It all started when I sent Nick a “super relatable” Instagram video of a poet reading one of her poems. We had been friends at seminary but I had only just recently gotten a feeling about him that made me want to be near him at all times. The poet talked about how sometimes meeting someone is like reading a book and how it’s only chapter one but she finally found a book that she can’t put down and she would read over and over and over again. It goes on to say that even though all books come with endings - endings are the least of the things I would risk to love you. (Super relatable poem to send to your platonic friend, amiright?!) (in my defense - we were not best friends yet but I wanted to be. MEANING!!!! He’s someone I loved being around and I wanted to hang out with him a lot…and there actually is no explanation of how I didn’t think sending that poem wouldn’t throw up some flags)

Anyway.

I should have known it wasn’t a friendship video because he then TEXTED ME - saying we should get together to talk about the video. He was super loving about it but I didn’t know what there was to talk about? Super normal friend stuff? Since then, I’ve shown this video to many who have gotten secondhand embarrassment on my behalf and long story short - we met up and went for a walk and I did what any son of a gun would do. DENY DENY DENY!! So he was like, oh? What did you mean by the video then? And ever since that day - I took that interaction as “he doesn’t like me and I need to pretend it never happened”

Well. We revisited this incident on The Day We Were Bold and as it turns out he also knew there was something there but couldn’t figure out what. (He ALSO took my response as, “oh, she doesn’t like me” and so forever moving forward - he thought I didn’t want to be more than friends.) (Ya h8 to see a situation that could have so clearly been helped by clear communication)

BUT the Moe’s didn’t raise a quitter so I continued to text, call, email, and voice memo Nick that whole summer. Long story even longer… My heart has known it was meant to be with Nick for a really long time - which is quite a conflicting thing to say considering he didn’t even know I liked him for over a year!! When Nick visited me in Rapid last summer, the entire time, my heart knew it had found its home. It didn’t make sense to me how that was possible - he didn’t even know I liked him!!!! So I realized that all I had left to say was the truth…

So I emailed him.

(I first started emailing him a few years ago because I thought I was funny but then that became an important form of our communication. (This love is sponsored by Gmail, apparently!))

After we were both back on the east coast, we met up and spent hours dancing around the subject! However - HE was bold first and THANK GOD for that because since then - everything has just felt right.

Loving Nick has been the most fun, loving, joyful, surprising, beautiful thing of my whole dang life!

We silly dance in the kitchen & slow dance in the living room. We watch hours of TV and also spend hours talking about our deepest darkest fears and whether we should make grilled cheeses after midnight. He calms me down when I’m on the verge of panicking and I like to keep him on his toes by finding new ways to cheat in every race we have. He watches every musical and movie I show him and eats the green skittles since I don’t like them. He is the most loving person in the whole world, he is caring and kind and intelligent and meaningful. His laugh is my favorite sound and his genuine care of creation makes me want to be a better person. He is also really bad at cartwheels so I at least know I’m better at SOMETHING than him! I just know we can get through everything in this life together.

I used to never understand how people could know if they wanted to be with someone forever! Forever feels like SUCH a long time?!?!

With Nick - forever isn’t ENOUGH time!

(But it’s a pretty good place to start.)

Cheers to the rest of ever with the love of my whole dang life.

(A picture from Hayley's graduation in 2022!)

She was the world of my dreams from the start.

Somewhere deep down, I knew that, if I should be so lucky, I’d be following her spark for the rest of ever. It just took me a while to realize what that meant.

We bonded quickly as kids from the Dakotas who somehow found ourselves in seminary in New Jersey. This love of ours is kinda sponsored by the Lutheran Group at PTS. The Lutheran Group met for lunch on the first Friday of every month, and one of the first things that I noticed and loved about Hayley was that at those lunches, she was the only one who could hear (and who would laugh at and give back) my quiet banter. I loved seeing her at the Lutheran Group’s Holden Evening Prayer every Thursday after the one class we had together. I tried to sit by her every chance I could get in that class. With her, it was like I could open a door into a level of tenderness and care-free joy that was always locked for me before. There was a vibrant hum that I didn’t know life could have.

And so it happened that she became my fastest best friend ever. I found myself happy, eager even, to drop everything to be with her, every chance I got.

And I very well might be the most introverted person I know (!).

And yet I’ve always found a home with her.

After she graduated, we spent the next year being really close friends. I looked forward to every call, every text, and every second I got to behold her face. I would let her in to parts of my personality that I wouldn’t give to anyone else. She would watch the sermons I preached and live-tweet text me her responses, and I loved listening her sermons on my way back from my own church and telling her how amazing they were. When the opportunity came up to potentially change field education churches, I really really really really considered trying to hop over to her church, even though it was totally impractical. She took a train to Newark when I invited her to meet my brother and me at the Dodge Poetry Festival that October. I invited her (and no one else) to cuddle baby goats at a retreat-of-sorts for my field education pastor and me. Whenever she came to Princeton, suddenly the only thing that mattered was being with her. When both of us had a really hard spring, I got to hold her sorrows as she so gracefully held mine.

All of that made it really hard to move halfway across the country to South Dakota for Clinical Pastoral Education that summer. As we said our last goodbyes, we each hung around a little longer, trying to stretch that moment into forever. The next day I did, in fact, go. And she called me every day of the road trip. We kept in touch with extra energy that summer.

And then, in August, she invited me come see her in Rapid City. I was hesitant at first—Rapid City was five hours away, on the other side of the state, and I was road tripping back to Princeton later that week. But the more I thought about it, the more I knew I couldn’t not take that opportunity to be with her.

So I went. And it was there that I realized I was in love with her. I felt like I was walking on clouds everywhere we went together. When we hiked up to her favorite peak, I wanted to stay there with her forever.

And I left, even though that was the last thing I wanted to do. I drove back letting this new revelation sink and settle in my mind, “Huh—I think I’m in love with Hayley Moe!”

We exchanged a few emails over the next few days, which might seem weird, but email is a customary form of communication for us. With each email, I thought more and more, “Ok, I think she might like me too!” And then I met her in New York, and after hours of conversation I told her how I felt and—BEST NEWS EVER!!!!—found out that she was in love with me, too. And so it was that I became the luckiest person on the face of ever. She was the world of my dreams from the start. And every sacred second with her since has been, and—AMAZINGLY—will continue to be, the greatest gift of my life. Now, amazingly, the home I’ve always found with her will be our forever, together.

(From a Lutheran Group hangout where we always seemed to end up near each other)