I didn't move to Bloomington, Indiana in August of 2021 expecting to find the perfect person for me. I found myself heading to a new city, a new campus in Indiana University, and a new ministry role in Chi Alpha as a Campus Missionary In Training without much of a strong conviction of why I was there--but God knew there was someone there I needed to meet.

In Alexis, I found a person who was incredibly easy to talk with. We shared a heart for God and for ministry, we shared a unique life stage, and we shared a love for (and dominance in) social deception board games. I have multiple early memories of us wiping the floor with our other friends and co-workers in Secret Hitler.

But the thing that stood out to me most was her depth of character. She was not a hurried person, but rather she moved slowly and patiently, relying on God. When you talked to her, it was evident she had a deep relationship with Him. She was a leader in prayer and worship amongst the ministry, and she was always hungry to grow in her understanding of scripture. She was the most thoughtful person I had ever met.

I am a slow-moving kind of guy. I knew I was starting to be attracted to her pretty early that school year, but I wanted to wait and pray and feel out if I was ready to be in a relationship (I have never been one to rush into things). To me, it seemed for those first few months like everything was on pause, and I had the time to think through my feelings and desires. Little did I know, her experience was quite different! But that time was invaluable to me, as God was revealing His blessing over this relationship and giving me the confidence to move forward.

After three months of hilariously awkward attempted set-ups by our co-workers (which I didn't notice), multiple long conversations about personal topics in the office (in which I put no stock), and one particularly ironic devotional Alexis gave that was literally ABOUT her liking me (which I somehow took as a sign that she wasn't interested in getting into a relationship at the moment)...

On November 18th, 2021, I worked up the courage to tell Alexis how I felt about her in the parking lot of the church where we worked. Nervous, I think all I could get out was something like this:

"I really like talking to you, and I really like being with you, and I really like you."

From there, we began to walk through the beautiful and (for me) anxiety-inducing stages of a new relationship together. Neither of us knew exactly how we wanted things to go, and neither of us were fully prepared for what it meant to love one another. By the grace and strength of God, however, we managed to walk in love anyway.

For me, learning to live like I wasn't alone was difficult. I didn't know how to shape my life around meeting the emotional needs of someone else, and there was a LOT I needed to learn about healthy communication. Still, Alexis has helped me grow so much in these past two years since we started dating. I continued to be a slow moving kind of guy (Alexis was ready to say I do a long time ago), but everything about this--everything about her--has proven to be worth my time.

I believe there is no better life partner out there for me than Alexis. I believe she will always hold and encourage me to be the man God has made me to be, and she welcomes me as I hold and encourage her to be the woman God made her to be. She makes me smile every day, and she knows me better than anyone else. I love Alexis, and I can't wait to begin crafting a beautiful marriage with her.

The Spring before Jeremy had even officially decided to come to Bloomington to do his internship with Chi Alpha at IU, my coworkers teasingly showed me his profile pictures and asked what I thought about him and if I was excited for this single man to be on our staff team the next year. My now-matron-of-honor joked about hoping he would be tall enough for me. I laughed it off, but from then on, I would be sure to keep my eye out the next Fall when he arrived. I thought, “It’s not every day that a tall single man who loves Jesus more than anything is just dropped on your doorstep.”

When Jeremy arrived in August of 2021, I decided to be a bit bold and put myself out there in a way that was very unlike myself. I started to make it a point to go to all of the hangouts that the interns would organize and strategically find ways in the office to have conversations with him. Apparently it really wasn’t that bold or obvious to him, but anyone who knew me before this point in time could tell that this typically early-to-bed introvert was making her moves. Trust me, I would not be staying up past my bed time consistently to spend time in large groups of people for just anyone.

We would play Secret Hitler together with the other interns (I had never met anyone as good at that game as I was before) and watched every Harry Potter movie that first semester. I would always steal glances at him, and I wouldn’t miss any opportunity to be around him for the world.

I watched him constantly take opportunities to serve others, I noticed his contagious joy and how he would encourage and lift up those around him. I watched how passionately and excitedly he worshiped the Lord, and I took note of his distinctly warm kindness towards others. He would take time to intentionally give his attention to those who might go unnoticed in group settings, and he knew how to love people well. I had never been in a relationship before, but I knew above all that a man of noble character was what I was after.

A couple months into the school year, I would be at the office in the mornings spending time reading my Bible before work, and I would hear his infectious laugh as he walked into the office while he talked with another coworker. It soon became my favorite and most anticipated sound in the mornings, and I would smile to myself and wonder how much longer it would take for him to notice that I liked him. (Little did I know how tormentingly long the process would seem).

Over these first few months of knowing him, I found myself smiling more than I ever have. In every conversation we had, when he would ask me about where I came from, how I got here, and how I decided to spend my time ministering to students, I felt safe and secure, like I could say anything, and his opinion of me wouldn’t lessen. His emotional health and empathy struck me deeply. He wasn’t afraid to feel what he felt, and when the college students he would meet with hurt or walked through pain, so did he.

One day, I was praying about how Jesus might want me to slow down and “unhurry” my life (I was reading “The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry” at the time, of course). I expected that he might ask me to create more margin in my schedule or something like that, but to my surprise He brought up Jeremy and told me that I needed to slow down in trying to make something happen between us. He gave me a picture of making caramel on the stove (which I ironically had never done before). It was a vision of a pot with sugar in it, heating up on the burner. He said that if I was impatient with this process of waiting on Jeremy, I could either take the pot off the burner and not make anything, or I could try to crank the heat, which would burn the caramel. Either way, I would not get the caramel I was after. The only way was to keep it on the burner and let it cook, and if I did, I felt the Lord urge that it would be sweet in the end.

This was a real test for me, because I was starting to catch on to the fact that Jeremy was a slow mover and we probably weren’t going anywhere fast. Soon, it began to feel like things were going nowhere. Every time I would feel like he was reciprocating feelings, he wouldn’t say anything about it. It felt like I was waiting agonizingly for him to break the tension and talk about the elephant in the room. Soon after I felt like it was starting to get awkward, on November 18th, 2021, he mustered up the courage to say that he liked me and wanted to see where this could go.

Ever since then, just like the Holy Spirit revealed to me, it has been like the sweet and slow process of making caramel. That is not to say that everything has always been easy, but the process has always been worth it. Over these past two years of dating, Jeremy has sharpened me like iron sharpens iron. He has loved me when I have not been lovable. He has been patient with me in my shortcomings and flaws. He has been quick to forgive when I have wronged him. He has shown me steadfast and loyal love. It will be the honor of my life to be called his wife, and I am so excited for what life with him will bring, through all of its goodness and difficulty, beauty and pain. There is nobody that I would rather walk through it all with. I can’t wait to share my life with such a wonderful man.