The short story is we met online. The greater and better story is that God is an abundantly faithful, gracious, and loving God, who in his sovereignty allowed us to meet each other. At the encouragement of my friend Hannah Miller, I decided to make an online profile at the beginning of the year. Even though I always hoped of meeting someone organically, I decided I had nothing to lose by giving online dating a chance. T.J. had slightly more experience with online dating, but also always hoped of meeting someone in the real world. Needless to say, we both were at a place in our lives of having a desire to be married and have a family one day, while also at a point of surrendering those dreams to God, but not wanting to give up on those dreams entirely. A few weeks after making a profile, I started to talking to another guy. T.J. messaged me shortly after I started talking to this other guy. With me not being great at multitasking, I didn’t want to talk to more than one guy at a time, so I messaged T.J. back but took several weeks to continue the conversation as I continued talking to the other guy. Nonetheless, T.J. was extremely patient and gently continued to pursue me, with me giving him little response initially. He eventually decided to give me one last chance and asked “If I’d like to get coffee or lunch sometime?” To which I said “Yes!” After a week or two of trying to meet (with delays in meeting due to me overbooking myself and having to cancel on him a couple times), we eventually met for icecream at Coldstone Creamery. At the end of our date, T.J. said, “I think this could be the start of something really special.” We had our second date at Cheesecake Factory and at the end of the date T.J. asked if I wanted to make it official! I said “Yes” because this definitely seemed like the start of something “really special!”

We both love to hike and enjoy the beautiful outdoors. We decided to take a last-minute trip to Chattanooga, TN to see some “fall foliage.” On the way up to Chattanooga, we were discussing what we would do on Friday evening and decided we would take a ride on the incline railway in Chattanooga. As I was going to book the tickets, there were 60 spots available in the evening, and before booking, T.J. reminded me to look for a discount code online (that a lady at the welcome center told us about). So….true to my easily distracted fashion, I started looking for a discount code, but got distracted reading sports articles and other stories that caught my eye. About an hour and a half or so goes by and I decided I probably needed to book the tickets. When I went to book the tickets, there was only one spot available. So we weren’t able to ride train. T.J. then pulled over and become a little more serious and focused and said, “Okay we need to figure out what we’re going to do.” Hannah Miller was with us and suggested a hike that one of her friends mentioned called “Edward’s Point Overlook” at Signal Mountain. We decided to go there instead to a enjoy a beautiful hike and take in all the beautiful leaves. As we started hiking, the trail became a little hard to follow, and we ended up getting off the beaten path just a little bit, but T.J. helped us find our way back. As we continued to hike, I wanted to stop at every tree to take a picture of the “fall foliage!” As we continued to hike, we eventually got to the end of the trail, which ended at this beautiful overlook (with views of the Tennessee River Gorge down below). The site also was overlooking this place called Julia’s Falls (which is where T.J. wanted to propose in honor of our sweet, friend Julia Schade). When we arrived at the overlook, we were taking in all of the beauty and T.J. became unusually quiet. I started talking about the sites over in the distance, to which T.J. reached in his back packet for his phone to look at the map to see what sites were in the distance. Meanwhile, I didn’t really notice but my friend Hannah was standing in the background taking in all of the sites also. After T.J. reached for his phone, he continued to fidget in his back pocket and I looked at Hannah, who was standing in the background with her phone and go-pro in hand and then I looked back at T.J. and saw him starting to get down on one knee. I screamed and couldn’t believe it! He asked me to marry him and of course I said, YES! Just about a week or two before this trip, we had briefly talked about when we would get married one day, to which T.J. said, “Oh we’ll probably get engaged in a year and a half and married in 2 years.” Needless to say, I was really sad in my heart to hear that but also trust T.J.’s judgement and trust God’s timing so I was trying to just be patient. So needless to say, I was completely shocked and not expecting anything to happen at all on this trip! But I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect proposal. Most importantly, I’m just SO grateful Jesus has allowed me to meet such an amazing man and am amazed at God’s faithfulness in giving us each other!