Once upon a time I gave a very simplified version of how Craig and I met, the year-of-which-we-still-don’t-speak-of (1994), and how it all resolved to what we now know as K-Bliss: all love, all the time (you bought that, right)?

Anyway, I’m pretty sure I left out this very significant aspect of that whole time – the courting through mix tape part.

Craig and I met in 1993 and became friends that summer. When I went back to Oklahoma State for my sophomore year that fall I was all giddy and stuff and I made him cookies. But I was poor and I mailed them parcel post. You see where this is going? The cookies didn’t arrive for some 12 days and when they did they were all hard and crumbly.

Nice.

He was made fun of mercilessly by the rest of the Eagle Lake team at that time, but he recovered well enough to make me a mix tape as a thank you for the cookies. And I assert that this very act is proof he HAD fallen for me already because who would spend the time to make a mix tape for a 19-year-old with bad postal judgment? Ahem.

Enter “Music for Megan” Volume 1:

The playlist is as follows:

I’d Rather Have Jesus – Jacob’s Trouble
Nobody Like You – Billy Batstone
You Remain Unchanged – Margaret Becker
Listen To Our Hearts – Geoff Moore
Innocence Lost – Susan Ashton
Psalm 51 – Charlie Peacock
Where You There? – Russ Taff
Carry On (I Am The Lord) – Harvest
The Just Shall Live – Rich Mullins
No Condemnation – Truth
Amazing Grace – Steve Green
Follow Me – Steve Camp
In The Light – Charlie Peacock
Sweet Love – First Call
I Will Be With You – Margaret Becker
You Are So Faithful – Praise Band
My Redeemer Is Faithful And True – Steven Curtis Chapman
Waiting On Your Faithfulness – Craig Dunham
I Know – Shiloh
Learning To Trust – David Meece
More Power To Ya – Petra
Jesus Is Just Alright (Reprise) – DC Talk

I listened to this tape fifty bajillion times. I’m not even kidding. It was pretty much all I listened to that year.

Today I had this overwhelming urge to recreate the playlist on iTunes so I could again listen to it fifty bajillion times. These songs take me back to 1012 Drummond Hall in Stillwater, Oklahoma and my 92 red Chevy Cavalier (which made it all the way with us to St. Louis in 2005 where it died a quiet death in a Kirkwood auto shop parking lot).

I was pretty disheartened to find that some of these songs are not available on iTunes and, as far as I could tell, not available anywhere else either. I’m missing:

Nobody Like You – Billy Batstone
Carry On (I Am The Lord) – Harvest
You Are So Faithful – Praise Band (that’s gonna be easy – because that band is soooo recognizable)
Waiting On Your Faithfulness – Craig Dunham (sniff, sniff – only on a demo tape he recorded, never transferred to CD)
I Know – Shiloh

So when I want the true effect I’m going to have to hunt down a tape player. For now, though, this is close and I’m on my third time through the playlist.

Chloe came down while I was doing this and asked if she could listen to it. I said, “Sure,” thinking she had a tape player on her CD player upstairs. She left and immediately returned to say, “I can’t listen to it. I don’t have one of those things this thing goes on.” She didn’t know the words “cassette tape” or “cassette tape player”. Funny.

And thus began the pseudo-courtship of Craig and Megan. He wooed me through music. And I still have every tape.

PS – I just counted. Craig made me 7 tapes and I made him 6 between the years 1993-1996. That’s true love right there.