Never met someone who thinks so much like me...jinx!...Jinx again!

Exactly 7 years ago today I put on a beautiful borrowed white dress (thanks Christy), had approximately 83,000 bobby pins placed in various locations throughout my hair to keep it in place, gathered with some of my most favorite people in life, and exchanged a few life altering words with a strikingly handsome young man I met on the internet.

Sort of.

Recounting Josh's and my story is no small feat because of its unique nature and the fact that 7 years later we still marvel at the fact that we ever met and actually managed to get married.  We joke that we got married so we could finally date, and also that we basically had an "arranged" marriage that we arranged ourselves...and then hoped for the best! 

Neither of us really could have imagined that one small church group outing would end up changing the rest of our lives.  Both of us had our reasons for joining this random outing to Safeco Field to tour the stadium for a few dollars.  It was shockingly not our deep mutual love of baseball that drew us, but rather that we each had friends going and we admittedly thought maybe there would be other single individuals there...because this is how you think when you're in your late 20's and going to any sort of outing.  

We interacted only briefly throughout the day, each functioning in the comfort zone of our closest friends who could affirm how delightful and funny we are just in case our future spouse happened to be watching...

Our love story nearly met its demise before it began when two groups of us agreed to meet up after the Safeco tour at the Cheesecake Factory.  We all did end up there, only half of us went to the Seattle location and the other half Bellevue.  Like Romeo and Juliet. 

Weeks passed without any further interaction, except of course for the customary MySpace investigating.  I determined from his social media persona that he was quite adventurous, funny, musical, handsome...and he thought pretty highly of Natalie Portman.  

I didn't attend the church he was going to, but I felt "compelled" to attend in the following weeks to support my friend Brenda who was leading worship there at the time.  I'm a really good friend.

I should also add that I knew at this point that this handsome man was recently home from a long stint in Thailand and would be leaving in a few months for a 2 year commitment in Cambodia.  This definitely deterred my thoughts of anything actually transpiring between us, but I've never been one to let Natalie Portman win, so after ending up at a few lunches together with mutual friends, I decided to finally take the next big step.

I sent him a MySpace friend request with a witty, non-chalant, "I'm really funny and you should be my friend via social media, but don't read into it like I like you," message attached. 

It worked. 

We went on a group outing to the Pacific Science Center to learn about our changing bodies and gaseous activity.  All the things a budding romance is made of.  We then arranged to go hiking because I suddenly loved the idea of hiking after looking at his MySpace page.  I brought roughly 48 friends along with me because apparently I was too nervous to be alone with such a handsome man.  I was getting over a cold and could only hear out of one ear during our adventure.  It put a damper on things, but the good news is I never cried!  I wanted to save the emotional part of me for marriage.   

I remember feeling disheartened as we chatted on our hike, thinking I was far too un-adventurous and non-outdoorsy to ever be a possible match for this handsome world traveler.  I couldn't compete with Queen Amidala and her pointy snake skin helmet ear cover thing and fancy royal starship.

Despite writing myself off as a possibility for him, we began to exchange more MySpace messages and eventually even spent time just the two of us exhibiting our natural God-given athleticism and prowess on the tennis courts of Everett.  We were incredible.   

In the meantime, I had no idea what to do with these interactions.  He was leaving the country in a month, we barely knew each other, and he'd recently been given his first opportunity to hear some of the song stylings of FigTree21.  None of this fared well for me, I'll be honest.

My only hope, my final shot at winning this man's heart forever, was an invitation to his youngest brother's wedding where I would be wearing an adorable black and white strapless dress and my full array of Star Wars makeup.

I opted out of the makeup at the last possible moment, which worked out for me in the long run.


All of my hard work paid off hours later when I went home, checked my email (sometimes we took a classier route than MySpace), and he'd sent me a small note to tell me how beautiful I looked that night. 

What!?  What could this mean??  He'd complimented my duct taped ankles at one point (that's for another blog), but to be so straightforward like this, so unabashed in his affections!  We hung out the next day to return his wedding suit, and ended up on an unplanned outing to take his brother and new sister-in-law to the airport to go on their honeymoon.  I rehearsed in my head all the way to the airport what I might say on the way back.  We obviously required some sort of "DTR" (define the relationship) at that point.  I didn't even know if we had a relationship to define, but I DID know that he was leaving the country for two years in exactly two days from that point, so something needed to happen!

At the airport, his lovely new sister-in-law told me in private, "You know he likes you, right?" 

What!? 

It sounds silly, but this piece of information entirely shocked me.  Did I mention he was leaving the country in two days??

So on the way home I got up all of my courage and asked, "What is this??" (pointing back and forth between the two of us) 

He replied, "Your finger?"  


And that's when I knew he was the one...

We sat in his car in a church parking lot and talked for hours.  His dad had joked about him bringing a ring with him that night just in case.  Apparently all of our "like" of each other was out in the open now.  The Cheesecake Factory and Natalie Portman could not  destroy what was meant to be. 

Two days later, his parents and I sent him off to Cambodia.  He tried to hold my hand at some point but I missed the cue so I only had MySpace messages to snuggle in his absence.  We e-mailed as often as we could, which was not terribly often for someone who was constantly leading teams throughout the provinces of Cambodia.  We "broke up" a few months later, also via email, after some well intended but unhelpful advice from a pastor friend.  The people who knew Josh and I best were surprisingly entirely on board with the craziness of it all and affirmed what a good match we were. 

Somehow we survived the "e-breakup" and he was making plans to come home for a week and a half at Christmas.  We knew this would help us determine if our whole communication had simply been a virtual e-relationship or something more substantial.

After getting past the initial awkwardness of suddenly being out from behind our laptops, we realized we actually really liked spending time together.  We engaged in a lot of non-written communication, went on a few actual real life dates, and I eventually made him kiss me.  He was a pure minded missionary, susceptible to the feminine charms of a young American woman. 

Per our style, he told me he loved me right as he was saying goodbye at the airport to go back to Cambodia.  We're very good at last minute expressions of affection.

Our emails became slightly more mushy and far more detailed in terms of what life might look like if this really all progressed as it was seeming to.  Three months later, he called to ask me a very important question.  He presented option B: he would fly home that spring, propose, and then that following Christmas (approximately 9 months away) we could get married...At this point I told him I would probably pick option A...

Option A, which is exactly what transpired, involved him flying home 3 weeks after that phone call, officially proposing in person, and us getting married 3 weeks later.  More than enough time!  I was 28 years old.  Had never left the country aside from Canada.  Had just finished up my Bachelor's degree (finally).  And was desperately and entirely in love with a man thousands of miles away.

The strangest thing for Josh during this time was receiving a copy of his own wedding invitation while still in Cambodia.  

He came home, took me to the beach, put a ring on my finger, and his sweet dad officiated the most beautiful wedding I could have ever imagined.  We sat on a couch literally minutes after being pronounced husband and wife in absolute awe of the moment.   

We went on dozens of dates together throughout multiple provinces of Cambodia for 16 months, hosted quite a few teams serving orphans and widows, learned what marriage looks like in some pretty foreign circumstances, and eventually moved back to America and were able to finally hold hands in public :) 

That's our story.  And I wouldn't want it any other way.  I have had the absolute privilege of sharing my life with the kindest, funniest, most thoughtful, loving, patient, generous, handsome man I've ever met. He loves Jesus and loves me unlike anything I could have ever fathomed.  I still don't understand how well he loves me.  I've fallen in love with him a thousand times over and I am thankful for the many chapters we've been able to add to our sweet story.  And if you've read this far, you're probably my mom.  But if you're not, then thanks for reading anyway :)