We first met on Match back in 2011. At the time, it wasn’t some love-at-first-sight fairytale. We went on a couple of hikes, stayed friends, and kept crossing paths. Jon was actually one of the very few people I trusted enough to tell that I was in rehab. When I needed a safe, alcohol-free place to live as part of my recovery plan, he opened his doors. I paid rent and stayed at his place while he was flipping a house up in Bellingham. Looking back, it feels wild how God was weaving things together even then. About a year later, friendship turned into something more, and we started dating. By 2015, we welcomed Hawkens, and not long after, our family grew with the rest of our crew. For a long time, marriage felt like something people expected us to do, a box to check, a societal pressure. And neither of us wanted to say “I do” just to make everyone else comfortable. We already had the life, the house, the kids, the love. But this past year, something shifted. As we started reading Scripture together and digging deeper into our faith, we realized marriage wasn’t just a piece of paper. It’s a covenant. It’s obedience. It’s saying yes to something bigger than ourselves. And that’s why now, after all these years, this moment feels different. It’s not pressure. It’s not expectation. It’s God, writing the next part of our story.