there, or I was late (actually, I was always late to church before I started dating Jason) and didn't want to interrupt a whole pew to sit by Faith, so I would just go and sit back at the sound board with Jason. It felt completely natural to do this, because we were buddies, pals, friends. Nothing romantic going on at ALL. In fact, I felt like he treated me and interacted with me just the same as Rachel, his cousin. Of course, there were those couple of times where his arm would go around the back of my chair, or when he would rub my back side a little. I definitely scooted or leaned forward then, and ditched him as soon as the service was over. But those things are completely forgotten, especially when I liked someone else. Which happened quite a bit. Those poor guys at church.

Jason started to invite me to his family gatherings. I didn't think anything was weird about that either because EVERYONE goes to the family gatherings---it is so true; like I said, knowing one

of the Shade clan=knowing ALL of the Shade clan. All of his siblings and his mom and everyone was so welcoming, so I didn't really feel as if I was getting any special attention from Jason specifically.

And then our housechurch "grafted" with another housechurch. I don't know if that's the official terminology, but the Stauffer/Rice hc joined back with the Garbers, and instead of 2 singles there were now 6 singles. So, it seemed only natural for all of us to go out together afterwards for coffee or dessert. (In retrospect, I have to extend an apology to the Garbers: I never thought how it might feel, as if we were ditching you!). Jason and I would ride out together because we lived only about a half mile apart. As you can tell, the friendship was deepening throughout the spring and summer of 2008.

I was gone for a huge portion of the summer in 2008, but when I came back, the HC was not