boy meets girl

Disclaimer: As a long time single girl I have a tough time posting this gushy love stuff because most days I had a hard time reading It. I carried a lot of bitterness, jealousy, and serious struggle with being happy for those who received what my heart so desperately longed for. I DO NOT judge you for x’ing this out and never reading it because you, yes I’m talking to you my sweet single friend, are having a hard time swallowing my joy and giddy-ness. Don’t force yourself to read it because you think you should. Or because you have to prove you’re “alright”. If you think this gushy love stuff will be too hard to read just X that window out, grab your Bible and sit on the bathroom floor to let those tears fall instead. I PROMISE God’s words will be MUCH more valuable to your heart then my words ever will be. If you don’t have a Bible, look up Psalm 143 on your phone instead. Here’s the deal… I’m glad I’m not in your single girl stilettos anymore, I’m glad I’ve found my person, and I’m sensitive (VERY empathetically sensitive) to your heartache and refuse to insert any cliche **your time will come** crap here. But when I started blogging I committed to telling my story, my WHOLE story and today I need to let myself publicly REJOICE that my wailing has turned into dancing and my heart is filled with joy for it has found the one it loves.

In January, I attended a session at work joined by folks from all kinds of departments. Here, I met a woman on the job only 3 weeks. She had lots of questions “is this place real??” (A common question to those starting Chick-fil-A) and I asked if she wanted to have lunch and get to know each other. I think we moved it around once or twice (my fault entirely) until we settled on February 8th (my niece’s birthday!)

February 8th was not a good day for me. I was annoyed at a whole handful of folks and my attention span was about as short as a fingernail. All I wanted to do was cancel lunch and find a long time friend to vent to about all the wonderful people in my life who were DRIVING ME NUTS. But no, God had put this lunch on my calendar for a reason.

Little did I know.

She had invited another newbie to eat with us and we couldn’t find a table by ourselves so sat with a group of women and chatted a lot about work. We didn’t start getting to know each other until about 30 minutes in. She tells me she just moved from Portland and I say “I’m going to Portland in March!” To which she replies “are you going to visit a Restaurant, my friend Lukas is at a grand opening there!” “Ah yes, I know of him, he’s on my list of people to meet with while I’m out there”

5 minutes later she’s telling me about her husband and how he does ministry work in Atlanta and their story of doing mission work together for years in Chile. In my head I’m thinking “COME ON, these people sound awesome, they are young, they love Jesus and I’m SURE they know some good looking Jesus loving SINGLE men” So in VA fashion I interrupt whatever she’s saying and say “this may be weird (or bold, not sure what I said but it was in fact both) but if you know any awesome single men, keep me in the back of your head…hook a sista up!” To which she replied “LUKAS”.

At this moment I’m half excited and half mortified. I’m going to Oregon to meet with this guy I’ve heard amazing things about and now I’m going to have to deal with the awkwardness of knowing he’s single AND cute (I’d already looked his picture up on our Chick-fil-A website weeks prior…a single girl always needs to know what she’s walking into!!) We start giggling “what would be the chances???” “this is nuts” “OMG!” Amidst our school girl giggles, Lukas walks up…

Wait a second, do you realize how completely psycho and crazy that sentence is…in case you missed it… Lukas walks up… the man who’s supposed to be in like Nebraska or something kicking ass and opening Chick-fil-A Restaurants… LUKAS WALKS UP.

…and taps my new friend on the shoulder. She turns beat red and for a few seconds I just point at him until I finally say “we were just talking about you- I’m coming to Oregon in March” I stand up, introduce myself and ramble about the work I’m doing with his department to which I remember thinking he seemed totally uninterested. He and my new friend chat (because he’s there to see HER not me) and determine that the next day they would go to lunch together.

He leaves. We are speechless. Speechless and giggling. Dumbfounded by what just happened. I tell her “feel free to play matchmaker! I have no shame…set a sista up!”

During their lunch the next day, she didn’t have to stir the pot… HE ASKED ABOUT ME. He remembered my name by reciting my last name in Spanish (because he’s FLUENT IN SPANISH- va dream come true!!) Then he found me on Facebook. I added him the next morning (I’d like to note that I never get on FB in the morning but a friend of mine had been MIA for a few days with texts and when you’ve had as many friends die as I have, it’s not THAT morbid to check their FB to make sure their still breathing- she was in fact still breathing). I saw his friend request and again, giddy school girl, accepted!

At this point in my head I had dated him, married him, and was already planning baby names for our children (I cannot be the ONLY single woman who does this…admit it ladies). That Wednesday I stalked his Facebook with my girlfriends, added him on Instagram and further planned our life complete with retirement at my dream lake house. But I didn’t hear from him, SURELY if he was interested he would email, call, text, SOMETHING. But by the end of the day, my lake house dreams were flying out the window. And my prayers were okay Lord, that was fun while it lasted, Oregon is going to be awkward.

As I was climbing into bed at my obnoxiously wild party animal bed time (I think it was 8:38) I checked FB one last time and noticed a message. A message! I was sure it was only my alumni group planning our high school reunion. I don’t have messenger on my phone so I logged into safari and sure enough- LUKAS HAD SENT ME A MESSAGE. At like 6:48 am, right after I had added him as a friend. Silly VA. I messaged him back, told him I was terrible at FB messages, clearly, and gave him my cell phone #. Ding ding, text message!!!! He claims he waited at least 10 minutes but it was more like 3 😉

We chatted back and forth- our college ministry worlds are so creepily intertwined. (I’d like to note that at this time I was DEFINITELY up past my bed time but man was it worth the lack of sleep) He said (something to this effect) “hey, I don’t want to be too bold but I’m leaving for Portland soon so can we do coffee or lunch before I leave?”

UM. YES WE CAN MISTER EXTREMELY ATTRACTIVE JESUS LOVING CHICK-FIL-A MAN… I WOULD LOVE TO TELL YOU ABOUT OUR KIDS AND OUR LAKE HOUSE.

Instead…

“I like the boldness! Sure, sounds great, I’m free Friday morning”

Friday morning I had to skip a conference call. Normally I would NEVER do that but come on…retirement at the lake house…this was a coffee I couldn’t miss.

The morning of, he asked me my Starbucks order and I flipped out. He hadn’t spent more than 2 minutes with me and was already knocking my socks off by going above and beyond on this work coffee date (we could have easily had Chick-fil-A coffee!). I told him my Starbucks order even though I’d given up coffee for lent (all things to all men…that’s for another blog post) and it was THE BEST ONE HOUR I HAD EVER HAD IN THAT CHICK-FIL-A CAFE.

I told him my whole story/testimony but we ran out of time for his. He told me briefly how his parents met (also another blog post because that’s crazier then how we met) and he said “at 4 years old I moved to Georgia” to which he stands up and says “That’s all you get for today… To be continued” Smooth, very, very smooth. With a flight to Oregon on Sunday afternoon and his dad’s birthday party in the mix (the whole reason he was even still in town that Friday for our first date) we planned to spend the free hours we both had over the weekend together.

Saturday was magical. We didn’t get to do any of the amazing things he planned for us because of a host of circumstances but we talked, we talked and we made a lot of eye contact and he told me his whole story and then took me home. As he dropped me off we kissed and man was it a good kiss. At one point I pulled away and said are we really kissing right now?? I said this is crazy, and as he walked away he said “crazier things have happened”.

Are you fascinated with this stuff?? Maybe a little taken aback. YES. WE WERE TOO.

After he left me with that kiss, I went inside, and in the dark of my living room, sat on the floor and couldn’t move. Couldn’t process. What was there to process first? There was so much. Do I call my mom, my sister, my best friend? Do I read my Bible? I was basically numb…this is crazy. This is scary. This is NUTS. So I took a picture, because I always take pictures because I am always thinking about the story being written and photos ALWAYS make a story better.

There I am, sitting in the dark and he texted me to ask for the picture we’d taken…this selfie with our eyes all sideways.

I sent him the picture and then since I knew he was driving I called him instead of texting back… “This is nuts dude, what are we doing? How can this work? Is this real life?” We talked for 15 minutes and at the end he said, don’t analyze it anymore, just go watch your shows.

WAIT. This man gets me already???? After like 5 hours??!! He knows I need to take a breather from thinking and drown myself in Meredith Grey’s life instead of my own.

I texted mom that I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, that I was soaking it all in. She said that was perfect and wise. That if God had ordained this I couldn’t mess it up or make it work…that I should rest in the confidence that God has me, no matter what (Or something like that).

On Sunday, after going to his church and heading back towards my house, we were getting off the exit in Vinings, I interrupted his story (in VA fashion) and said “wait, we need to figure out where we are going to eat lunch”.

HA. Little did I know…again.

Not only had he already made a reservation but he had taken flowers and a Valentine’s Day card (the funniest and least “lovey one” because as he said…it’s a little nuts to celebrate Valentine’s Day on a 3rd date) to the restaurant before he came to pick me up that morning.

What a man. Like a REAL REAL take care of me kind of man…I was hooked.

I took him to the airport afterwards and we had a make out session in the parking lot (sorry mom) and after silence that was anything but awkward I said “we need someone to hold us accountable in Portland!!!!” The attraction to each other was off the charts. Something cool, really cool was happening. (And yes, we had accountability in Portland and were being held accountable to about a billion people who were praying for us as I flew across the country to 1. Do my job and 2. Find out if this was real love developing in my heart)

Anyway…with him in Portland and me in Atlanta there were hours upon hours logged with FaceTime and phone calls. Y’all when I say hours, I mean hourssss. We talked. O we talked. About work and ourselves and our stories and our fears and weaknesses and goals and dreams and what we wanted to see God do in and through us as individuals and then we also talked about stuff we don’t like to admit in the daylight…the dark stuff, the yucky stuff. We watched God show up in conversation after conversation and prayer after prayer for each other, with each other and after awhile, the prayers began to include “Lord, if this isn’t headed to marriage, please please please bring clarity FAST!”

All along during those phone calls and FaceTime conversations we knew that in 20 days from our first coffee date, God would bring us together on the other side of the country in Oregon. We’d have an opportunity to see if what had developed already over the phone would be just as good in person.

PAUSE.

I wrote all of that on the plane to Oregon. I’m not kidding. Word for word, outside of a little editing, that’s what my heart was capturing and thinking and feeling 2 months ago, only 20 days after February 8th. I could go on and on and on but you know the story continues. You know because you’ve seen his (or my) post on Instagram…

You know because you’ve been invested in our story and prayed for our story…a story that has only just begun. We covet your prayers, ask that you cheer us on and REJOICE that two broken individuals were brought together to do something bigger, better and more glorifying to God then we could have ever done apart.

xoxo, va