At Rice University, every freshman takes a writing seminar in their topic of choice. Lucy, being the romantic she is, decided to take "Contemporary American Poetry." Ethan, being the pre-health major he was, tried to get into the "easy A" comics writing class. Unfortunately, that class filled up and Ethan was assigned to the same poetry class as Lucy against his will. It is in this classroom they first laid eyes on each other. Lucy: "I didn't really notice him at first until the class started reading their poems out loud and I couldn't stop laughing at Ethan's poetry. Please read his poem about Milk." Ethan: "She obviously stood out to me cuz she was hot. Which probably meant she had a boyfriend." And alas, yes she did.

After poetry class ended, Ethan & Lucy's college paths diverged for the next two years, besides occasional conversations in their campus ministry, or when Lucy went to see Ethan's acapella concerts. In the summer before senior year, Lucy made the difficult decision to break up with her high school sweetheart. Immediately, Ethan sensed the shift in the universe with Lucy's newfound singleness. His unchanged attraction to Lucy's passionate persona and profound life story provided the motivation to begin his pursuit. In contrast to Lucy's previous relationship of five and a half years, Ethan had yet to date someone and so approached Lucy with a natural naïveté and intense directness. Study sessions at the campus coffeehouse turned into pseudo-dates to the Houston Symphony Orchestra, and led to Ethan's enrollment in Lucy's student taught course: How Music Plays the Brain. In each of his interactions with Lucy, Ethan noticed several recurring motifs: that they both grooved to old school R&B, that Lucy had a way of intensely staring into his soul either out of flirtation or intentionality, and that they shared the same fondness for introspection and reflection. During this revival of friendship, Ethan & Lucy both began interviewing for dental school and PhD programs respectively. Their shared travel fatigue and existential decisions was bonding, and also revealed to them how much the other desired their futures to glorify God. Ethan's feelings for Lucy grew, but he knew it was unideal timing to make any moves with her still recent break-up and their impending graduation. But it seemed to be a miracle when both Ethan & Lucy received acceptance letters from Harvard. After independent anguishing and wrestling, they found out to their mutual surprise that they had both committed to the same school. Was it meant to be?! The tensions reached their climax when Lucy invited him to the on-campus studio to sing and record songs together. For an entire afternoon, they recorded their own versions of Nelly's "Just a Dream" and Hillsong's "This is Living". After this experience of co-creation, Ethan invited Lucy over for a home-cooked dinner as a final act of foreplay. When Lucy texted "Is there a reason why you want to cook for me?", Ethan slyly responded "I don't know why, I just know I want to." That night, Ethan put together salmon, pasta, shrimp, and a Riesling wine while they reflected on their friendship and college experience. Lucy felt so loved that night that she cried on her drive home. As for Ethan, that evening solidified his decision to speak the unspoken. One week later, he met up with Lucy and asked her out. Her response devastated him along with every other good Christian boy who hears the words: "I'll pray about it."

"After a lot of prayer and processing, I strongly feel that the near future is not a time for me to start dating again, as there’s a lot of emotional recovery and personal growth still to be had in the coming years." This is an excerpt from Lucy's email to Ethan one month later (yes, she wrote him an email). As one can see, Lucy made it clear to Ethan they would not be dating, yet she deliberately avoided saying a direct "no". Lucy didn't feel attracted to Ethan, but she also felt he wasn't a door she needed to close just yet. Attraction is a strange thing, isn't it? And so Ethan & Lucy began their new lives in Boston, as friends, navigating a post-college world that felt so different from their years at Rice. Lucy started therapy to process her relationship wounds and learned to see herself with curiosity and compassion. Ethan wrestled through loneliness and slowly made new friends with whom he could mature in silliness and vulnerability. With the occasional hangout/pseudo-date, they would catch intriguing glimpses of who each other was becoming, such as when Ethan asked Lucy to be his plus-one to a Harvard boat party or when Lucy bought them tickets to see Daniel Caesar. It felt like they were meeting each other for the first time. And whether or not they intended to (Ethan definitely intended to), Ethan & Lucy danced the line between friendship and romance. It is difficult to give justice to describing the complexity that is attraction and awareness of that attraction, but Ethan continued to hope against hope, and Lucy...well, let's just say that she was happy to keep on dancing.

It was their second year of living in Boston, and for Ethan, his attraction toward Lucy had only deepened. Every time they talked, he felt drawn to her depth of perception and thought, her intense confidence, and her resilient longing to see God amidst suffering. Ethan felt excited by Lucy's dreams, spoken and unspoken, to use her God-given intellect and abilities to love deeper, whether it was to be in the world of academia or perhaps orphanages in China. Ethan wanted to gather the balls to ask out Lucy again, but he didn't want to come across as desperate or lingering. In his introspection, Ethan read through Tim Keller's "The Meaning of Marriage", where one quote especially pinpointed the significance and rarity of his feelings toward Lucy. "Within the Christian vision for marriage, here's what it means to fall in love. It is to look at another person and get a glimpse of the person God is creating, and to say, "I see who God is making you, and it excites me! I want to be a part of that."" Internalizing these words, Ethan unashamedly acknowledged to himself that he had fallen in love with Lucy. And so, he built up the courage to ask out Lucy once more, and for the last time, put the ball in her court. On January 14, 2020, he invited her over for some home cooked Taiwanese beef noodle soup, and confessed his love to her, even quoting Tim Keller. This time, Lucy didn't need to pray about it. She crucified any chance of romance with a clear and resounding "NO. I don't feel the same way, and I think closeness is perceived differently." To make matters worse, before they could have a follow-up conversation and reestablish their friendship, COVID hit America and Ethan & Lucy both went home for the shut-down. For months, Ethan lived in unresolved emotions until one day in April, he received what he believed to be a letter of closure in the mail from Lucy. Heart pumping, he wrote out and sent his own letter expressing his sorrows BEFORE opening Lucy's letter. To his dismay, Lucy's letter was simply a "Hope you're well card". These letters represented the great disparity between their post-rejection perceptions: Ethan wanted resolution, Lucy wanted to forget it ever happened. The miscommunication and misunderstanding only multiplied when Lucy received Ethan's fateful letter and misinterpreted it to be blaming her for the whole situation. At this point, it wasn't just their chance at love that was dead. Ethan & Lucy's friendship, as they knew it, was over.

"For in Him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through Him to reconcile to Himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of His cross." Colossians 1:20-21 Though Ethan & Lucy's friendship had been crucified, little did they know what was to be resurrected. But first, they desperately needed a reconciliation powerful enough to forgive and wash away any and all misunderstanding, projected hurt, and unprocessed wounds that each of them carried. Here is where we must delve into Ethan & Lucy's own complex inner journeys. For Ethan, he initially felt confused and terrible for ruining their friendship with his well-meaning letter. As he prayed and examined his heart, he realized his desire for resolution came from both a place of hurt and misplaced hope. The inherent goodness he saw in Lucy and in romantic intimacy ultimately could not replace his deepest desire for Jesus Himself. He learned that placing his hope in anything else would lead to projected hurt and blame. With this lesson, Ethan was overcome with the most releasing sense of freedom, to ask for forgiveness from Lucy...and also finally close that door and go on other dates. As for Lucy, beneath her rejections was a nuanced reality: that her friendship with Ethan had always felt deeper than her other male friendships, yet she could not make the cognitive jump to romance. Ethan felt too real, too safe for her wounded relational past. Her "no" said as much about her perceived lack of attraction as her own capacity to love and be loved. As Lucy had processed in therapy, she had a way of pushing away intimacy in fear of not being good enough for love. As much as she wanted to pretend Ethan's relentless pursuit was non-existent, his persistence pushed her past the threshold of finally facing her own belovedness. The tender process of loving oneself rarely happens overnight, but for Lucy, in the cathartic moment that the scales of unworthiness fell from her eyes, she also suddenly saw Ethan with new eyes. On the rainy day of October 16, 2020, almost one year after the crucifixion, Lucy ran 3.5miles to Ethan's house to deliver a 6-page handwritten letter detailing her inner journey and confessing her romantic feelings toward him. Straight out of a movie, she dropped off the letter in his mailbox and ran straight home in the rain. With tears of unbelief and awe, Ethan read and reread the letter...and reread it again with many of his now groomsmen to try to make sense of the miracle. With prayer, he reached out to Lucy and said: "It's really quite simple, Lucy. You are going to continue healing. You just have to decide if you want to do that with God, or with God and me too. It's your choice." October 26, 2020: Ethan & Lucy start dating. If you've read this far, we want to tell you the rest of the story on our wedding day and how wonderful God has been to us on this continued journey of being (His) beloved. Can't wait to celebrate with y'all!!!!