Patrick and I met at Moody Bible Institute. We were on the same brother/sister floor and I wasn't really involved with the floor, but he would sometimes convince me and my friend Allison to sit down in the SDR and eat a meal with him or the bro/sis. We also always joked about smoking a cigar together, so when I had graduated, Patrick came in with a couple of friends to the restaurant I was working at, and asked me if we wanted to go smoke cigars together. I said sure, and so we made plans! There really wasn't anything romantic about the proposition, but over our time together that night, we talked for like 4 hours. I had been asking the Lord that if he would bring someone along for me, it needed to be someone who would be a spiritual leader for our family, someone who would truly love the Lord more than he loves me. That night, Patrick talked about that exact desire for his future family. That blew my mind, and I was pretty infatuated for the few days that were between this night and Patrick breaking into my apartment with the help of our friends Peighton and Joe to ask me out on a date (it was more romantic than it sounds). God has grown and stretched me so much through Patrick and I look forward to seeing how he continues to refine us both through this marriage!

I had known Holly for about a year as a school acquaintance. I always enjoyed time spent talking to her, but was never romantically interested in her. I had also been wrestling with God for years over what my specific calling as a follower of Jesus would be-- would I be a celibate or a husband? Both are high and godly callings. At the time that I asked Holly out, my soul was being excavated by God; he was painfully unearthing the hidden sins of my heart to make room for his good designs and plans to come to fruition. I had been idealizing celibacy as the higher of the two callings. The Holy Spirit revealed to me that my desire for the godly calling of celibacy was really a selfishly ambitious desire. I only wanted to pursue that so that I would be looked at as a stronger Christian than those around me. Once I saw my pride for what it really was, the idea of daily laying my life down for the sake of another through marriage was becoming more attractive to me. It was about this time that I talked to Holly for a long while and got to have my first in-depth conversation with her, and I was struck with a sudden desire to know the depths of her and to love her.