My Favorite Story
By: Chase Muro
Everyone has a story.
That is the whole reason I started this project. I believe every person we pass has lived a life filled with people, places, failures, victories, strange coincidences, heartbreaks, prayers, and moments that somehow brought them exactly where they are today.
But this story is different.
Because this one is about my favorite person.
This one is about Alexa.
And maybe the craziest part of our story is that for most of our lives, we were right there.
We grew up close to each other. We went to Prune Hill Elementary School. We could have passed each other in hallways a hundred times without ever realizing who the other person would someday become.
Maybe she saw me walking around with my bleached hair, thinking I was a basketball player, listening to rap and probably doing something stupid.
She tells me she would not have liked high school Chase.
I tell her I probably would not have liked high school Alexa either.
And I think that is exactly the point.
We weren’t ready yet.
God was still working on us.
It Started With Our Moms
Of all the ways two people can meet in 2024, ours started because our moms were talking around Christmastime.
Not Tinder. Not Hinge. Not some perfectly crafted dating profile.
Our moms.
I had done all of that other stuff already. I had dated. I had explored. I had tried the apps. I went to Bible studies and church events, sometimes probably wondering in the back of my mind if I might meet somebody.
And somewhere along the way, I realized something.
I didn’t just want someone.
I wanted someone who understood what I believed. Someone who wanted Christ at the center of her life. Someone I could pray with. Someone who could challenge me. Someone with whom I could build something deeper than attraction.
I remember putting things like “Christ first,” “believer,” and “waiting until marriage” on dating profiles.
Usually, things fizzled out.
Then I heard about Alexa.
And somehow I found the courage to send her a text.
I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen.
Thank God I sent it.
Because on December 16, 2024, we met at Mesa in downtown Camas.
We ate dinner, had some drinks, talked, and began something neither of us could have completely understood at the time.
And I have to give a shoutout to Kelllen Mason, because those chips, guacamole, and salsa were unbelievable.
Some details of a love story are sacred.
Apparently, chips and guac are among them.
The Long Distance Part
Then Alexa went back to Loyola Marymount University for her final semester.
Perfect timing, right?
I finally meet this incredible girl, and she leaves.
But looking back, I wouldn’t change it.
Because we had to talk.
Really talk.
We wrote letters. We sent notes. We played GamePigeon. We asked each other ridiculous questions.
“If you were a utensil in a kitchen, which one would you be?”
I don’t even know where I came up with some of this stuff.
Part of it was just me being weird Chase Muro.
But another part of it was that I genuinely wanted to know everything about her.
Being apart forced us to build something that wasn’t based only on physical closeness. There were no shortcuts. We had months to ask questions, write letters, laugh over the phone, talk about life, talk about God, and slowly discover the person on the other side.
I learned her heart before I ever got the privilege of sharing everyday life with her.
When she graduated, I thought, “Finally. She’s coming home.”
Then she went to Europe for three weeks.
Come on, AG.
But I had already waited months.
I could wait a little longer.
She was worth waiting for.
God’s Timing
There is something I believe now that I don’t think I understood when I was younger.
God’s timing isn’t ours.
Alexa and I could have met years earlier.
We didn’t.
And I think there was a reason for that.
God had work to do on me first.
My life had to take me away. I had to go to Colorado State. I had to struggle. I had to grow up. I had to begin recognizing God’s presence in my life instead of thinking I could muscle my way through everything alone.
Alexa had her own story unfolding at the same time.
Then, in 2024, my family’s house was struck by lightning.
It was one of those experiences that changes your perspective on how much control you actually have over life.
During that strange chapter, I met a Jamaican neighbor named Steve. He had served in the Jamaican military, and one thing he told me has stayed with me ever since.
He told me that God can’t give you a jewel if you don’t know what to do with it.
Something precious has to be cared for.
You have to become capable of recognizing it.
About a month later, I met Alexa.
Maybe that was coincidence.
I don’t think it was.
I still can’t say that I perfectly know how to care for the jewel God gave me. I make mistakes. I get frustrated. I get quiet. I can be stubborn. I fail.
But I know what I have.
And I thank God for her.
Coming Home
When Alexa finally came home, life wasn’t exactly slowing down for me.
I was finishing my credits at Washington State University Vancouver. I took 15 summer credits. I was studying for my insurance license and eventually my securities licenses. I was trying to figure out what adulthood was actually supposed to look like.
But I always wanted to make time for her.
Because somewhere along the way, Alexa stopped feeling like another part of my schedule.
She became the person I wanted beside me through all of it.
And she was.
She helped me study. She ran flashcards with me. She did Quizlets with me. We generated ridiculous practice questions and dialogues in ChatGPT. She listened to me talk about things that probably sounded like complete gibberish.
And when I passed those exams and moved forward in my career, my name might have been on the licenses, but Alexa’s fingerprints were all over the journey.
I am a better man because of her.
Not because she magically fixed me.
Because loving her made me want to become the man God is asking me to be.
Finding Faith Together
During all of this, I was going through OCIA and preparing to become Catholic.
Faith was becoming the center of my life in a way it had never been before.
And I wanted to share that with Alexa.
That wasn’t always an easy conversation.
Faith is deeply personal. It couldn’t simply become hers because it was mine.
But Alexa was curious.
She started coming to classes with me. She started asking questions. She began looking backward at her own life and recognizing that maybe God had been leaving breadcrumbs for her long before I ever came along.
This past Easter, I was baptized, confirmed, and received my First Holy Communion.
Alexa was there.
She saw the culmination of a journey that had changed my life.
And now I get to watch her own relationship with God unfold.
That means more to me than I know how to explain.
Our faith doesn’t mean our relationship is perfect.
It means we know where to look when it isn’t.
AG
I call her AG.
Always Gorgeous.
It also occasionally stands for Attorney General, because this woman runs the operation.
We just traveled through Alaska together, and I honestly don’t know how I would have gotten home without her.
What gate are we at?
Ask Alexa.
What terminal?
Alexa knows.
Where are the passports?
Alexa.
What’s the plan?
Ask the Attorney General.
I just follow along.
And I trust her.
That’s one of the million little things I love about us.
Alexa is beautiful, but anybody with eyes can see that.
What I get to see is everything underneath.
She’s strong.
She’s ridiculously smart.
She’s curious.
She’s determined.
She’s sweet.
She’s witty.
And her sarcasm can hit you like a backhanded slap when you least expect it.
She gets plenty of that from her dad, Joe.
And then there is this sweetness in her that reminds me of her mom, Nina.
But Alexa is completely her own person.
She doesn’t give up.
That is one of my favorite things about her.
She keeps going.
And she has taught me to do the same.
The Little Things
Love isn’t only the big moments.
I’ve learned that from Alexa.
Sometimes it’s the weird stuff.
She cracks her thumbs approximately every five seconds. I still don’t completely understand how they bend like that.
I fart.
Sometimes badly.
She has somehow decided to continue dating me despite this information.
We write each other notes.
We listen to gospel music.
We laugh.
We bicker.
I go quiet sometimes, and she pulls me out of it.
Sometimes she needs time to process things, and I’m learning how to give her that.
We’re learning each other’s quirks.
We’re learning how the other person wants to be loved.
We’re learning when to talk and when to shut up.
We’re learning when to apologize.
We’re learning how to forgive.
And I don’t ever want to stop learning about her.
I want to know Alexa when we’re 25.
I want to know her when we’re 40.
I want to know her when we’re 70.
I want to keep discovering the person God created her to be.
My Favorite Story
When I started Everyone Has a Story, I wanted to tell stories about people.
Athletes. Business owners. Priests. Teachers. Coaches. Immigrants. Friends. People who had experienced success, loss, faith, change, and everything in between.
I wanted to remind people that nobody is ordinary once you actually sit down and listen to them.
But Alexa has taught me something else.
Sometimes another person’s story becomes part of your own.
Before December 2024, Alexa had an entire life I wasn’t part of.
And I had mine.
Two kids could grow up minutes apart, attend the same elementary school, live in the same community, and never really meet.
Until the right moment.
Until a conversation between two moms around Christmastime.
Until one text.
Until one dinner at Mesa.
Until letters and GamePigeon and stupid questions about kitchen utensils.
Until LMU.
Until Europe.
Until home.
Until faith.
Until Alaska.
Until all of these little moments somehow became our life.
There will be hard days ahead. There will be trials neither of us can predict. There will be arguments, mistakes, tears, stress, changes, and moments when life doesn’t go according to our plan.
But I know what I want to do when those days come.
I want to reach for her hand.
I want to pray with her.
I want to make her laugh.
I want to hug her.
I want to kiss her forehead.
I want to tell her she’s beautiful even when she rolls her eyes at me.
I want to listen to country music with her.
I want to raise a family with her.
I want Christ at the center of our home.
I want us to keep choosing each other.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Because we can’t give up.
Not on God.
Not on each other.
Not on the life we’re building together.
Steve told me that God doesn’t give you a jewel until you’re ready to understand what you’ve been given.
I’m still learning.
I’ll probably spend the rest of my life learning.
But I know this much:
Alexa is the greatest earthly gift God has ever placed in my life.
She has seen the good in me.
She has seen the bad.
She has seen the ugly.
And somehow, through all of it, she has continued to love me.
I want to spend my life returning that love.
Maybe God knew exactly what He was doing when He kept two kids from Prune Hill apart all those years.
Maybe we needed to become Chase and Alexa first.
Maybe He needed to bring me closer to Him before He could introduce me to her.
Maybe December 16, 2024, wasn’t late at all.
Maybe it was exactly on time.
Everyone has a story.
This is Alexa’s.
This is mine.
And by the grace of God, I pray that we’re only at the beginning of ours.
------
I will love you forever, Mrs. Muro.