Announcing . . . a Courtship!

So I’ve sat on a secret for about a year now. ;) Prayers about a courtship have been going up since last July. I should probably start the story at the beginning though.

In December 2012, my family moved to Texas. For six months, I knew there was a guy in our youth group named Jessie, but that’s all I knew about him.

In June of 2013, Ben and I went to help our youth pastor set up a slip-and-slide for our gathering the next night. Jessie and his brother were also there. After our work to set up the slide, Pastor D took us all out to Chick-fil-A. Jessie introduced me to Chick-fil-A sauce, and that’s about all we said to each other. :-P Then another night, our family went over to his family’s house for a dinner they hosted for the worship team members at church. We still didn’t talk then which felt a little awkward. :-P

Then in July, his family went on the missions trip to Guatemala that Ben and I also went on. That was when my friendship with their family started. Miss D (Jessie’s Mom) was kind of my “adopted mom” on the trip. I already knew Mr. J (Jessie’s Dad) because we were on worship team together.

On that trip, I got to know Jessie and his brother, along with the other teens on the team. After that trip, a bunch of us started hanging out together and doing movie nights periodically. Jessie and his brother *always* came to those!

We continued to be friends and hang out fairly often. In April 2014, we both decided to intern in Guatemala that summer. I felt a little weird at first going with a young guy, but as I got to know him better while we prepared for the trip, my parents and I both felt much more comfortable with him going versus me going alone.

About that time, I went as a leader with the high school students from church on a weekend youth retreat (I am 13 months older than Jessie.) I think it was then that I realized that I had developed feelings for him. Our friendship had been so encouraging, edifying, and never awkward. I knew he was going away to college in the fall, and figured that’d be the end of our friendship. So I tried to proceed as normal.

Then in July, we left for our internship. A couple of days into the trip, people started teasing us about liking each other. I felt bad and slightly embarrassed because I didn’t believe he had feelings for me, and figured that the teasing was awkward for him. But one night in the middle of our trip, Pastor D asked us “do you like each other?” And he wouldn’t let us off the hook without answering.

Honestly, those few seconds were some of the scariest and most awkward of my life! I waited to see what Jessie would say before I answered. He said he did like me, and I said I liked him as well. It was such a relief to know the feelings were actually reciprocated! We proceeded to talk for two hours that evening of the “what now?” questions. We both valued a serious, courtship-type relationship. I was concerned about him leaving for college, knowing how much people change during that stage of life.

So we agreed to pray about our relationship through his first year of school and to continue to build a friendship. I was honestly a bit skeptical about whether or not our relationship would last. Jessie was confident that his feelings would not change in a year.

He was right! He has communicated with me every single day since he left for school in August. He initiated a once-a-week Skype call tradition. Those calls stretched to 2.5 hours some weeks! :-O We saw each other in person every 4-5 weeks when he would come home for the weekend. I went with his family to visit him at school once and then I went with my Mom during the second semester.

In June, he talked to my Daddy and then asked permission to court me. :-) He came over to my house bearing a bouquet of Snapdragons he had picked from home. Then we went down to the pecan grove for one of our favorite past times: hammocking. And that’s when he asked! It was a very sweet moment, because he said “I love you” for the first time (we had agreed not to say it for the year we waited and prayed.) He had planned out the evening with some of our other favorite activities including an evening walk, ice cream and “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.”, and star gazing.

Now that we’re in a courtship, we have begun to talk about issues more specific to a future marriage between us. We know that we are the *type* of people we would like to marry; now we’re trying to figure out if we’re *specifically* meant to marry each other.

The more I get to know him, the more amazed I am at God’s goodness. In many ways, Jessie is more than I dreamed of in a young man. I am so excited to see where the Lord takes our relationship!