Hannah and I first saw each other on August 21st, 2018. For two people who are really sentimental about dates, this one means the most. We both attended a soccer game at school and saw each other from a distance around the same time. Although we didn't ever speak to each other that evening, we both left an impression on each other. I proceeded to go back to my dorm and rave about this girl to my roommate Daniel, and Hannah did the same with her roommate Megan. This feeling stuck around for the next couple weeks or so. While my shyness kept me in a state of inaction, Hannah made no shortness of appearances in the course of my days. With every spotting of "Luke's girl" I would be hit with a nudge by my lovely friends to notify me of her presence that I was already aware of. Now in this time, Hannah had found her way to sitting near me at chapel every day giving me a golden opportunity to speak to her. After a couple failed attempts at building up the courage to act, on September 21st, 2018, I vowed to Daniel that he could punch me as hard as he possibly could if I failed to talk to her this day. He delightfully agreed to my wager. I fumbled my way into a conversation with Hannah just as she was leaving chapel for the day and spit off my pre-rehearsed conversation at a mile a minute. Daniel casually fake-fainted behind me to show his shock in my sudden burst of confidence in the way only a roommate could. Hannah was so effortlessly kind and excited to finally hear from me after our endless across the room looks for the past month. After leaving that conversation, I went to my friend Ryan to ask how I looked and sounded from his posted up position by the door. He assured me so kindly: "Oh it was bad, you looked really nervous." Oh well. Thankfully our story doesn't end there since you are reading this now.

Now after that incredible introduction we had at chapel, Hannah quickly made her way into my friend group thanks to Rose being the best wing woman and orchestrator of events. What I love most about how this all unfolds, is that Hannah quickly became a friend to not just me, but the people that I cared most about. We spent nearly every day of the next semester together with our friends. Our relationship was purely a friendship that we both treasured and grew our eventual relationship from that. There was one night that we had talked and decided that we should just be friends and we both left the rest of our story up to God if it was His will to write our story together. Fast forward to the spring and things started to change. This once decided on friendship began to grow into something more special to us than that. We began to spend more one-on-one time together, eager to see each other every day, and learning more about what drives us and where we felt God calling us in life. These shared goals and values in life began to shift our mindset into reevaluating what our relationship looked like. On April 18th, 2019, Hannah and I went on our first date out to sushi. We spent forever talking about what was important to us, what God was doing in our lives, and what we really meant to each other after nearly seven months of being friends. Fast forward a couple weeks and some really important conversations with friends and God, on May 6th, 2019 (one week before graduation, incredible timing right?) I asked Hannah to be my girlfriend.

Our dating relationship in its entirety was long distance. Weekends, weekends, weekends, and a couple full weeks here and there, through this time we really fell in love with each other. Quite honestly, the 4 hour and 4 minute trip to Hannah's house was second nature to me. Hannah and I always reflect on this aspect of our relationship and it seems really natural to us because it's all we have ever known. Now, both me and Hannah are words of affirmation people, making a long distance relationship just a little more feasible over FaceTime and texts on the weekdays. We poured every bit of ourselves into our relationship because we believed in it. We believed in the foundation we had built as friends, and the leap of faith move into a romantic relationship and used that momentum to grow our emotional relationship even more. Spending every night before an early morning of work praying over our relationship and the guidance we needed because God was the only way we would be able to make this thing work if it was His will.

I planned this engagement 5 times. Every time I set a date that date was moved. In a pandemic, my plans seemed anything but set in stone. But I didn't give up and I finally set my date of May 29th, 2020 that I would propose and invite Hannah to spend forever with me. That shy, chapel boy who kept looking at her from across the room for a month before acting on anything boy. How did it happen? I invited Hannah up to Maranatha, a place right on Lake Michigan that has meant so much to me and my growth as a person and servant of Jesus. A place that only felt right to make a commitment to the girl I had fallen so in love with. I wrote a letter to Hannah, framed it between glass on a stand wrapped in flowers with a spot for a polaroid of us to be taken just like we had taken our very first day of being officially a couple. I mapped out the day with my whole family and gave everyone their assigned roles for how the evening was to go down. Hannah arrived that evening and we casually ate dinner with my family and I offered to go hammocking with Hannah right before sunset near the water. We left dinner and in that moment everyone broke into a frenzy of preparing the night. Some were tasked with picking up Hannah's parents from the parking lot nearby, others were tasked with setting up the framed letter and flowers, others with the party decorations for when we would return. It really was a team effort, but we pulled it off. I arrived at the spot I had designated, told Hannah we actually weren't going to be hammocking and walked her out to ask her the most important question I had ever mustered up the courage to ask. She did in fact say yes. We can't wait to have you join us just one short year after that date. May 29th, 2021.