It was 2001. I had been in relationships in college and after a hard break-up, swore off dating anyone to invest my time and energy into the sweet relationships of my friends. After finishing my art degree in 3 years, I wasn’t ready to be done with college and launch into the world and my career. There were other avenues that I wanted to explore and overseas missions was one of them. Over the summer I traveled a bunch- through Mexico, Ecuador, and then throughout the US during with a church planing pastor and his team. Loving what I was doing, and after a chat with another friend, she convinced me to sign up for a semester long missions trip and to possibly explore the option of minoring in intercultural studies. After prayer and talks with my family, I decided to move forward and join the team. One of the qualifications of the trip and the minor was to do all our course work with your team for the full semester as well as do an unpaid internship with an organization in the Cities.
After finding a wonderful organization that worked with at-risk youth, I started volunteering. While there, I met a man with a yellow backpack. The same man I had seen in an earlier class that year on crutches. I remembered him not only because of the bright yellow backpack, but because he would hobble into our 8am class to try to find a seat without interrupting the professor and the rest of the class (pretty unsuccessfully!) Because this was the only recollection I had of him, when paired together to help kids with an art project, it was the starting point of a long conversation for us. Not only did I find out WHY he was on crutches (he fell from a building while trying to scale a wall on a dare), but I also found out that we would be traveling on the mission trip together, and would also have all our classes together the following semester.
This was spring of 2001. We spent the next weeks of the semester together connecting on our love for travel, children, missions, the Bible, and roller blading (seriously, it WAS 2001!) and continued throughout the summer, following fall and mission trip to be together. On that trip, while serving in ministry together, we both came to the conviction (in our young minds) that we were ready for marriage. In the spring of 2002 we were engaged and six months later married.
Looking back on the timing, we know we were both really young (22 and 23!) but we wanted to be married and together. Never for a second do I regret getting married so young. I see it as a grace as we have grown up together. We have had children, lost children, bought homes, sold homes, walked the waters of managing a business, starting a church (if you didn’t know, Kevin is a pastor of a church plant) have had our ups and downs, and everything in between together. We have both been changed for the better and almost 15 years later and 17 years of exchanging Valentines, I can still say he is my one on only true Valentine.
Happy Valentine Day to you and your loved ones today!