I'm back! Maybe you didn't even notice I was gone, but I was. I took a little week off because Josh and I had a handful of visitors come through this past week and that + working full time proved to be a little full with little downtime! So I apologize for the brief hiatus, but I'm back. I had this post saved in my drafts and I was going to share it on March 15 (aka our actual anniversary) but like I said, things got a little crazy (in the best way!) and I never got to post it. So, this may be a week late but... better late than never, am I right? I feel like one of the first questions people ask you when they first meet you, right after they find out your married/engaged/dating is "how did you meet him/her?", so to celebrate Josh and I's two year anniversary, I want to share our love story.
For those who don't know, right after I graduated high school I started doing missions work with an organization called Youth with a Mission (aka YWAM). I was living in Kona, Hawaii, (rough life, I know!) where I would be for three months before going overseas for three months and then back to Kona to do it all over again. Even though it was hard to be somewhere new with mostly new people every three months and even harder to be so far away from my family, I absolutely loved it. I loved everything about it. I loved traveling, I loved the people I got to meet, I love discovering new cultures, I loved getting to share the love of Jesus with people through words and actions. I loved it so much that at one point I basically had a 10 year plan to solo-sailor it and do missions work overseas before I "settled down and got married". I feel like those four years were some of the most important years of my life. I really got to grow into myself and learn who I was and what I was passionate about and what I truly believed. Even with all the hard times of wondering if my monthly support was going to come through and where I was going to live the next three months, I wouldn't trade those years for anything!
Marriage was the last thing on my mind, and to be honest, I didn't actually think I would ever get married. I was never the girl that fantasized about my wedding day and dreamed about what my "colors" would be and what song we would dance to for the first time. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with daydreaming about your wedding (and if anything it will help you with actually planning a wedding!) I just never did.
Our love story actually started in May 2012, about eight months before I met Josh. I had just lead a missions team and I was back home to take a month of rest and seek direction on where I was to go next. I was staying at my parents house and one night, as I was laying in bed in that half awake but half asleep state, I had a dream. In the dream, I first saw the back of Josh's head with his long hair pulled up in his signature man-bun and then he turned around, looked at me and smiled. And that was it. I instantly woke up and I knew from the one psychology class I took in school that you only dream of people you know or faces you've seen before. But I didn't recognize him and I felt it was God saying "that was your husband, start praying for him".
I thought for sure I had just made that up, I almost never dream and if I do I never remember them, but this one I just couldn't forget. I didn't share it with anyone, not even my mom or best friend, and I just felt like God was inviting me to trust Him and to see what He would do in my life and how this love story would unfold. So I did. And whenever I was reminded of the dream or whenever I felt like everyone around me was getting engaged or married I would pray for my husband, whether it was the man in my dreams or not.
Fast forward through that summer and fall, I had moved to Austin and decided to move back to my parent’s house. Everyone around me was talking about graduating and jobs and grad school and here I was so unsure of what I wanted to do with my life. I narrowed it down and decided that I was either going to move back to Hawaii to work with YWAM again, or go back to school and get a degree in photojournalism. As I pursued each option, both of those doors closed - and I mean they slammed shut - about a week apart from each other. Bummer right? Then, one day, and pretty randomly, I found out about a Communications and Graphic Design course they offered at the YWAM Denver campus. It started in January. Not only were they still accepting students but within a week I was accepted, got money for my one-way plane ticket and was moving to Denver. Totally crazy, but God was totally behind it.
And then, in Denver, I met Josh.
He was there doing his discipleship training school. When I first saw him, I immediately thought he looked so familiar. I thought nothing of it though because he said that he was from Maryland and he was seven years older than me. The Denver campus is pretty small so everyone eats lunch cafeteria-style together, no matter what course you're taking. One day, that first week, we ended up sitting in front of each other at lunch and we just started talking small talk (and yes, I was kinda freaking out internally because he was so hot!). He was so easy to talk to and I felt like I could talk to him forever. He was (and still is) amazing. He told me he was a surfer from a beach town on the eastern shore, he told me about all his travels through South America and that he even spoke fluent Spanish (what!) and had a deep love for tea, reading and the outdoors. He was even trying to go work at YWAM in Kona, Hawaii, (just like I was) but the door closed on him and he ended up in Denver. What! He couldn’t have been more perfect.
Then one day, about a week after that initial lunch, God reminded me of the dream I had. You know, the one I had eight months prior, the one where He showed me who my husband was - yeah, that dream. And I was like, “No way. There’s no way. Things like this don’t happen to me and he is really too perfect. Plus he has short hair, not a man bun like in my dream.” and to that God simply said, “Just trust Me.” I kid you not, the very next day Josh told me the story of how he cut off all his hair just before moving to Denver because he bet his friend he wouldn't cut his dreads off (spoiler alert, he did) and he even showed me some pictures of him with his ponytail. God is really funny sometimes.
After that, I actually tried to avoid Josh for a good bit because I was a little freaked out that I had seen him in a dream before I had even met him, and what if I accidentally spilled the beans and told him that?! But sure enough, we were put together for everything. From outreach to intercession groups, he was always there. We even ended up going to the same church and would always ride together. Needless to say, we quickly developed a friendship and the more we got to know each other the more we realized we had so much in common.
Part of the course Josh was taking includes a three month trip overseas, so while I was doing a communications course he was getting ready to do a two month trip in Kenya and Uganda and I was working in the communications office at the YWAM campus. One thing led to another, and I was given the opportunity to join his team going to Africa as a photographer. I had literally no money for the trip, but somehow everything I needed came in.
If you ever want to really get to know someone, travel with them because you will see each other in all sorts of situations - good, bad, ugly, sick (we both got malaria in Uganda). One night, I got so sick from pneumonia and poorly-treated malaria that he literally had to carry me to the hospital in middle-of-nowhere, Uganda, at night. I’m talking, dirt road, not a single street light to be found, middle-of-nowhere. He says that that’s the night he realized what a place I had in his heart, that more than just being best friends, he was in love with me. Because of my high fever and everything else that was going on in my body that night, all I can remember was the few times I had to tell him to put me down because I was going to puke. Romantic, right?
And to add to everything, this whole entire time, for those five months in Denver and Africa, we weren’t supposed to talk about how we felt about each other and it was so hard to not spill my heart when I was around him, especially towards the end! (YWAM asks that if you are in a discipleship training school or on a trip, you do not begin dating until your trip is over) So this whole time, I had no idea how he felt and he was seven years older than me so I for sure thought that maybe he just saw me as a good friend. You know, like a little sister or something. Little did I know we were both falling in love with each other the whole time!
On the way home from our trip, Josh and I got to sit next to each other on our 17 hour flight (where we watched stupid movies and only slept one hour.. it was the best!) and at the end of that flight, Josh asked me on a date. Finally! Well, he asked me if I wanted to go on a picnic with him, but we both knew what that meant. It meant we could finally talk to each other about how we felt, share everything God was showing us about each other in those five months, spill our hearts, vomit love.. you know, all that good stuff. And that's exactly what happened on our picnic! He told me all the dreams he had about me and how God was confirming to him that I was his wife. I told him about the dream I had about a year before, almost to the day, and how God spoke to me so clearly that he was my husband. It was so surreal! We ended up staying on that mountainside gushing and sharing stories for almost 7 hours. We didn't even eat the lunch we had packed but it was still the best picnic I had ever been on.
So, while we were having a picnic on the most beautiful mountainside, after he said he knew he wanted to marry me, he asked me to be his girlfriend. Five months later, after we moved to Hawaii, while on a picnic next to the ocean, we ate sushi from our favorite place and he asked me to be his wife. Five months after that we were standing on another beautiful mountainside in Hawaii, vowing our love for the rest of our lives to each other.
If you don't take anything else away from this story, just know that God is so faithful and so trustworthy. Even if you feel like you've been waiting for something, whether it's a significant other or a job opportunity, you've just gotta trust Him with it. Don't try to do it on your own strength, just let Him lead you. And He will, I promise.
xo Kristina
