"Chris, what's wrong with you?" A line that I (Lydia) must have spoken a couple hundred times in our rehearsal and show run of Pilgrim the Musical. Pilgrim the Musical was a quirky but significant show in our story. Camden had done theater for a few years when he was cast as Christian, but I (Lydia) had never experienced musical theater before. He was Christian, I was Faithful. In the show we were close friends who fell in love in the process of walking the narrow path to Heaven. This journey included ups and downs for the characters, and oh how prophetic that turned out to be in our own life.

"What if we did an all-nighter guys?" We proposed the idea of an all nighter to our cast after the cast party...Only three people were in. Can you guess who? Me, Camden, and our match-making director Casey Golden. So we stayed up all night. We talked about our interests, our dreams, favorite movies, etc. Camden heard that I (Lydia) had never seen the LOTR series...that gave him just the excuse he needed ;) -- Both Camden and I knew as early as this night that we could see a future together. But there was still a lot of doubt for both of us.

Two days later we made plans to start one of many movie nights with our friend Jack (the best man). Naturally, we had Jack sit between us. We tried so hard to act like we weren't hard-core crushing on each other.

Fast forward seven months, we couldn't handle the "just friends" status anymore. We knew we wanted to get more serious about discovering whether the Lord wanted us to be together forever. So, we started officially dating. For us this meant more one-on-one time and deeper discussions about who we were and where the Lord was leading us to go in life. The Lord very quickly confirmed that we were working towards similar things in life and that our personalities did very well together.

We spent a spring and summer soaking up lots of time together. We got to go to Camden's senior prom together...

Attend weddings together...

Graduate from High School...

Enjoy beach trips...

& see shows together. But then it was time for a life transition...

On September 3rd, Camden packed up to move to Lancaster, PA for his two-year conservatory program with Sight & Sound Theatres. Our just over five-month relationship turned long-distance. We trusted that God would use this time to show us if we were meant to be together forever.

We used FaceTime and a lot of gasoline to travel to visit each other.

We made a lot more memories during this season and fought through a lot of hardship in our individual lives and in our relationship.

After almost two years as a long-distance couple, I moved to PA to start an internship and be closer to Camden. It was a whole new adventure being close to each other again.

Camden graduated from the conservatory!

I graduated from college!

Thanksgiving rolled around and even though I thought for sure I'd know it was coming, I was utterly surprised when Camden proposed on Thanksgiving day.

And here we are, getting ready to be married in a few months. Our story is one of deep gospel parallels. We've both been hard to love at times. But God has taught us how to love when its joyful and when it's hard. When we reflect on our story, we know that it is only the story that it is because our Savior chose to love us first. "We love because he first loved us." We PRAISE JESUS for his kindness and goodness in our lives! Our story has just begun, and we are so excited for the rest!