The List

Back in May, I flew to Memphis to spend the weekend with my best friend from birth (for real, our mom’s were friends in college and we’ve known each other literally our entire lives). We spent Saturday morning shopping but by 11am neither of us even had the energy to shop anymore so we decided to go back to her house and make cocktails… we were hoping it would at least be noon by then.

Her husband was in complete support of this decision and added to the equation that he would be cleaning the pool so we should just cut to the chase and put our bathing suits on, lay out in her yard for a while with our cocktails, then we could hop in the pool later. Yes, please.

So Marianne gets this great idea that we’re going to make a list; a list of all the qualities I’m looking for in a man. We make our drinks, get down one of two of them, then I start talking and she starts writing. I rattled off the first few: (1) Friendly and easy to talk to, (2) Full of life, (3) Christian and solid as a rock.

Marianne looks at me in that moment and said, “Ok, so far we’ve described Cameron.”

To make matters more awkward, apparently my brother Cameron feels the same way.  Here’s a portion of one of his blog posts from a while back:

“Alright, I haven’t blogged in a while, but I can’t really contain myself tonight because I am so stoked about what the Lord is doing in the life of my cousin, Hayley. First off, if you don’t know her, you should, because she might be your best friend. She’s a beach girl from head to toe, always wearing a huge smile, and reallllly hates drinking soda (which has always seemed odd to me…anyways).  She’s two and a half years younger than me, and she’s been more mature than me since she was born. She is an amazing big sister to Trey, Jack, and Molly and an amazing friend to the rest of us.

She’s always been a part of younglife. When Meghan and I got involved in high school, Hayley stepped up and did it too. Meg invested so much time in her, and led her every step of the way. When I think of the ideal woman, a woman that I would want to marry one day, I say to myself, “she’s gotta be like Meg…that’s all” because, and this is true, my sister is amazing. To be honest, she’s probably cooler than me and you…”

Did I mention that our family is from West Virginia?