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My sophomore year of college, my friend introduced me to this tall, shy basketball lover whom I frequently started playing basketball with as the first weeks of school went by. At this time in my life, I felt like God was asking me to be intentionally single so He could have time to heal my heart more fully. Even though I was being obedient to that, every time I went to play basketball, I would hope he would be there, and every time we would play together I would wonder what he thought of me. Finally, one day he asked me for my number (as I hoped) and we started texting and talking more. As we got to know each other more and hang out a bit outside of playing basketball, I still felt strongly that the Lord wanted me to be single. So I hit Preston with the dreaded "let's just be friends". Now usually, that does not actually work out- people that say "let's just be friends" don't actually stay friends. It's just thing to say to make it feel a little easier. For our case, however, we did stay friends. I think the Lord knew to interwork our lives with the same community of friends so we would maintain a friendship even while we were on different journeys for a while. Both of us dated other people, both of those people didn't work out for us, and we slowly found our way back to hanging out again. The timing seemed better this time except for the large fact that I was about to study abroad in Spain for the next 4 and a half months. Oh, and on top of that, he would be working at a summer camp until August. So we were looking at a good 8 months of not seeing each other. It was too obvious though that we had feelings for each other, so we told each other how we felt and agreed we would keep in touch while I was gone "just as friends" again. This time, the "just friends" didn't work out for us- but in a good way :) After a few months of being abroad, Preston texts me and says he would like to give me a call. My roommate and I were anxiously talking in her room about what it could be, then he finally called and said "I just want to let you know that I am 100% committed to waiting for you to get back to see if it will work out." What a way to make a girl feel chosen. The next few months went by ever so slowly until we finally got to see each other again, and the rest is history. After all the time, we both are so overjoyed to proclaim that God's timing is perfect, and it was SO worth the wait for Him to shape us into the people we are meant to be for each other.

When I was a freshman in college I did not go out and meet very many people. A few weeks in, I ended up meeting a guy named David. David invited me to come hoop with a few people he was friends with. When I went there and I saw Mariah I started getting serious cause I needed to impress her. I eventually worked up the nerve to ask for her number and to hangout. All while this was happening I went home to tell my mom “I just met this 10 out of 10 at school.” Anyway, we hung out a time or two and she figured out that I liked her. I did not think she liked me. I remember her saying, “not saying it won’t ever happen but not right now.” She didn’t know that was actually going to come true. Close to 2 years later and after both of us dated other people, we started to hangout again. We’d always be around each other because we are in the same circle so it made things easy to pick back up. We both had changed and I think we both liked the newer versions of each other. We eventually told each other how we felt but the problem was she was going to be on the other side of the world and I was going to be gone all summer when she got back. We decided to have no commitment and just be friends and after lots of praying and texting with her, I decided that I didn’t want to do that. I told her that I am committed to her fully and will wait until she gets back to give us a chance before anything else. Summer camp goes by and she gets home and we hangout again and we knew this was it. Pretty long and crazy story but the way the Lord shaped us to better fit throughout all of that time was very important and amazing to see work.