aukerman.org

Tara says:

I'd known of David since our freshman year at Taylor. It was a small enough school that you recognize most of your classmates fairly early on - and Dave's very recognizeable. He's tall, has beautiful (big) curly hair, and has a huge mouth... =)

Students went to chapel for an hour three times a week, and sometimes the Chorale would sing in the services. The Chorale is an audition-based choral group (which means they're good) that Dave was in for all four years (Dave was easy to pick out because he was the tallest in the back row and opened his mouth really wide) . Since I was a music major and he was hanging around the music building a lot because of this choir, I got to know him well enough to say hi passing in a hallway. That was it for the first two years of college.

The next year (junior year), I decided to audition for Chorale (I'd been in all the other ensembles at the school, and wanted to do some serious choral music in addition to all the instrumental stuff I had to do) and made it. That year, Dave became the Chorale's chaplain (Taylor's a Christian school, so this position was a discipleship/leadership role), so I got to know him a little better through his ministry in that group.

I thought he was a pretty neat guy - he said a lot of things to make you think. When I could, I'd stay after rehearsal and talk with him or with a group near him. I found myself liking this guy more and more as a person and as a leader, so began spending more time with him by sitting near him on long trips and hanging out with him on tours.

Then, in the fall of our senior year, Dave had a class with my roommate, Anne. They were partners for a huge project, so he was often over at our apartment. I'd hang around and crack jokes and distract them for a while, then leave and let them work. It was a good way to get to know Dave more as a friend than as a classmate or an acquaintance - I got to see the non-Chorale side of him.

He started hanging out for a while even after Anne and he were finished working, and when he called for her, he'd chat with me for a while, too. We often drove or walked together to classes because his apartment was near mine and we had similar schedules. When it came time to schedule spring semester classes, we found out we both needed the same course and wanted to take it with the same prof. Naturally, we scheduled it at the same time.

We took that class together with a good friend of Dave's (Shawn - soon to be a good friend of mine). The three of us sat together every day, studied for tests together (well, Dave studied - Shawn and I goofed around and crammed later), walked from class together (I skipped about a quarter of the next class I had to talk with the boys), and generally got to know each other really well. It was fun interacting with Dave and his friends, and so much more the blessing that they ended up being mine as well.

About that same time, I started going over to Dave's apartment to study - it was always very quiet and (for lack of a better word) serene. I loved living with Anne, but the tv was always on and sometimes I couldn't concentrate. Other times, to be perfectly honest, I just wanted to see Dave. =)

David says:

I first remember Tara in our junior year at Taylor, the first time we sang in the Taylor Chorale together. All I knew about her was that she was a good singer - part of the best quartet in the group! - and that she could do computer stuff. I remember asking her to think about doing some kind of webpage for the Chorale (which never materialized because ... well, the idea just died). I remember that she always seemed to be happy, with lots of energy, willing to help other people at whatever they were doing.

We really started spending time together in our senior year of college, during those infamous Information Systems Analysis projects that I did with Tara's roommate Anne. Those were our days of living off-campus, so there weren't open house hours to deal with - Anne and I worked on one big project for several days at different times of the day. Tara was always good about giving us the space we needed to do our work, but once we were done working, she had a funny way of showing up to hang out with the two of us. I remember watching a hockey game on TV in their apartment with Tara, Anne, and Anne's boyfriend Russ - and being amazed that "so late" in my college years I was still finding some new people to do stuff with.

It was in that period of time that Tara introduced me to The Princess Bride, which we watched on her computer .. I remember that situation pretty clearly. I also remember walking to school every morning, and quite often along would come Tara in her white Grand Am, slowing down to see if I wanted a (thirty second) ride to school. After a while it became a sort of routine for the two of us.

In the spring semester of our senior year, we had a class together with Shawn (who is now my best man). The three of us always sat in the second row of seats in the classroom, on the left-hand side, on the center aisle. Every day, I was usually the last of the three of us to show up, and I was always disappointed if I didn't get to sit between Shawn and Tara - specifically, if I couldn't sit next to Tara at all. She made that class more fun. :)

That was the beginning of our friendship, one that has blossomed into something truly wonderful. Who knew that we would ever end up here? (Apparently Tara did, or at least she hoped so!) :)

Tara says:

Things changed for me during our senior year. I grew up a lot, and learned a lot, in a relatively short amount of time. I came to rely on Dave to steady me during that period - I was trying to reconcile a lot of seemingly conflicting things, and I was learning how to have deep friendships, lasting relationships, for the first time in my life. His quiet affirmation was something I came to place a lot of importance in.

I played in the Jazz Ensemble and David sang in the most selective small choir (the Sounds) - these two groups went on tour together in April of our senior year. By then, he and I were fast friends, so we spent most of the trip to the Bahamas together. When I had free time, I sought him out; we played games, swam, just enjoyed each other (and paradise, of course!).

That May, I remember sitting on his couch with him, talking about what was coming - about the changes our lives would hold, about the uncertainty of the future, and about the necessarily finite nature of relationships - they always end. He understood that I was trying to deal with the inevitable ending of friendships I'd made over the past four years, and he tried to cheer me up by saying that I'd always have my close friends. I looked him straight in the eyes and asked him if he and I would still be friends. Would we care enough about each other to keep in touch? Or would our friendship fade like so many others? He, trying to say exactly the truth (instead of trying to make me feel better), says, "I don't know. Maybe not." And that was it. A few days later, we graduated and we didn't get the chance to even say goodbye to each other before I left for home in Pennsylvania.

But... this forgetting of each other that I so dreaded was not to be. =) Dave and Shawn planned a trip to see some baseball games over that summer, and they stopped and spent a week at my parents' home. We'd done a good job of keeping in touch, and continued that. Since Melissa was still in school, I went out a couple of times the next school year to see Dave. He had moved to Ohio to start grad school, and I stayed a couple of weekends throughout the schoolyear.

I wasn't doing well in Pennsylvania. Eventually, after much talking with my parents and much more prayer, I decided to move back to Indiana. Almost immediately, my relationship with Dave took off in a new direction. Well, that's not entirely true. We both had wanted to be together, but a 9 hour distance was daunting. Now that we were only 2 hours apart, we felt like we could devote enough time to each other to actually form a relationship. So we did. =)

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Like I said earlier, I've always thought that David was a really interesting person. I enjoyed spending time with him and I loved to listen to him talk. He always had such important things to say... always gave me so much to think about. He was one of those people with whom you could talk and come away feeling like you actually said something.

I adored David almost from the very beginning. I grew to love him quickly, I think. After I realized how I felt, I simply waited for Dave. =)

So. When did I know that I wanted to be with him? I guess it came on pretty gradually. It started out as "I would really like to get to know him." When I got to know him a little, it moved into "I would really like to be good friends with him." When we became friends, I started thinking, "This is the kind of guy I want to marry someday." Then it became "This is the guy I want to marry someday." Then, it was "This is the guy I AM going to marry!" Now, it's "This is my husband." =)

David says:

This is a tricky question for me. My friendship with Tara grew slowly but steadily from that spring semester of our senior year onward. A defining moment for us came in my apartment just before graduation. Tara had been processing what would happen to her friendships when she left Taylor, and she asked me if the two of us would still be friends after we graduated. I remember reacting generally positively (if maybe a little hesitantly) to that question ... I definitely thought we could stay friends, but we'd have to work at keeping in contact. Our friendship was just starting to develop into something special (not romantic yet - just a special friendship), and I thought it would be awful to let that go to waste.

So ... we graduated. I wanted to say goodbye to Tara before we left, but as I was cleaning out my apartment, I looked across the lawn and saw that her car was gone - she and her sister Leah had already taken off for Pennsylvania. That was a sad moment ... who knew how long it would be until we saw each other again?

Tara and I started writing letters - real, pen-and-paper, 37-cent-stamp letters - to each other. In those letters we talked about all sorts of things, from our daily lives to questions about faith to hopes for the future. Tara always apologized for her "illegible" handwriting, but I always thought it was a lot of fun to read her letters. After a few of them, I got the hang of how she wrote, and I thought her writing was beautiful.

Soon Tara moved to Indianapolis just so she could go to the church she went to as a Taylor student. That seemed like an amazing leap of faith to me. After that, we were a mere two hours' drive apart, and we took advantage of that, seeing each other as much as possible. We started "officially" dating pretty soon, and after a couple of years, we were engaged.

So when did I "know" that Tara and I were prime marriage material? I don't know that I can say for sure. The summer before Tara moved to Indy, Shawn and I visited her and her family for a week, and I told Shawn that somebody was going to have a lot of fun winning Tara's heart. After Tara and I had dated for over a year, I realized that I couldn't imagine living without her - not in an emotionally needy, crippled sense (I've been there before, and it's not good at all), but in a healthy, lasting, friendship-and-Christ-oriented sense. I saw that she complimented me in ways where I was lacking, and that I did the same for her. I saw that she loved me even when I couldn't figure out why I ought to love myself. I saw that she helped me have FUN in my life, and that's something I needed desperately. What's more, I felt that I could be used by God to work with her and produce a God-glorifying marriage.

In the end (really the beginning), then, we're just a great fit for each other. It takes a while to learn that kind of thing. And one day you wake up and realize that the question isn't "Is she the one?" any more. You just know that she is.

David says:

Go read the story at my blog. :)

We say:

For this first year, we're going to live in Upland, IN, home of our alma mater, Taylor University. David has accepted a one-year teaching position at the school, filling in for a professor on sabbatical. Tara will keep her job in Indianapolis and make the 1½ hour commute three days a week and work the other two from home. David will take a couple of seminary classes, but will cut down the number of hours for this year. The plan for next year (right now - but we all know how things change!) is for us to move back to Indianapolis. David will go back to taking classes and teaching part-time.

We'll be going to church at Woodruff Place. We've prayed about it and decided that it's the best place for us to be for now. We will have plenty of opportunity to both grow together and to serve.