Put simply, our story began in both August and September of 2020.

Let me (Andrew) explain.

It was August 25, 2020 when Carissa gave looking on Christian Mingle one last shot, came across my profile, and sent me the first generic, ice-breaking 'smile.' You see, she had taken a break from looking after literally scouring the entire site - globally - for what she was looking for. During the break she took is when I made my profile, so she didn't find me during her first deep dive of profiles.

I, however, had given up on the site as it seemed like many of my alleged 'matches' were based on keywords only and went to churches without windows. We both, on a whim, logged in one more time...I was just a month later.

It was September 25th, 2020 when I finally logged back in to see the sorry state of things where I had left my profile. To my surprise, I had a smile waiting for me from a Carissa Brackelsberg and I thought, at first, wow - now that's a German last name (im ernst). On opening her message and viewing her profile, I actually became pretty discouraged. I saw her, then I looked back at the date she sent me the message...and there it was. I was a month late and there was no way a girl this gorgeous was still single. I should just let this one go, that ship sailed.

I almost closed out of everything and walked away.

But, something inside me said you know what? Send a smile back. What I didn't know at the time was on the other end of the computer, she was not taken and when she saw I had smiled back after a month...she thought I could wait a day before getting a response.

It turns out, over the course of the first week or two of our conversation thread on the site, there were a couple things I wouldn't have known. For example - since I have a background in software, I work off of three screens in my home office as I did at my job. I thought she was so beautiful, I kept her profile open on one of my screens and every time a message came through or I refreshed the page...well, she got a message each time from the site that I was viewing her profile. Each. Time.

So, God bless this girl for not thinking the worst because she also didn't know I used three screens. Fortunately, she thought there's no way I could know that she was getting that many alerts and there must be more to that story. And - spoiler - there was.

After about two weeks of chatting back and forth on the site, I decided...you know what? This is going to be something, or it isn't. So, we made plans for me to drive down from St. Louis to Oklahoma City for our first date. We went out for a burger, played mini-golf, and I had this plan for this nice, fancy dessert spot that I had looked up in advance - but we were too late. It was already closing by the time we were done golfing.

Well thank God Braums was there to save the day. I hadn't been to a Braums since I was a boy living outside of Witchita - so not for 23 years of living in St. Louis. I nervously asked if we could do Braums instead, thinking I was disappointing her while completely unaware of the near spiritual connection my bride to be has with 1) ice cream and 2) Braums.

Clearly, this was meant to be.

Our schedules didn't line up again until three weekends later for Halloween - which turned out to be the longest stretch of time we'd ever be away from each other again. That trip was where I met Phil and Crystal and we had our first public appearance at a Halloween party. We even matched - I had picked up matching peanut butter and jelly sandwich costumes. But, it was also on this trip where we said we love each other. In fact, going back to St. Louis on that trip, that Monday morning, was one of the hardest goodbyes we ever had. It was me and Carissa at Phil and Crystal's house where I stayed, ended with a big, old-fashioned group hug and I got in my car and began my journey back.

What I come to find out later was how hard that goodbye affected Carissa, that she was in tears and both scared and nervous - knowing that she loves me but not knowing what to do about it. And just like that, in a moment of clarity, Crystal reminded Carissa that this - this exactly - was what she had been praying for.

We resolved to travel to each other every other week for a long weekend, only taking about 11 days in between trips. While not together, the distance put us in a unique position of forcing conversation every night - without fail - on FaceTime. We learned so much about each other, made up for so much lost time. We leaped ahead in the maturity of our relationship in such a short amount of time because neither of us had time for uncertainty.

After several months of back and forth which found me spending the holidays in Oklahoma, some unforeseen circumstances but a lot of God's grace saw me move down to Edmond about 3 months ahead of schedule, at the end of February, 2021. To be honest, it felt like I was right where I belonged, all along. Carissa and I fell into the rhythm of our relationship as if we had been together the whole time, with no previous life before we found each other. Calling each other 'boyfriend' and 'girlfriend' seemed trite and not nearly enough for what we meant to each other.

In my moving to Edmond, my intention to marry this amazing woman was unquestioned. I left everything I knew to start a new adventure with her - I wasn't moving down here to casually date. A little over 6 months later and around our one-year anniversary, I asked her to be my bride, my best friend, my goofball.

Oh - she said yes.