I met Bee on Facebook's “People You May Know” section. I don’t remember the moment exactly, but I remember the emotions associated with stumbling on her page as if it was yesterday. Instantly, my curiosity peaked. My reaction was “Wow! Who is this gorgeous, seemingly smart, and wonderful woman?” After quickly browsing her page, I realized it was a small miracle that we didn’t know each other already because we had many mutual friends. It was nearly inconceivable that we’d never met in person. Come to find out, our mothers went to grade school together in Rwanda and even shared a desk. Also, my Dad happened to have a small moment in helping escort Bee’s dad to his bride (now Bee’s mom) in the 1980s. We’d also had a possible encounter in 2013 when Bee moved to Kansas to attend grad school. Her father had called mine to ask our family to look out for her as she was moving to the state, only to be discouraged when he found out that our family was in the midst of a move to another state. I’ve heard it said, “Trust in God’s timing. It’s better to wait a while and have things fall into place than to rush things and have things fall apart.” It would take two years after I first saw Bee’s profile before she and I finally became friends online. We had our first communication 3 weeks later on August 11th 2018, a day after her birthday. We would not have our first phone conversation until a lazy Saturday afternoon when she had had eye-sight correction surgery and couldn’t look at me. A few weeks later, on October 28th, 2018, I met Bee for the first time and took her to a KU basketball game at Allen Fieldhouse, all while having to explain the rules to her. Despite attending KU for years and living in Lawrence, Bee had never attended a KU men’s basketball game. It was on January 3rd, 2019 at Generation Youth for Christ (GYC) conference in Houston, Texas that I knew who my future bride would be. I proposed almost exactly a year later on January 1, 2020. The rest is history…

Pascal added me on Facebook but went weeks without saying anything--not even “hello.” At the time, I was waiting every day for him to initiate contact; however, days and weeks flew by. While waiting, I asked some mutual friends who he was and through this learned that he’d had his eye on me for a while and had inquired years back when I was in a different relationship. I also learned that his dad was the man my dad called to watch out for me when I moved to Kansas, only to hear that their family was moving away. Knowing this, I visited and talked to Ronette, one of my best friends, and Linda, my Pastor at the time, and filled them in on this situation—I wanted to get to know this guy, he added me on Facebook, but he’d not said anything. Both Ronette and Linda gracefully peer pressured me into initiating contact, so I sent Pascal a message on Facebook that read, “Hey, I heard you grew up in Kansas.” Ronette and Linda captured my anxiety on video as I lay in fetal position from the brevity of initiating contact with a man—I mean, that’s not how my mama raised me, you know? Pascal probably responded to my message in less than two hours, but those two hours felt like five years. Pascal and I began to communicate then on and got to know each other despite the long distance and time zones as he lived in California and I lived in Kansas at the time. From our first phone conversation to our first Facetime call to meeting each other in person for the first time, I’d always had a quiet confidence that Pascal would be my husband. I’m so lucky to be chosen and loved by him.