I, Nessa, will regale you now with the tale of just how we came to be :) We met on February 10th, 2024, at a movie night for my theater group, hosted at his house. I remember noticing him and wondering why he was there because he looked so uninterested and kind of stood in the corner like he was judging the group. {Heyyy guys, Benj here! All the lil blurbs in the curly brackets are from me! 😁} {I absolutely was judging the very loud, rambunctious, dramatic group of theater girls, true lol… but I will say I was judging Nessa the least.} The next time we ran into each other was apparently at the post–closing night IHOP celebration with LMT. Now, I have genuinely no recollection of him being there or us interacting, but apparently both happened. He says it was “fun, brief, goofy late-night energy,” so I guess I’m sad I missed that, haha. {Yea it happened… she made fun of Myers for all looking the same lol.} But according to me, the next time that counts was back at his house after a failed homeschool prom (yeah, it was just about as fun as it sounds XD), where a group of us bailed and instead went to the Myers’ basement and engaged in shenanigans. {Which I obviously joined in because I am a master shenaniganist 😎} After most of the people left and went home, the remaining hoodlums went to Wendy’s and ate fries in the parking lot. In the smaller group, he was far more engaging and actually kind of funny. {I thought she was very funny and fun too.} I was enjoying bantering with him and started to think he maybe wasn’t the antisocial crab I first believed him to be — and darn it, he was pretty cute too. {Hey I’ll take kinda funny, pretty cute, and maybe non-crabby 🤷‍♂️} As I drove Josie home, I regaled her with my panic: “Oh frick, do I like this dude?” I decided I didn’t want to deal with it, sooooo I ignored it — quite successfully too, might I add — until I visited Southgate one week to support Johanna, who was leading worship. I ended up loving the community there and began coming regularly, getting well integrated with the established friend group — which, of course, included the aforementioned cute, not-so-crab-like boy. {W unintentional wingwoman moment Joey 🫡} Our group would hang out after service and on evenings and weekends doing a bunch of random things, and Benj and I started to grow our banter-and-make-fun-of-each-other relationship.

That July, we both went to the youth group conference through Southgate and really started to talk and become closer friends there. At this point, most people were getting suspicious of us and kind of already thought we might be a thing. And also at this point, I must say, I had fallen prey to those big blue eyes {flutters eyelashes} and definitely had a crush on him. We chatted, walked and sat together, played very intense rounds of Dutch Blitz {she put a curse on me in sign language}, and I also sneakily asked for his number (hehe). That’s right — I was out there making moves. {I didn’t really know if I liked her at this point… but did know that I thought she was pretty, I really enjoyed hanging out with her, and thought she was super fun, so I just kept matching her vibes.} After we got back, he almost immediately left for Spokane with some of his family, so I wasn’t going to see him for a bit — which made me sad — buuuttt I had his number. {And the rest is history… 😜} So I texted him wishing him safe travels, and that quickly turned into an eight-hour text conversation involving sharing song recommendations, talking about my hatred of spiders, and him singing Frozen {🎶let it gooo, let it goooooo🎶}. At this point, I knew I was in deep. I spent all eight hours giggling at my phone and loving every second of getting to talk to him. He’s just funny! {no u 😘} Once they returned from their trip, the next four months were filled with group activities that frequently and very not suspiciously {no not suspicious at all 😉} ended with us being the last two standing since we’d chat for too long and be too busy laughing {we’re just funnyyyyy} to want to leave or to care that the rest of the people had left. We’d climb trees, throw rocks and shoes at each other, race down streets, and scale the side of libraries. (I would like to say I did not scale the library — I filmed Benj doing it and laughed.) So pretty much at this point, we had turned into our friend group’s own personal rom-com reality TV show. They were all on the edge of their seats wondering when Benj was finally going to ask me out. And lemme tell ya, so was I {I still didn’t realllyyyy know if I liked her in a romantic way or not and was trying to figure that out for myself, but I could definitely tell everyone else thought I did 😅}. I was absolutely losing my marbles over this man, aggressively panic-processing and expressing my bewilderment at the fact that he STILL hadn’t asked me out yet to all who would listen (shout out to all of my friends who endured my constant ranting about this really handsome crazy man {🤭} — y’all are troopers). I was on the verge of yanking my hair out. {Hehe whoopsie, sorry pookie 😙}

Finally, fast-forward to November 17th {at this point I was preeeetty sure I liked her but still didn’t fully know what to do about it 😂}, where — who would have guessed — Benj and I were hanging out alone (insert audible gasp here). I had had enough of all this panic-inducing craziness and needed this boy to give me an answer, gosh darn it. So I basically asked him what we were doing because I liked him and wanted to date. After he paused and thought for a minute (the longest minute of my life, might I add — I could hear my heart pounding), he admitted he liked me too. (I mean, kind of obviously with the way he was acting. Silly guy just didn’t ask me out.) {Hey I was busy tryna figure out if I liked her or not too lol 🙃😉} And POOF — just like that, we were finally dating and couldn’t be happier about it. Since then, we’ve gotten to simply do life together. We’ve had ups and downs, but at the end of the day, we keep choosing each other :) Our 15 months of dating were filled with late-night car rides, movie nights, {mercilessly roasting me in front of all my coworkers 😂}, dancing in the kitchen, escape rooms, and simply enjoying being in each other’s {stunningly gorgeous 😍} presence. The Lord has been so good (as He always is) in growing us closer to each other, but also to Him, and blessing us with a relationship that pushes each of us to be the best version of ourselves. We pretty quickly knew we wanted the chance to do this for the rest of our lives. {💙♾️💚} So come February 20th, Benj took me up to Horsetooth, got down on one knee, and asked me to be his forever — to which I actually can’t remember if I truly said yes. {Don’t worry, she did 😁} I think I just emphatically nodded since I was (well, we both were) a little busy crying. So now we get to start a new chapter of our lives as husband and wife. We couldn’t be more excited, and we are so blessed that you all are sharing this day with us. 🤍 {And thanks to all of you who have been alongside us throughout everything and supporting and loving us 😊}

“Why June 26th?” you may be asking. Well, lemme tell ya. Other than the fun pattern of the date (6/26/26) :) I was looking through my journal one night and stumbled upon the first time I ever wrote about Benj. While it was mostly ranting about how he confused me and the fact that he was so handsome, I also mentioned that something felt weird — it felt right. I wrote that I wasn’t even dating this man yet, but I could picture myself marrying him, and that God was telling me to wait. When did I write this?? June 26th, 2024. (God is so cool, right?)