because He first loved us

Technically, we met in 2020 on our year of missionary work with NET Ministries. Throughout that year, we made many mutual friends, but we never had much of an interaction until the end of our time on the road. During the last week of NET we spent a lot of time together with those mutual friends. That was where our friendship began. Throughout that year, I remember being aware of Maria because I thought she was super attractive. No one was surprised that I thought this because first of all, I said that about a lot of people when I was 18 and second of all, Maria WAS super attractive. After that year, Maria went to college at the University of Mary and I ended up doing another year. We continued our friendship throughout Maria's freshman year over text and a couple FaceTime calls, but there wasn't much more on the table than friendship at that point. After NET, I also went to UMary. I was a year behind Maria, but we ended up in the same group of friends and spent a lot of time together. Our friendship was one of the best I have ever had, and was built primarily around being able to talk about pretty much anything. When people asked if we were dating, (which happened quite often) I would usually tell them something along the lines of: "No, Maria is like my sister, I wouldn't date her." The Fall of 2022 was the first time my dad ever met Maria. Within four minutes of meeting her he told me: "Yeah, I'd be ok with it if you dated her." At the time, he was very aware that I was dating someone else. I would later find out that same night he went home and told my mom: "Well Meredith, if Tommy is called to marriage I think I met the woman he's going to marry." My second year of college, I realized about two months in that I was definitely attracted Maria. At first, I was in deep denial because of the whole "she's like my sister" story I had convinced myself of. Maria's brother John was the one who told me I needed to do something about my feelings because he was sick of seeing us flirt without actually doing anything about it. So, the day after Thanksgiving of 2023, I drove to Woodbury to tell Maria that I liked her. After much deliberation, we decided to go on a date and see how it went. Our first date was on November 30th, 2023. I made cookies and then we watched the sunset at the river (I realize it was a little cold for that). Then we went to a Christmas lights show in Mandan, which I had scouted out the day before with our friend Jerry. I wish I could tell you that after that Maria fell for me instantly, but fortunately for us both that is not exactly what happened. Falling in love instantly isn't something that I think actually happens to anyone. Our falling in love is something that has happened over the course of the last five years. I loved Maria long before we were dating, and she loved me too, but that love evolved slowly over time. For the first two years of our relationship, the love that we had for each other was wanting what was best for each other and desiring growth for the other. The longer we spent time together, the more that love grew into a desire to be together and to be the one that helped the other to grow closer to Christ. Maria and I dated for a little over a year and a half before I proposed on August 2nd, 2025. Over that year and a half there were several moments where we weren't sure that together was where God wanted us to be. There were seasons of deep pain and sacrifice that were incredibly difficult to see light in. Overshadowing these moments, however, were even more of deep love and mercy that we came to notice as the movements of the Lord in our lives. Forgiveness is an element of love that flips pain on its head and turns it into something that draws you closer together. We know we have many years to go before we can claim to have definitive "life experience", but we do know that we have found this love in Him and through Him, and it is unmatched by anything the world could offer us.