I graduated high school in May 2001. That summer was my last year at Round Lake Christian Assembly, the camp I went to each summer starting around 8th grade. This same summer followed Justin’s first year at college. He and a group from school travelled around doing the music for different camps. Twice they ended up at Round Lake. The first time he met Don Hooper who invited him to OSU to lead worship at Student Christian Fellowship. The second time he met me. The last night of camp, as they did a sort of “concert,” the thought passed through my head, “maybe he’ll be my husband.” I quickly brushed it off of course. Silly girl. Partly due to not actually having talked to him yet. Partly due to the fact that his ex was going to be my dorm mom (until she went home sick). I’m actually not sure if I knew this at the time, but what a small world we live in at times. I approached him and asked for his email address since we would both be starting at OSU in the winter. He doesn’t remember this but I have the email address to prove it. After attaining said address and thinking he was cute, I sent him an email. If read aloud I’m sure it would sound high pitched and have a lots of “ums,” hoping he would remember who I was. I never heard anything back. Story of my life. Moving on.
That fall I worked and “saved” up for college. I think most of my paychecks went to buying makeup at Wal-Mart. I didn’t get into OSU until winter quarter so I had to use the guise of saving to sound responsible. January 2002 my mom drove me through the snow to Ohio State. She dropped me off to two roommates who could have cared less that I was moving in. Through tears we hugged goodbye, probably both wondering what I was doing there. Little did we know that God’s providence was at work.
I moved in on a Sunday. On Monday I received an email back from Justin. Let me remind you this is January. I sent the email the previous summer. Like me, he lived at home during the fall. Not having email at home, he never read my charming attempt to stand out among the other girls writing him after camp telling him how dreamy he was. The subject of my email was “Ohio State,” which caught Justin’s eye and so, he read and responded. The following night I went to SCF where he was leading worship (a guitar player, how dreamy). Then the truth came out as he mentioned that night about how he enjoyed hunting. My first thought was “oh crap. That’s gross.” 
If I knew then what I know now…I would still flirt. Deer season is only 5 months of the year. Ha! Only? Something is always in season, and if it’s not, then it’s time to prepare for it. Still, he had a nice face, so I overlooked this hunting he spoke of and hoped he didn’t take half a year to write me another email.
I did end up hearing from him shortly, and a month later we were kissing and calling ourselves a couple. Throughout our courtship I was a student at OSU, but sadly I didn’t make it to class too often. For the classes I did make it to I didn’t really know why I was there and they held no interest to me. I made it through winter and spring quarter, lived at home for the summer, and then moved back to Columbus fall of 2002. I pictured myself being a mom, and the student loans were adding up fast. That’s when I withdrew (ok- dropped out) of school. I started nannying, thinking it was the best thing I could do to prepare for having kids. We were engaged just over a year after we started dating, and thanks to our generous friends and family, were able to get married 5 ½ months after that. August 23, 2003 we became The Dills. Sure it cost us 2 quarters of classes and dorm living all via student loans to get there. Sure Key Bank is still taking payments from us each month. But in the end I got the pretty guitar player to email me back.
He is very dreamy!
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