Dearest Friends!

We realize you may be perplexed at how Caroline and Greg find themselves on the verge of marriage after a short, sweet engagement. Herein we will *briefly* attempt to share how God has worked out the details to bring us together! We know that many of you won’t be able to celebrate with us in person in Dallas given the very short notice. We will have a link to the event to watch online that will be posted on this website on the day of the ceremony (6/7@10am Texas time, 9am Colorado time), and once we choose a date for a Colorado reception, we will also post it here! We apologize for the many text messages/emails with the invitation as we had some IT challenges with the website. Thanks for bearing with us!

Our story begins about 8 years ago in February when Caroline, Jeremy, Michelle and Greg met at the Navigators Physician’s Discipleship Retreat at Glen Eyrie in Colorado Springs. The Glen is a place where the veil between heaven and earth is quite thin. The Physician’s Retreat has been in existence for over 40 years and was started by Skip and Buzzie Gray along with a few couples, including Roy and Carolyn Stringfellow, Caroline’s parents! The retreat attendees are almost all couples, one or both of whom being physicians. A truly remarkable facet of the retreat is the authenticity of the attendees, a willingness to share openly about the hard things in life while coming alongside to encourage and pray for each other.

During the retreat, Michelle and Greg, then married for 11 years, shared that Michelle’s breast cancer had recurred the prior summer, was stage 4, and not humanly curable. Caroline was among the first of Navs to pray for them. As Caroline and Jeremy were then at a time of hardship in their marriage, she noticed the tenderness of Greg and Michelle’s care for each other and longed for such a connection in her marriage with Jeremy. Over the years that followed, Caroline attended the conference solo and looked forward to seeing Michelle and Greg, sharing more time with Michelle through the women in medicine gatherings and praying for them and their girls throughout the year. Their last time together was the retreat in February 2023 when Caroline had her mediation for her divorce the same weekend, but stopped by at the end of the conference to see a few of the people to whom she was closely connected. The three of them connected and prayed and cried together, bearing one another’s burdens.

After 17 years of marriage, Michelle went to Jesus on September 25, 2023. Following Michelle’s departure, Greg took time to grieve a devastating loss and care for their girls, Trinity, then age 15 and Grace, then age 9, helped by an amazing community in Dallas that loves the dePrisco family! In the winter after Michelle’s departure, Greg had the realization that he yearned to share life with someone again and asked God to send someone who: 1) is a follower of Jesus 2) would love their girls and 3) who knew Michelle (that last ask came out of Michelle's being larger than life and Greg’s concern that if he were to have another life partner who hadn’t known Michelle, she would have thought he was remembering Michelle through seriously rose-colored glasses and would feel diminished by comparison!).

So it was in February of 2024 that Greg left Trinity and Grace for the first time since Michelle’s departure to attend the Physician’s Retreat. On the first night of the retreat, Greg found himself in the buffet line opposite Caroline. Something to understand is that during the time of Michelle’s cancer journey, Greg maintained a singular focus on Michelle. So much so that as he chatted with Caroline as they went through the buffet line, he thought he was meeting Caroline for the first time! He learned her name, that she had two kids, and that she was an obstetrician who lived in Colorado Springs. Greg was intrigued to see an unaccompanied woman at the retreat. He was immediately attracted to her and by the end of their walk through the buffet line, he had vowed not to speak with her again during the conference as he was still actively grieving Michelle. Greg remained true to his vow despite stealing glances at Caroline when the opportunity arose. Caroline was also choosing to stay focused on her own healing as a single person given that her divorce was still in process-nearly a year and a half at this point.

On the last night of the conference, Greg sought out Lynn, a senior Navigator who had been one of Michelle’s prayer warriors, encouraging her after her illness had led her to stop working. Greg went to thank Lynn for supporting Michelle, and during their conversation, Caroline also approached Lynn. As Greg listened to them talking, it was apparent Lynn had been praying for Caroline as well, but he could not discern about what. As they talked, a group of Navigators surrounded Greg, and Caroline suggested they pray for him and the girls. At the conclusion of the prayer, they all hugged Greg. The last one to hug him was Caroline. Greg was astounded that Caroline’s hugs felt amazingly like Michelle’s. Levelled by this, Greg felt the need to get away and try to put Caroline as far from his mind as he could.

Greg managed to keep thoughts of Caroline at bay until a couple weeks after the retreat when he heard "Old Neptune, He's Roaring", a song by Brian Sauvé, a pastor in Utah, which is about how God is in control and all a man must do is go get the girl. On hearing this song, Greg’s thoughts again went to Caroline. Have a listen to the song! ***Greg found himself listening to the song throughout the next year, remembering Caroline when it came up on his playlist.

That summer, after Trinity left for a school trip to Peru, Greg dropped Grace off for summer camp at Sky Ranch. This was a particularly hard time for Greg as on the drive to Sky Ranch to pick up Grace the year prior, Michelle suffered steroid psychosis due to large doses of steroids she had been given to treat brain metastases. During the drive, Michelle became abusive to the family owing to steroid rage. Michelle was ultimately hospitalized and recovered, but this was one of the harder trials during Michelle’s cancer walk. And so, returning to an empty home and reliving the trauma of Michelle’s illness, Greg found himself covered by the deepest waves of grief he had yet experienced. As he sat alone in the kitchen, his mind went to thoughts of how much he missed Michelle’s hugs. This led him to thoughts of Caroline and in that moment, he got out the Physician’s Retreat phone list, found Caroline’s number and entered it in his phone. He was shocked to see the number was already in his phone, saved as Caroline Hedges. Greg and Michelle shared their contacts, so it was then that Greg realized Caroline must have known Michelle. Greg messaged Caroline that day and he shared his feelings of loss, but not his attraction to her. She met him in his grief and they remembered Michelle together, and Caroline shared her own challenges in life and paths to healing she was experiencing including Al-Anon, a 12 step program for those who have loved ones in the grip of addiction.

Shortly thereafter, Caroline’s divorce was finalized, and they communicated on and off with mutual encouragement, requests for prayer, and platonic conversation.

Before this and in the months following, with the help of wonderful friends and family, amazing therapists, Grief Share and Divorce Care, both Caroline and Greg received much healing and each ultimately came to the point that they felt ready to open their hearts to the possibility of meeting someone new.

On January 7, 2025, Greg contacted Caroline to share that he’d had a heart attack the day before. For those of you who don’t know Greg, he is svelte, fit, and eats well, so this was a complete shock. Since Michelle's departure in September 2023, Greg had been so focused on caring for Trinity and Grace that he neglected living for himself to the point that he feels he gave himself a heart attack. If you are skeptical of this claim, watch this story Greg shared with the radiology residents he teaches. It outlines the events surrounding heart attack and how God used it for good.

A few weeks after this major medical event, Greg decided to share his feelings for Caroline. For comic relief, at the end of our story is the text Greg sent her at 1:30 AM immediately after watching "Something's Gotta Give," a romantic comedy about a man adjusting to life after having a heart attack which Greg watched in the throes of insomnia that developed after his own heart attack.

Caroline was open to Greg’s feelings and they have spent much time getting to know each other and each other’s loved ones since January. If you want to know why they think they should marry so quickly, they will quote Harry from “When Harry Met Sally” and tell you, “When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” Greg is fond of saying that Jesus has walked with him and Caroline down roads they each did not care to walk down and He is now walking with them down a road they want to walk down. Please feel free to ask them for more details of why they were made for each other…after the wedding!

Trinity (16), Grace (11), Clara (16), and Max (14) first met their parent’s new love and each other the week of the Physician’s Retreat in March and things got off to a great start with the kids connecting and enjoying time together. They were all together in the mountains of Colorado when Greg proposed to Caroline at Easter. Greg and Caroline have been working to discern if they should marry this summer or next, and one of the deciding factors for timing has been the wishes and needs of the kids. They feel strongly that they want to start life as siblings together so they can establish that relationship in the two years that they have left at home all together, and desire to move in the summer so they’ll be ready to start their junior, freshman, and 6th grade years by fall and be able to settle in without further moves. The decisions have been difficult in determining how we can start to blend our families given our rich communities in Dallas and Colorado Springs. Ultimately, Greg and the girls have made the difficult decision to leave their beloved friends in Dallas to make the move to the mountains to start our new lives together. Trinity and Grace are excited about moving to Colorado Springs to make a new start, and Greg will continue to work remotely with his current job for now. The beautiful dePrisco home is on the market and our hope is that it will sell soon and we can move to a home that will be new to the six of us and we can start building our new family story there together in Colorado. We covet your prayers as the kids adjust to each other and all these changes, and as we make huge transitions in general, determine our new family rhythms, establish our relationship as a couple, navigate job changes, and walk through some new seasons with Caroline’s parents as her delightful mom, Carolyn, is having some health challenges that we are privileged to walk through with her and Roy.

Thank you for loving our families so well up to this point. We look forward to sharing a wonderful time with you at our wedding and thereafter. The peace of Christ be with you.

"Taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the one who takes refuge in him." - Psalms 34:8

Caroline and Greg

Greg’s message to Caroline early enough in the morning so as to be confused with a drunk text:

“I've wanted to share something with you for some time. I don't know that there will ever be a better time, so I'm sharing it now. There is a great song by Dido entitled "White Flag" that has lyrics about sharing feelings that may be unwelcome to the hearer that go: ‘If I didn't say it, well I'd still have felt it, so where's the sense in that?’

Well, I heard the song "Old Neptune, He's Roaring" by Brian Sauvé for the first time a couple weeks after we connected at the Physician Discipleship Retreat nearly a year ago and thought of you and wondered with optimism about the future. Mind you, I don't have it playing on repeat, and it didn't make it to my most played list on Spotify for 2024.

No matter what may or may not be in store, I feel the sentiment of the song is true and kind. May it be a blessing for you to hear it.

Peace of Christ be with you.

”

Caroline’s response was that his feelings were not unwelcome, but welcome.

And the rest is history!