. I’ve got messages on my iPhone from the day I first turned it on. Every conversation. And I’ve got every facebook conversation I’ve ever had still on facebook. I didn’t delete them. The reason is that I guess I knew back then that someday I might want to look back at those messages. Maybe they might be important or mean something, regardless of how trivial they were at the time. Mallory said she couldn’t find the facebook messages that started our romance in June of 2006, but I found them. I kept them. But as I scanned the archives of my facebook messages, I remembered something about myself. I found more girls than just Mallory. I would never have remembered if I hadn’t looked, but I had multiple girls that initiated conversation with me, flirted with me, and wanted to meet up and hang out over that summer...I blew all of them off. 

Notice the dates...I blew her off!

I don’t say that to brag, it’s just true. I can show you the messages. But I didn’t blow them off because I was some kind of stud that had tons of girls to choose from (not that that wasn’t true!! j/k). I blew them off for reasons… One girl was flirting with me rather persistently and I asked about her church. She said she was Catholic, and I blew her off. Another girl was telling me what she’d done over the weekend and she said she’d spent some time partying, so I didn’t message her back. I’d decided that I was gonna wait till I found a righteous girl that God wanted me to be with. I’d learned the hard way, in high school, about jumping ahead of God to the best available girl instead of waiting for the best girl, and I made up my mind not to do that anymore. I don’t think Mallory included this in her story, but she had several eligible suitors during her senior year and freshman summer. She blew all of the off. I blew those girls off because I was waiting for Mallory, and I didn’t even know it. I blew her off because I didn’t know she was who I was waiting for.

All my life I’d been waiting for her, now we are waiting for June 23, 2012 together.