We're getting married!

We both grew up in beautiful North Idaho, where our families met at an evening service at Grace Bible Church. Throughout the next several years, our families occasionally spent time at each other’s homes. Through this time my younger sister, Ivanna, and Rachel began to develop a sweet friendship. When I was 13, my family moved to Wyoming and Rachel and Ivanna kept in touch through pen pal letters. While we never talked much with each other before I moved, Rachel remembers watching me play with the other younger children and thinking that I was (in her words) “SO adorable and sweet”. While I kind of wish I did remember her from back then, I am pretty sure it is the Lord’s mercy that I didn’t. If I had, I’d have most likely been completely smitten and think of the many long years I would have had to wait for both of us to grow up, without knowing if she would even be interested!

In January 2018, my younger brother Samuel and I moved to Virginia for a semester to continue/complete our degrees at Liberty University. Although I had a special aversion to Facebook, the Lord led me to a Bible study group that used it to share prayer requests and meeting updates, and so I gave in and created an account. Taking 23 college credits for my final senior semester didn’t leave much time for social media perusal, but as the Lord would have it, on March 1, I took a quick scan down my feed, and found myself intrigued with a beautifully written post that really spoke to my heart. I glanced up to see who wrote it. “Huh, Howard Strubhar…” It was fun to see a peek into the heart of such an old acquaintance, and I was blessed that such a young man had a seemingly deep, personal walk with Jesus to be able to write a post like that. At the same time, I also knew that people can say a lot of things online that are not truly accurate reflections of who they are on the inside. Still, I decided to give him the courtesy of an encouraging comment and leave discerning his heart to God. This began an exchange of polite icebreaker questions and responses, through which he misinterpreted a geographical question that I asked as a personal “what is God doing in your life” question. I must admit that when I received a private message from him sharing personal things that God was doing in his life, I was both surprised and slightly concerned. Desperate boy alerts began sounding in my head, but having been around the block a few times quite recently with seemingly platonic friendships that turned out to be otherwise, I still hoped for the best and replied back. Maybe he would prove to be an authentically true friend – one who would care about my relationship with God more than my relationship with him...A friend that cared more about being a Godly friend than about enticing me into a romantic relationship. I didn’t exactly expect it to turn out that way – but I still hoped.

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Over the following few days, our initial chitchat turned into deep conversational texts, and by the 3rd day, I had a special feeling in my heart about who this young man was. So much so, in fact, that I was almost certain he might start forming ideas, and I couldn’t blame him. Something about our connection was undoubtedly special, however, at the time, I was content in my walk with God and extremely leery of relationships in general, no matter how wonderful the fellow might seem. And, having some other deep friendships with young men that I was not attracted to “in that way”, I had no reason to expect that this growing friendship with Howard would or should be any different. Besides, I still hadn’t met him since he had grown up, and while I knew it wasn’t fair to write him completely off my list until I got to know him a little better in person, I also didn’t want to defraud him in any way. So when he mentioned that he had arranged to fly up to visit Ivanna in Harrisonville, PA over spring break, my wheels started turning. Pennsylvania was only a few hours away, and what a dream it would be to see Ivanna after so many years. Maybe this was God’s way of allowing Howard and I to meet in person so we could quickly realize and clearly establish the platonic destiny of our friendship. Sure enough, the plan worked out on both sides, and Samuel was fully on board with spending spring break with them, too. Howard asked to call me to finalize details, but our first conversation only lasted about 45 seconds, since I already had a phone date with my childhood best friend scheduled. Over an hour later I called him back, for what became a 2 hour conversation that left me on the floor crying for joy—I was so blessed and encouraged! I found out later he skipped most of an event he had driven a long ways to attend in order to talk to me.

Besides the first 5 or 10 minutes of discussing travel logistics, we spent the rest of our conversation sharing how God was sanctifying, teaching, and drawing us closer to Himself. In fact, all I wanted to do when I ended the call was to read my Bible and know Jesus more in the way that Howard knew Him. There were so many treasures that Howard shared that convicted me and challenged my daily walk. I wanted to walk in the true heart belief that God truly is who He says He is in His Word: A God of truly unconditional and never-ending love and grace; a God that desires to demonstrate His supernatural power in and through our lives every moment of our existence; a God that knows and cares about every little thought we think, every pain we feel, every temptation we battle, every loss we suffer, and every humbling of the heart, the last of which He never fails to smile upon. This was the beginning of Howard’s and my friendship. The beginning of a story too beautiful for words, and more glorious than my greatest of imaginations. It is a God-written Love Story, my friends, and He always writes the best.

Looking back over the landscape of our friendship, it never ceases to amaze me how God’s hand led, guided, and blessed every piece of our journey. While there are far too many miracle kisses from our Father to record here, there are a few that bear special significance to Howard and I, which I will attempt to share succinctly: In the first week that we began to talk on the phone, I'm a bit embarrassed to admit that our phone call hours, not including a LOT of text messages, added up to 21 hours in 4 phone calls. Plus, that week just so happened to be the week before most of my mid-terms! So, instead of spending long nights studying after classes, I was found talking to Howard instead, and when mid-terms snuck up on me, I was tempted to worry. When Howard caught wind of my predicament, he felt terrible and apologized for keeping me from my studies, but I told him that to me it was worth it, even if it meant that my grades slid. That didn’t seem to comfort him much, so upon hearing there was a chance of snow the following day, he decided to pray that the next day it would snow so much my school would call a snow day. Now while snow isn’t unheard of in late March, Liberty was known for not calling snow days even when there was enough snow to predictably cause accidents and stuck vehicles. Thankfully, God doesn’t consult almanacs to make His weather decisions, and the next morning I woke up to find it was snowing, but barely. The drive to school was normal - I knew by experience there was no way they would call a snow day for that mild of weather, and when we parked, it was still not snowing much. However, I had hardly taken 2 steps away from the car when my phone buzzed with a school-wide alert. They called a snow day! In fact, they decided to call the next day a snow day, too! I could hardly believe my eyes!! I still don’t know what human reason they had to do it, but I believe God was smiling on Howard’s humble request, and to our delight, I kept my grades up.

Over the next week, we started asking God for special things we could pray for each other that would be clear miracles. Faithfully, God answered, and it took our breath away. One night, I was about to ask Howard if he wanted to do a challenge with me where we would ask God to wake us up in the morning to pray, and whenever God woke us up, no matter the time, to obey and meet God in prayer. But then I looked at my watch and realized it was past 10pm, and we had decided to not communicate past 10 in order to preserve our sleep. So I prayed and asked God to just wake him up and put it on his heart to pray, and that He would give him a significant and special dream. The next morning came and Howard said he had something amazing to tell me, and asked if I had time to talk. He proceeded to tell me how he hardly ever wakes up in the middle of the night, but for some reason that night he did. In fact, at about 3am, he awoke suddenly and for apparently no reason. At first he wondered if maybe something was wrong, but all seemed to be well, and so he decided to pray. After some sweet time with Jesus, he fell back asleep. Then he said another strange thing happened. He hardly ever has dreams, or if he does, he can hardly ever remember them, but this time he had such an incredible dream that he not only remembered it, but it was so vivid in his mind, it might as well have actually happened. He went on to share that God asked him to worship and dance before Him in a church service. Even in his dream it was a terribly embarrassing idea, and he resisted, but the Lord wouldn’t relent and continued to gently ask Howard to worship and dance before Him. Finally, he surrendered and with no regard to anyone around him, he worshipped in full surrender through song and dance! In that moment, Howard said he felt the Holy Spirit come upon him like he had never felt before! It was so so real, so beautiful, so holy…

Several times over the last year, when I have had a physical ailment and Howard prayed over me, I have been immediately healed. Once when he was in Ethiopia, I prayed that God would give him a warm shower, and even though they had turned the water heater off in hopes that the power would turn back on, and the girl before him had a freezing cold shower, when he got in, the water miraculously turned warm! He excitedly told the girl who was next in line for the showers that the shower was somehow warm, but when she got in, it was freezing cold again. Even though I hadn’t told him that I had prayed for that, the first thing he texted me after that event was, “Did you happen to pray that God would give me a warm shower?” Even though by this time I was really learning to have more faith in God answering our prayers, it still came as a surprise to me! Why would God care so much to answer such a seemingly trivial prayer like that… besides, Howard wanted to get used to difficult circumstances, because he felt called to the mission field. But that’s our God! He loves to show His strength, and He delights to answer the prayers of His children. Not because we deserve it, but because He is that overwhelmingly loving and desirous to demonstrate His glory through our lives.

Coming soon!

Coming Soon!