If you had ever had a conversation with Carlee, you knew that she was never going to get married; an apartment, two dogs, and a cat were her future and she couldn't be more excited. If you ever had a conversation with Josh, you knew he was super serious about getting married, knew it would be soon, and was not fond of wasting time with dating around. How did these two learn to meet in the middle? And so quickly? Definitely only by the hand of God. For Carlee, it started a year or two prior with some hard seasons and real life realizations. If she really wanted to allow Jesus to lead her life (best choice ever btw, 11/10 recommend), how could she cling to this easy, comfortable decision she had made when she was a kid to not get married? When she opened up the door to Jesus to have a say in this area, He quickly began making it clear marriage was certainly up ahead. So what did she do? Lived in one form or another of denial for a year (-4/10 don't recommend, listening to God the first time is better and I wasted a lot of time and energy doing the opposite). Eventually, she allowed God to start doing the work to prepare her to be a whole and healthy girlfriend, and one day wife. God spoke very clearly again in mid-October of 2022 (remember this for later) when He said, "What I have been preparing you for is coming soon." Carlee, feeling all the way not ready to truly uproot her entire life vision assumed "soon" meant years, but soon in fact meant two months, because on December 6th, 2022 one Joshua Timothy King walked into the life group she led, and although she had literally (mostly) no idea at the time, her future husband just walked in the room… For Josh, it all started in March of 2022 when Josh’s parents began to feel a geographic shift from the Lord. In August of 2022, Josh and his family visited the Wilmington area, where God delivered a prophetic word for their whole family through people they had never even met. It was clear that Josh and his family were called to this region, so in October of 2022 (remember this date? God is good at what He does), the family moved to Southport, North Carolina with great expectation for this new season. After visiting several churches in the area, and still not feeling they had found their church home, Josh’s mom began searching the internet one more time for local churches. She came across the website for 828 Church and instantly felt the family may be called to there- and it remained true after visiting. Upon the recommendation of a member of the congregation (s/o Tyler), Josh and his brother set out to attend the young adult group scheduled the following week. Over the next several days, it seemed that everyone had something to say about “this” Carlee (all the great things by the way). Then on December 6, 2022 Joshua Timothy King saw one Carlee J Kennedy for the first time... Upon their initial meeting, Josh was very impressed by the way Carlee carried herself, her ability to communicate the Word of God and intentionally interact with every member of the group. (Oh, by the way, Josh was incredibly taken back by her stunning beauty). Carlee was similarly very impressed with how Josh communicated the Word so articulately and with such conviction, and how he fielded really tough questions even on his first night. She wouldn’t have admitted it that night, but she was definitely noticing him a lot about him, including that he was REAL cute. Flash forward a week (after narrowly missing talking to each other on a Sunday morning), and the two were both in attendance at the life group Christmas party. No substantial conversation was had, but there was enough time for Carlee to find out Josh was fond of the series “High School Musical” and for some reason said that this still complete stranger Josh was her new “favorite person”. (Talk about the power of words coming true…little did she know…)

So Josh and Carlee interact like three times, so what? Well, a very interested Josh and a completely oblivious Carlee attended the same Christmas Eve service. Behind the scenes, Josh's family was pressing him to shoot his shot with this real cute, curly headed, super bubbly girl that they knew piqued his interest (s/o to the fam for real), so he took all measures possible to make it happen. He subtly positioned himself throughout the night near her, whether in conversations around her or in places he knew she would walk by. When he finally caught her attention, he endured long conversations about water bottles, ice cream scooping, and even recovered well from a moment when he thought he was going to get her phone number and she completely blew him off (aka forgot). What was Carlee doing and thinking this whole time, you may ask? Fully enjoying the Christmas season and having (mostly) no idea that the handsome, strong, bearded man in front of her was making full efforts to get to know her as ~more than a friend~. Hours go by, and Josh and Carlee find themselves back at their respective homes with their respective families, but Josh has decided with the prompting of his family (s/o again) to move this train along and not be stuck in the friend zone for months on end. He finds Carlee's number on the bottom of a life group email, crafts the perfect text that ends with "By the way, this is Josh", and hits send. Wasting no time, within three texts of introduction Josh asks her out (even though he doesn't say the word. "date"...), and Carlee fully surprises herself and says she'd love to go out with him. They went on their first date December 27th, 2023, and the rest is God-blessed, favor filled, and grace covered history. That is how we got to where we are today, but below you can find a picture of where we started- on our first date:)