We met for the first time during Teen 2 at Camp Hope in 2015. Three years later, we had our first real conversation and realized how much more we had in common than we initially thought. Over the next few weeks, we began to talk and slowly get to know one another. In early August, Shane convinced both himself and I that Orlando was on the way home from Panama City Beach (instead of the actual seven hours out of the way), and we had lunch at Lazy Moon and hung out for the first time since camp.

Shane came down to Pensacola to visit me on my very first free weekend since starting college. He told me he was trying to check off an item from his bucket list on Saturday by seeing the sunrise at the highest place he could (Brasstown Bald), and the sunset at the lowest place he could (the beach), and asked if he could stay in Pensacola for the weekend to do so. I said yes and quickly scrambled to find him a place to stay. We spent Saturday together at the beach and talked until the sun went down. On Sunday, he said he was leaving at 3, then 6, then 8, and actually ended up driving away from my dorm at 8:30 pm. An hour later, he texted me back and said that he had forgotten his water bottle in my car and was almost back to pick it up. I came outside and saw him sitting on a bench waiting for me. I walked up to him, and the first thing he said was "Okay, the truth is, I didn't actually forget my water bottle." He told me the real reason he had turned around and just laid out how he was feeling and what he thought we could be. Despite my only response being "I don't know" at least 5 times consecutively, we began dating two months later after much thought and prayer about the Lord's will in our lives.

For our one year anniversary, Shane came down to Pensacola so that we could spend the weekend together. He came down one day early and surprised me at work so that we could have one extra day. From then on, he kept on telling me how he wanted it to be our best weekend yet. On Sunday, we went to the same spot where Shane "forgot his water bottle" behind my old dorm and just recapped on everything the Lord had done in our lives together up to that point. Once I was sufficiently cold and ready to go home, Shane asked me to stay for one more thing. At this point, he got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. Once again, I had the wildly ill-suited response of "did you really ask my dad already?" He assured me that yes, he had, and I said yes to spending the rest of my life with him. :)