Who'da Thunk It

"Suzy, you might just move to Minnesota and get married! What about that one guy, Ben D? You could marry him!!"

"Yeah, that's never going to happen.  I don't even think we're gonna be friends, much less get married!" 

That is a snippet of an actual conversation that I actually had with an actual person before I actually moved here and ate those words...actually.  

So I suppose you'll want the story.  There are many versions.  But here is my favorite one:

One January back a few years, a teenage girl (complete with braces and in the midst of her awkward stage) went to the train station to pick up two boys.  One was visiting the other from a long ways away. And when said visitor saw the girl, his attention was immediately drawn to her and his curiosity piqued.  

Girl doesn't remember meeting him. at all. 

(It was not exactly what we romantics like to call a "meet-cute")

Summer of 2009, the girl went to his home state to visit family.  There was this random canoeing trip where this boy and his dad and brother showed up.  He didn't make much of an impression and seemed overall quiet and shy and not really "her type."  (Who decided this whole thing about "types" anyway? silly notion.) 

Fast forward to January of 2012.  This same girl (sans braces and a little less awkward) feels prompted by God to move to the frozen northland of Minnesota to help out her brother and sister-in-law with their impossibly cute children.  She moves thinking that this will merely be a season in her life and she most likely won't stay.  While she wouldn't have minded getting married at some point, she was learning to be content in the season of life God had her in at any given moment.  

The girl ended up going to the same church as the boy who had come visiting California all those years ago.  She still thought he was quiet and shy and that her bubbly and outgoing personality probably rubbed him the wrong way.  They saw each other at church, had polite conversations and hung out in the same circles on occasion.  

And that was all there was to it. For a little bit anyway. 

Then it happened. 

 "It" being a fateful game called Words With Friends.  

(Folks, this is a dangerous game...things like marriage come from it.)

They started playing the game with each other and using the chat-box feature to have random conversation about strategy and the vocabulary words they were using. (The boy is really smart and beat the girl soundly on multiple occasions.) The topics got a little more in depth and they talked more often in person and through some emails. They discussed how different their personalities were and how God had done amazing things in their lives.  Each conversation they had revealed a new side of the boy that the girl had never seen before.  And a true friendship was formed.  As time went on, however, she was continually impressed by the boy and began to love what she saw.  He seemed to be fitting all the important standards she had for a future mate.

She did a lot of talking to God about it.  Talked to her parents and a few friends too to get some advice and wisdom.  Ultimately, she appreciated the boy's friendship above all else and wanted to keep things on the up-and-up.  

The summer passed with both of them learning new things about God and discovering that He had been preparing them both separately for this.  The two of them mutually decided to step back, take a little time not talking.  During this time (which was the longest, worst [and best] week in their relationship), they each felt that God had been working and that they were, to put it simply, MFEO (Meant For Each Other).  

And the rest is history, as they say.  

Sure there are more details sprinkled along the way.  But the long and short of it was: Neither Ben nor I expected this.  Neither of us could have made it happen on our own, even if we had tried.  God was mighty, present and orchestrated the whole process-- and all credit and glory goes to Him.  He is the author of this story...and it is a beautiful one.  We are continuously amazed and feel blessed to be living it out.  

So the boy may have been a little quiet and shy, but...hmmm...well, allow me to quote [paraphrase] a humorous conversation from a kids movie that might be familiar to you to illustrate: (a few details changed to fit the situation)

Me: For your information, there's a lot more to Ben than people think.
Person: Example?
Me: Example... uh... Ben is like an onion!
Person: He stinks?
Me: No!
Person: Oh, he makes you cry?
Me: No!
Person: Oh, you leave him out in the sun, he gets all brown, starts sproutin' little white hairs...
Me: NO! Layers. Onions have layers. Ben has layers. Onions have layers. You get it? They both have layers.
Person: Oh, they both have LAYERS. Oh. You know, not everybody likes onions. What about cake? Everybody loves cake!
Me: I don't care what everyone else likes! Ben is not like a cake.
Person: You know what ELSE everybody likes? Parfaits! Have you ever met a person, you say, "Let's get some parfait," they say, "Oh no, I don't like no parfait"? Parfaits are the most delicious thing on the whole planet!

So maybe he's like a parfait.  Point is...there's a lot more to this soft-spoken guy than what I saw at first (or second) glance, and I love him for it.

And he says my bubbly and outgoing personality is one of the things he loves most about me.  So I guess that turned out well.

=)

Thank you for your love, support, prayers and celebration as we begin this new journey together.  We've already decided that it is an adventure with many unpredictable and exciting things ahead and we're going to enjoy every minute of it!  

And as our engagement theme song goes, "This is [our] story, This is [our] song...praising [our] Savior all the day long!" 

p.s. now maybe my blogging absence makes some sense.  I was a little *ahem* preoccupied with other things!