Ten years ago I met Stephen Andrew Moody. Five years ago today, I became Mrs. Stephen Andrew Moody. And so…

Once upon a love story, in a land not so far away, there lived a man and wife and their darling baby girl. {wait. what? I thought this was about Stephen and Elisabeth? hang on!} One day the man and his wife packed up their earthly possessions, left the flat farmland of Indiana, and moved their family to the hills of West Virginia. They settled into a small cottage near the church where he was to be the new youth minister. In the neighboring cottage, lived a maiden named Elisabeth.

Elisabeth was in her last year of high school and was part of the church’s youth group. That Christmas season, the youth minister, his wife and baby made the long journey back to their homeland where they spied a dashing young man named Stephen {who had been, at one time, the minister’s computer student}. Upon seeing this knight in shining armor, the minister and his wife mentioned to Stephen that a girl in their youth group would make a good match for him. About all Stephen remembered from that encounter was that the damsel’s name was Elisabeth and that she had blonde hair.

When the couple and their beautiful little girl returned home to their cottage in the hills, the minister set out in the snow to join his youth group who was attending a teen winter retreat at a remote camp further up a nearby hollow. While there, he told Elisabeth about the knight in shining armor that might make a good match for her. After the snowy retreat, Elisabeth was shown a school annual that included Stephen’s picture.

That spring, Elisabeth and her family traversed the Alleghenies to visit Elisabeth’s elder sister at the university where Stephen was also a pupil. And for the first time, there in the dining hall, the maiden caught a glimpse of her knight! Of course the knight was totally oblivious as he had never seen a photograph of the damsel, but the maiden was thrilled nonetheless.

Elisabeth completed her studies, graduated from high school, and entered the university in the fall. Her literary society was planning an autumn dating outing, so each maiden would need to invite the knight of her choice in order to attend the event. Elisabeth thought to herself, “I might as well invite the guy I’m interested in since I’ll probably never get to meet him otherwise.” She composed a short note to Stephen explaining how she knew of him and inviting him to her society’s outing. She then sent the invitation in the university’s mail courier system to be delivered to Stephen’s dormitory room.

The next morning, half awake, the knight discovered Elisabeth’s note that had been slipped under his door. However, after receiving the invitation, he waited four days before replying! Finally, he rang Elisabeth and accepted her invitation and asked her to meet him for dinner.

The maiden had butterflies in her stomach as she walked up to the dining hall to meet her man for the first time. The knight stood outside watching for a blonde girl, not knowing which one was Elisabeth. She approached, introduced herself, they exchanged pleasantries, and began making their way into the dining hall. Once inside the couple’s every move was tracked by Elisabeth’s cousins and friends who were watching with keen interest and giving Elisabeth a smiling thumb’s up when Stephen wasn’t looking.

And from that day forward, the maiden and the knight grew in their love for each other. Their courtship lasted the four years of Elisabeth’s career at the university and continued across the miles when she took a teaching position at a small schoolhouse in the red rocks of Utah. Then, Christmas of that year, the dashing young knight proposed to the lovely maiden, and she said yes! They were married in the church of Elisabeth’s childhood on a hot, sticky day~August 4, 2006~surrounded by family and friends.Now, 5 years later, the knight and his lady still have stars in their eyes for each other. He rides his mighty steed {not sure that a ’95 Camry qualifies either as mighty or as a steed} slaying dragons {computer viruses, worms, power outages, system overloads} while she rocks their baby to sleep and makes their cottage into a home.

And they lived happily ever after. The End.