Our Story: The Beginning

Awkward first meetings, butterfly-filled first dates, nervous-sweaty first hand holdings, and the excited first kiss. We all remember those beginning stages of love. Guys tell nervous jokes that girls laugh at as if it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Girls twirl their hair around their finger and guys pretend not to notice. Guys open car doors and girls are impressed. Girls bake cookies and guys eat them as if they weren’t completely burnt. We do all of these things to impress the other person because we want them to like us. We have finally found someone we could see ourselves spending forever alongside, and we try everything to make the other person have the same realization. Lipstick, cologne, flowers, and kisses on the cheek seal the deal on a new romance.

Everyone has their own story of falling in love. This is ours; the awkward, butterfly-filled, nervous, and excited truth of it.

In December of 2012, after back-to-back let downs, I had sworn off guys. I had decided I was not going to date or be pursued by anyone. I was going to finish school, move to Mexico to teach English, and marry a Mexican. I had a plan. The funny thing about plans is that God often has one that we cannot see that is happening simultaneously with the plan we have constructed for ourselves.  Sitting on the couch in my apartment, lamenting my eternal singleness with a close friend, I heard a phrase that unbeknownst to me would change my life forever.

“You should meet my friend Jesus. He loves the Lord, goes to art school, leads small group with me…and, he’s Mexican!”

I laughed at her suggestion and reminded her that I wanted to move to Mexico to find a Mexican, not meet one here. Working double-time, she had also told her friend Jesus that he needed to meet me. His response was along the lines of: “I don’t want to meet one of your crazy, desperate friends.” We both stubbornly stood by the idea that set-ups never work out.

On January 18^th, 2013 I was having dinner with the same close friend. She asked if I minded if we stopped by a party for her school for a little bit. After I agreed and we were on the way, she quickly informed me, “By the way the party is at Jesus’s house and I told him you were coming and he’s excited to meet you.”

We arrived at the party and Jesus opened the door to let us in. Jen introduced us in the garage while we were standing next to an RV. Jesus was wearing a super hero t-shirt and a fake mustache. To this day he can’t remember what I was wearing (even though I’ve told him a hundred times). We sat on the couch and spent the rest of the nights sharing our experiences in Mexico.

As I was leaving, he asked if he could Facebook me. Not knowing what to say or really how I felt, I agreed. He found me the next day and immediately sent me a message. That already made him more reliable that the previous guys who had expressed interest in me, which won him major points. After talking back and forth for a couple days, we exchanged phone numbers. He texted me and I texted him. Neither of us received the other person’s message, and we both started to doubt the interest level. After a couple weeks, I told my friend if Jesus was to ask me out on a date, I would say yes. After getting my number from our friend, he called me that night (and we figured out we both had the other person’s phone numbers wrong) and asked me on a date. While we were talking and trying to figure out an evening, my roommate was yelling and texting me from the other room, “YOU BETTER SAY YES! YOU CAN GET OFF WORK! YOU ARE FREE SATURDAY!”

As I said earlier, God’s plans are always better. Always. He knew that I would find Jesus’s reliability so attractive in light of recent let-downs. He knew Jesus would find my heart for the Lord so inspiring in light of past relationships. While we were striving to keep to our own plans and ideas of what we needed, God was molding our individual characters to be what the other person needed. He was preparing us to serve the other person without us even knowing. He was creating a need inside each of us that could only be met by the other person. He was breaking our lives down individually so they would fit together perfectly.

After a couple very successful dates (more on those later), we officially started our relationship on March 17th, 2013. And by officially I mean we changed our Facebook relationship status. It was a BIG DEAL! One year and three months later, Jesus proposed on June 14th, 2015. Three and a half months later, we were married on October 4th, 2015.

Our story is one of overcoming, one of surrendering, one of compromising, and one of celebrating. We want our story to inspire others. We want to share the joy we have found in each other as an outstanding example of God’s provision for His children. We want to glorify God with the life he has blessed us with together.

In honor of our recent one-year anniversary, we did a celebratory photo shoot. We dressed in our wedding attire and revisited the places of our first three dates. We wanted to document where our love began in order to share our story with others. Look for the following posts that will share the rest of the story of the beginning of our lives together. 

Scioto Mile: Location of our engagement