I first heard about Lydia through mutual friends of ours, Coralyn and Devin. I remember them mentioning the new girl that was working at the school, but I didn't actually meet her until a couple months later. Devin texted me and asked if I could give him a hand moving some furniture that weekend. The new girl was moving into an apartment and I was the first person he thought of to help out. I had seen her around a couple times, but we had never spoken to each other before, and I'm pretty sure I didn't get beyond a couple words here and there that day. This girl was absolutely beautiful and I had nothing intelligent to say to her.

We saw each other here and there over the next few weeks, but our first real interaction was the weekend after Valentine’s day. A bunch of my friends were going swing dancing and I found out that Lydia was also going to be there. I had never gone dancing before but getting to see her again was all the motivation I needed. So, I went and although she didn't notice at the time, she was the only girl I danced with the whole night (probably because I was so bad at it). All my friends certainly did, though.

Afterwards, we all went out to eat and I got the chance to actually sit and talk to her. She was smart and funny, and really cute. Through events that I definitely had no part in, I needed a ride back home, and I ended up carpooling with Devin, Coralyn, and Lydia.

Over the next couple months, I started seeing her more and more at different places. She was at a birthday party for a friend of ours and she started going to a young adults Bible study I had been going to. Every time, I made it a point to talk to her and I became more and more interested in her. Finally, one night at the Bible study, with some helpful prodding from my friends, I worked up the nerve to try and actually have a conversation with her that lasted longer than ten minutes. I ended up talking with her for a couple hours and by the end of it, I got her number. We texted each other all the time, hung out with some friends a couple more times and eventually, I worked up the nerve to ask her out for coffee…

I hoped he would ask me out, but I wasn’t even sure if he liked me or if he was just fun to talk and really friendly. When we started texting, we stuck to safe topics like books, musicals, and movies, and it turned out we had plenty to talk about. I couldn’t help liking his sarcastic, self-deprecating sense of humor, and every time we spoke, time flew by. After what felt like a very, very long time, I got a text that said, ”Are you busy today around 6?” We had our first date at Starbucks, sitting with our coffees and talking for hours. And the rest is history! I can’t tell when exactly I fell in love, but very soon I realized that I couldn’t get enough of his laugh, couldn’t do without his gentleness towards me and his strength, especially through the challenges that inevitably come in life.

The week before Valentines this year, Kelon mentioned that on Valentine’s Day he was thinking we could go for a walk and then get dinner together. And since I am somewhat obsessed with walks, even in the dead of winter, I happily agreed without much of a thought. We drove to a park that was a favorite spot of ours during the summer, where the path includes a bridge over water. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary as we drove there, other than Kelon seemed a bit concerned when I put the wrong address in and it routed us a different way (turns out, friends of ours were hiding near the bridge to take pictures and Kelon was worried the GPS might take us by their car). However, we arrived without any issues and began our walk. We stopped on the bridge and I took a BeReal of the sunset. Kelon said he hadn’t gotten a Valentine’s card for me, so he wanted to tell me everything he would have written in it, and he began saying lots of sweet things (you can use your imagination:), then asked me to marry him. I am so excited for this new stage of life that will bring us together and thankful for how God worked through both our lives each step of the way.