One summer I was in Arkansas and then the next I was making the big decision to live in Georgia. God blessed me with an amazing opportunity to coach in Macon, GA during the summer of 2022. However, I had no idea where to live. That is when Wesley of Macon came along, a campus ministry at Mercer University who kindly opened their doors to me to live there for a few months. At first, it was just me living there, then Brandon Tolle (our officiant) told me about this new guy Madison, who was moving in and that we would get along because of "gym stuff". I made a point to introduce myself to him since it would just be us this summer (besides Ashton coming in and out). The first time we met, I thought he was (not gonna lie) kinda cute. After this, I would only talk to him in brief segments between work and bed. As the summer came to a close, I never got the opportunity to get any of his socials. It wasn't until I found myself on the gruesome dating apps, to my surprise, there was a familiar face. So, I swiped right. It only took two days before I got the notification "You got a match!", I open and it was Madison! We spoke for 4 texts before I asked him for his Snapchat. From there, we talked from morning until night UNTIL I went to the local boba shop with a friend and said "I didn't know there was a boba shop here!" to my response that we should go together and "It's a date!". Come Sunday, October 2nd, 2022, we went on our first date and closed the shop down. We had not realized we had been sitting there talking, sharing stories, and pictures that we had been there for almost 4 hours. We were both stunned. That following week, we went to the gym, walked around Mercer, sat at the baseball field until 4 a.m., and made banana bread. That was all it took for me to know he was the one. We spoke so easily to each other and with no end. Our daily snapchats quickly went to counting down the hours till we got to see each other and soon enough we did everything together and I could not have been happier. Everyday he made me happier than the day before and that statement still stands to this day.
As the spring semester of 2022 drew to an end, I began looking for somewhere to stay in Macon over the summer so I could continue my job as a personal trainer. I mentioned this to a friend and he recommended the Wesley House. Rent was SUPER cheap, I would be surrounded by a great christian community, and best of all there were always free snacks (this was actually the main selling point). I was meeting with Brandon (the Wesley ministry leader) to finalize moving in, and he mentioned a girl named Lydia. He said her and I would get along well because we're similar, and also because of "fitness and stuff". After about a week of me living there, our paths crossed and Lydia introduced herself to me. We talked for just a couple minutes, and then had to go. Over the course of the summer, we would see each other in passing: I would be getting back from work, and she would be headed out to work, or vice versa. The extent of those conversations was: "how was work?" "it was a long day" "haha nice". When the summer ended, I moved out of the Wesley House while she was out of town, and I was actually a little sad I didn't get to tell her goodbye. Fast forward a few months on a random week night, me and one of my roommates thought it would be funny to download a dating app for fun, just to see who was on there. After just a few minutes, I saw Lydia's profile. I recognized her from Wesley over the summer, and thought her profile pictures were pretty cute (much cuter than when I saw her in the summer after she worked a long shift at the pool) (just kidding!). We sent a couple messages back and forth and then added each other on snapchat. A few days go by, and she mentions a boba tea shop downtown that I had never heard of, and I told her that we should go sometime the next weekend. She sent a snap, deleted it, and sent another snap that said "Then it's a date". She had to make SURE I knew it was actually a date. So on October 2nd, we got boba tea. We sat, talked, and exchanged stories until we closed the place down. Over the course of the next 3 weeks, we saw each other after classes and would walk around campus, bake banana bread together, and even had deep conversations on the baseball field bleachers until 4am. At this point, I knew this was a serious situation. We began spending more time together and kept growing closer in our relationship, until we knew that this was the one. I realized that I have found someone who matches my level of ambition, someone who is up for any kind of adventure without hesitation, someone who loves the Lord, and someone who it feels so natural to be with. Those are the very reasons I decided that this is the person I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, and I couldn't be happier about it