I have found the one whom my soul loves

I had been attending the Rose Heights college group for several years, but when I started Nursing school, it was hard to find the time. My last semester was coming to an end, and my mom encouraged me to go back to my college group. Every Thursday night, she would remind me. After dismissing her suggestion over and over, one night I got dressed and, without really thinking, I went. When I showed up that night, I was a little nervous. I didn’t know if I’d see anyone I knew and wondered if people would remember me. When I walked in the doors, I was embraced with the same love I felt the first time years ago. During worship, I remember having my eyes closed, but when I heard his voice, I couldn’t help but open them. He had the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard. Before I could think another thought, I left quickly to my small group. Little did I know, but he was in my group. I listened as people talked, but his voice was the only one I remember hearing. When he spoke, I could hear his heart, and I knew he had a story. I was immediately drawn to his vulnerability and honesty. When I finally looked up to see him, the first thing I noticed was the bird tattooed on his arm. I always said I would marry a man with tattoos ;-) After the small group ended, he introduced himself, hearing his name and looking into his beautiful brown eyes is a moment sealed in my memory. He invited me to Cane’s and said I could follow him. We ate, laughed, and shared our stories. When I heard his testimony, I knew his answers in our small group came from the life he had lived and valleys he had traveled through. Listening to his real, raw heart felt so freeing to me. Who I was was enough with him. We talked forever, and it felt strangely natural. He left with my number and the promise of coffee one day. The Lord has been at work in both of our hearts since that day. The way that Jaxon has pursued me has been so healing. He is fearless in his pursuit of loving others and has shown me what real love means. He did not shy away from my brokenness, but stood at the door of my heart. It’s like he walked in, opened the windows, and let the sunshine in. There is joy where there was sorrow, beauty where there were ashes, and hope where there was doubt. He has looked after me and laid himself down without ever making me feel like it was a sacrifice. He carries this quiet security that doesn’t need to prove itself, and the Lord has used his humility, making him a strong, fierce leader that I want to follow. His wisdom runs deep, but so does his humility. His dependence on the Lord is beautiful and makes it easy to trust him with my heart. He is brave in his love, honest in his words, and gives without weighing the cost. I am able to rest in his strong love :) The Lord heard my prayers and gave me every desire of my heart and even more than I knew to ask for. I knew when I met him that night that a blessing like him could only be sent by the Lord. I never knew the beautiful brown eyes I noticed over a year ago would one day look into mine and tell me, I love you. Those same eyes would look up at me, kneeling on one knee, and ask me to spend forever with him. I never imagined I would be writing this to the man I prayed for all these years, a man I dreamed of long before I knew his name. I have seen God's heart for me be revealed more and more as time has passed. Every year, I pray about a verse for that year. Last year, before I met Jaxon, I had written in my journal Proverbs 31:25: “Strength and honor are her clothing, and she can laugh at the days to come. ” I had no idea at the time the significance that verse would have a year later. I have never been more honored than at the thought of becoming a wife to a man who I can laugh at the days to come with.

To know her face, her name, and hear her voice was a prayer that I restlessly and imperfectly waited to see answered. God’s gentle hand bringing a heart to wait patiently was the only thing that could turn a normal Thursday night into the day that my life would quietly change into a story that tells who my God is. To me, it was nothing out of the ordinary. I paced, I talked nonsense to anyone willing to listen, I anxiously took pulls from my water bottle, twice refilled, thinking about the horror that would overtake me if my voice cracked on stage in front of everyone. I couldn’t tell you the song I was singing on November 14th, 2024, I couldn’t tell you what the sermon was about that night, but I can tell you that my routine was going exactly as it always had at Unite Young Adults. I stood, mic in hand, seeking to center my thoughts on the heart of worship in the minutes leading up to the start of service when suddenly, my efforts to find focus were interrupted by an event that would leave a mental picture more vivid to me than most that I can remember. I watched a ray of light casually walk on two legs; dressed in a green sweater, arms outstretched to embrace familiar faces that excitedly welcomed her saying her name within earshot of me: “Chloe.” It took one quarter of a second, to be exact, for me to turn my face and walk the complete other direction thinking, “I’m as anxious as I need to be right now WITHOUT a beautiful woman watching me sing.” Some time in the middle of worship, I looked down and saw her. She stood alone, her eyes were closed, her mouth was open in praise to the Lord, and her hands were raised in surrender. About a year before, I came to this group for the first time and didn’t know anyone. I climbed off of a roof, drove my work truck to church, and walked into Unite for the first time with mud on my clothes, a heavy heart, and a lot of questions. I know what it’s like to come into a new place and be hungry, and how demanding it can be against a prideful heart by first-hand experience. I realized that this woman in the green sweater had not come by invitation, but because she too was hungry, and now I knew that she was also brave. Lord forgive me, but my focus was now nonexistent. After I exited the stage, we went straight into small groups, and I was determined to find myself in the same small group as this girl named Chloe. She sat quietly and listened with the sweetest smile on her face as everyone talked and answered questions. Looking back, she absolutely had me right from the beginning. I was putting on a show for this girl, answering questions like I never had before. The Holy Spirit was out here giving me some game, y’all. After our group was over, I waited for her to get done talking with some familiar faces and I introduced myself. To be continued, read part 2

People… the Holy Spirit was moving, because I might as well have been talking Chinese to myself whenever she looked at me with her bright, bluish green eyes, but whatever I said, she didn’t take them off of me for about 20 minutes. I have never felt like someone wanted to share a moment and connect with me more than how she made me feel that night. With nowhere else to be and no one else to talk to, she quickly began to show me what kind of woman I was meeting. Beautiful, spiritually hungry, brave, pure-hearted, modest, vulnerable… the more we talked the more painfully aware I became of the fact that the longer I talk, the greater my chances were of saying something embarrassing or weird and so while I was still “winning”, I smiled, shook her hand, said it was nice to meet her, then I went off on a quest to retain my dignity anywhere else in the room. I might as well have floated away like a cartoon character smelling a pie in the window, but I did my best to walk calmly and coolly away, like I didn’t just meet the woman that I would ask to marry me one day. The story goes on with us going to eat at Canes together that same night where I got her number, and the rest is history. To begin to try to put into words what loving and being loved by Chloe has done for me is like trying to make a case for myself as to why I deserve goodness or to see the faithfulness of the Lord; it can’t be done. I can only tell you how the Lord, despite my pride, my pain, my doubt, and my selfishness has shown me time and time again how much He loves me anyway, and He proves what His thoughts are of me by entrusting me with holding a heart as pure as Chloe Grace Burgamy’s. She is an oak tree. A standing testimony of what it looks like to be beautiful because of roots that reach deep to find good in the soil. Chloe is a shelter and a healer. Gentle to the weak and immovable to the storm that comes against the ones she shelters. If she is a tree, she has felt the rain long enough to learn how to laugh at the storm, and such a sight has taught many to be fearless of dark clouds. Quiet and strong. Loving you has taught me more about the heart of Jesus than anything. He has used you to show me that “neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)