Lauren and CT, we pray, is a story that reflects the heart and purpose of the Lord. Lauren grew up in Wisconsin and later moved to Colorado in 8th grade. CT was a long way away in East Texas, his entire life. We both knew that there was a God and a creator growing up, but neither of us had yet to develop a personal relationship with that seemingly far-off God. Then we both decided, on a random occasion, to go to school at Texas Tech. Lauren wanted to go to med school while CT had just moved on from his basketball dream. Under the sovereignty of the Lord, we both ended up in a Christian club called Christians at Tech. Lauren was in the club one year before CT, while he was playing basketball at a junior college. However, the Lord did a great work in CT at that time in 2022, where he came to accept Jesus Christ as his savior in a dorm room by himself. Lauren was gaining a love for the Lord and a curiosity for what this life really was during that year. The next year, Lauren would come to be baptized and have a big turn in the Spring of 2023 after spending so much time around a special group of believers. An entire year went by in our sophomore year of reading the word consistently and pursuing with other believers regularly in the same club. However, we never crossed paths. We knew who each other were, but never really spoke, and never had a thought that this would turn into anything. Then came the first time we spoke in the late summer of 2023 at a minor league baseball game in Amarillo (CT dropped a foul ball, tough moment). Lauren’s Monday night small group family, the Strongs, had just moved that summer to College Station, the place where she had developed a home away from home. That was hard for her as she and a group of girls were told they were moving to the Redmonds on Monday nights that year. That just so happened to be the small group CT was already in. We started pursuing the Lord as a group every Monday night and seeing things that blew us away. We learned more firmly that year that the word was the most amazing and impressive thing in the entire world. Not just us, but a group of us as we grew closer. As time went on, the feelings inside of both Lauren and CT began to form for each other. We had become friends, but nothing else.

After May of 2024, we were going our separate ways that summer before the next school year. Secretly, we both decided not to talk to each other for 3 months to see if the feeling inside would go away. But then in August of that year, things were the exact same as they had left off in May, the moment we reunited. Late, the night of September 3rd, 2024, at the Texas Tech Rec Center, a friend of CT’s had encouraged him to reach out to Lauren. The next morning, Lauren expressed that she felt the same way about him, and from there, things took off. From that very moment, there was a lot of doubt and confusion. We didn’t want to mess anything up, and we didn’t want to put each other at harm. However, there was no denying that both of us knew that this was really special because the Lord’s loving kindness was in the midst of it. Even in the adversity, the intimate person of Jesus was a firm ground for us to stand on together. We started to become best friends over time. We started to read and pray together in a more serious way. Eventually, we started to call on the name of the Lord together and individually. Before we knew it, we were doing almost everything together. However, each time the Lord made a move in us, the enemy would attack again. But we could not deny that the Lord was eager to supply a mighty flow of his life into this. This he would show us at times when we opened to him. Fast forward about a year, in August of 2025, and Lauren was led to move on from medical school and experienced a significant change in her desire to give her life and this relationship fully to the Lord. CT was constantly reminded through trial and error that the love of God was the most sufficient love for Lauren. This relationship has been about the breaking of the natural self more and more. It has served as a constant reminder that there is no love and compassion like the Lord’s. When we contact the living God in us, we can love and cherish someone else effortlessly. We praise the Lord that he is the love of our lives! Then, in the spring of 2026, we began to see and treasure the one single purpose of God. He began to show us together that there is only one thing at the end of the Bible left, a corporate couple. Christ and The Church. This last semester has been full of him showing us that he has one single purpose, and that is to get his Bride. In order to get his Bride, the Body needs to grow. Through all of eternity, this has been set on God’s heart, and we have both fallen in love with devoting ourselves and our relationship to him, getting his loving bride. Praise the Lord that he has revealed this. Through this vision, we could not help but see the sweet reality of marriage and living a life in this great purpose together. This led us to get engaged on April 10, 2026. May this story not be about Lauren and CT, but about the great and wonderful purpose of God. May it be a tiny glimpse of this divine romance between Christ and The Church.