We met at the library, and we continued to meet at the library, but where we really met was a bench during a wintry February night. She told me about her life, and I mine until I saw my opportunity, brought by some tears, to hold her hand. It started in the moments between holding hands and the ringing of the midnight bell. We came back to that bench every night that week, and for the next couple years, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Days had passed since the holding of hands at that bench, and I knew I had to say something, and so I initiated the conversation one day at lunch (yes, it was me—don’t ask Emily about this part of the story because she gets it wrong). She pretended to have no clue as to what I was asking. (Yes, that is what happened). I brought up the whole hand holding incident, and I think we decided that we didn’t really know what was happening. We went to see La La Land twice. The first time, we were not dating. The second time, we were. We had gone with friends to a theater that had couches instead of chairs, and I tried to avoid it, but Emily sat next to me, and I swear she inched over the whole movie. Suffice to say, we enjoyed it more the second time. Then summer came. I went to Iowa for an institute, and she went to China for missions. Talk about homesickness. Even the drugs I took (I had wisdom teeth surgery, calm down) did nothing to help me cope with a lovesick heart. That hazy season of Peter Frampton (“Oh, Baby I Love Your Way” Acoustic) on repeat soon brought us to my probationary period at her family’s camp, where I have reaped more friends and family than I deserve. We spent most of the next semester in the library and the next and the next and the next. We spent breaks meeting halfway. We have been together for what will be almost four years come our wedding. TO BE CONTINUED

Some might say we started dating too early but I wouldn’t give a single day back. Mary Oliver writes, "I did think, let’s go about this slowly. This is important. This should take some really deep thought. We should take small thoughtful steps. But, bless us, we didn’t." We have had hardships, external to ourselves and internal to the relationship. We have tiptoed past the brink of breaking up. I have hurt her, and she me. The bridging of those hurts strengthened our bond like forged steel heated up and cooled repeatedly. Those cracks are where the light of the gospel gets in. We have done much forgiving and forbearing in our love. We have fought for our love and yet been carried along and sustained by His Fatherly Hand. All of this resulted in my bent knee (though not really because in the moment I forgot about that part of a proposal). All of this love in its multiplex form of forgiveness and enjoyment and laughing and tears of hurt and homesickness—all of it resulted in adorning her with the cosmos and once again to our hands coming together. Now, we are asking you to come celebrate all of it in cosmic proportions. “When two Christians who fully understand this stand before the minister all decked out in their wedding finery, they realize they’re not just playing dress-up. What they’re saying is that someday they are going to be standing not before the minister but before the Lord. And they will turn to see each other without spot or blemish. And they hope to hear God say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. Over the years you have lifted up one another up to me. You sacrificed for one another. You held one another up with prayer and with thanksgiving. You confronted each other. You rebuked each other. You hugged and loved each other and continually pushed each other toward me. And now look at you. You’re radiant” (Meaning of Marriage, 123). Come share in the laughter and love that started at a bench and will continue as we long as we both shall live.