I think many of you know that Stephen (aka Rex) and I met on eHarmony. Oh the wonders of the internet! :) I'd actually kinda given up on it, and honestly, I wasn't looking at the moment, too many tings going on with family and work. Just hadn't cancelled my subscription. It was the best thing my laziness has ever done for me. :)

Just helping a friend set up her own profile (she had way better chances of finding someone than I thought I'd had - my childhood and family life hadn't really set me up to be successful in relationships), and I'd logged on to my own profile to show her how I'd set up mine...and there he was.

Stephen.

Of course, the only thing you see at first is a picture, age, and general location...and I thought, "This one's cute...where was he when I was looking before?" I clicked on his profile just to see, ready to be like, "Nah...not this one either. All the cute ones are just not deep enough..."

The first thing I saw was that he was articulate and liked to read (I write, and it's alwys been important to me that I find someone who would be interested in my passion), and I was like, "He's smart, and he reads good books. Ok...that's definitely a good sign. But I don't know. I'll probably send him a smile, and he won't respond. That's just the way it works. I'm kinda weird...didn't hide that on my profile...Sure he labeld himself a 'nerd" on his own profile, but there are nerds and then there are nerds..." (You don't really know the difference unless you are one...)

But still...sending a smile and chancing not having it responded to...I was going through a lot at the time. I didn't want to add feelings of rejection to the stress.

And then I saw it. He runs. He loves running, like...a lot. But he wasn't doing it for himself. He had given this passion to God and was letting Him use it to save children who had no other hope on this earth than other people hearing the heart of God and reaching out to give them a hand. There are times in your life when you realize that potential for joy is worth the probability of pain. And this man was definitely worth me risking rejection.

I sent him a smile.

And he's given me a reason to keep smiling every day after that.

As I always like to tell people, Dr. Warren introduced us - that normally gets me by without having to admit that Dr. Warren was the founder of eHarmony; people usually just nod and act like they know Dr. Warren too - most people won't ask who the heck that is. Anyway, after the job I moved to Seattle for fell through, I was considering whether or not to stay. I hadn't quite gotten settled and was exploring my options. Head back to the Midwest, move abroad, whatever path God brought along. I jumped on eHarmony just to see if there were any smart, fun, conservative, Christian girls in Seattle. Chatted with a few people, but nothing really stuck, and besides, I was seriously considering moving again anyway, so no big deal.

When Laura smiled at me, the first thing I thought was "huh . . . she has cool hair." Once we started talking a bit, I told her that. and she said that it was based off the cool hair that characters had in video games, especially the Final Fantasy series . . .DING, DING, DING, she said the magic words! There are three quick ways to my heart: 1) Be a running junky like me, 2) Be into amazing food, 3) Love and appreciate my nerdy side and geeky obsessions. Knew I had to meet this girl.

After a first date consisting of coffee, an escape room (she got to see my ulltra-competitive side and STILL stayed for a second date!), and a long, laughter-filled dinner in which we overstayed closing time and weren't kicked out until the staff finished family meal and realized we were still there in the back an hour past close, our second and third dates consisted of speeding over to the emergency room in pouring rain after one of her sister's suffered some breathing issues following a bike ride and getting lost in the woods down near Olympia and having a 6 mile hike turn into a 20-miler that nearly found us spending the night in the woods; I've literally never been so happy to see signs for a trailhead in my life! I was amazed at how well she handled that stress on both occasions and thought, just maybe, she could handle my weird, random self. I'd love to say that there was that AHA moment where I knew this was the person I wanted to be with, but it was just because of a million small acts of kindness, grace, and humor over our first year together that I kinda gradually realized that I didn't wanna do life with anyone else.