One warm Spring day, I was chilling with my friend Jay. I started sharing with Jay the type of woman I had always dreamt of being with: someone strong, intense, clever, serious, and quirkily hilarious. Jay listened patiently. When I was done talking, Jay told me about the daughter of a mutual friend - her name was Claire Miller. I pretended that my heart didn’t flutter a bit as he described her, and responded “yeah, yeah I’d love to meet her.”

One month later, I was told to show up to a swing dancing party that the Miller’s were hosting. What I didn’t know was that Claire’s mom Cristina heard about Jay and his wife Evelyn trying to set me up with Claire. In her matchmaking wisdom, Cristina decided that throwing a swing dance party would be the perfect context to disguise the set-up of this potential romance.

Although she greeted me immediately at the door, it took me a while to muster up the nerve to ask Claire to dance; I really didn’t know anything about swing dancing. After an amazing night of hanging out and getting to know each other, I asked, probably very awkwardly, “Would it be weird if I asked for your number?” Fortunately, Claire must have had some feelings stirring up inside her as well, and her impulse was to be gracious and laugh off my awkwardness… and she gave me her number.

We spent the summer walking on the beach, eating dinners outside with family, talking for hours, and making dumb jokes. All the while, we were discovering the unique and incredible gift God had brought into our lives. Each of our lives experienced the ups and downs as young adults, while each season drew us closer to each other. When mutual commitment to each other became obvious, and our trust for the other became stronger than our feelings, our desire for marriage naturally blossomed. With the help of wise counsel, we spent a season of intentional discernment and studying the way God designed marriage to be. When we both knew that God was calling us to marry the other, we took a cold walk on the beach and at the end of it, began planning a wedding.

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