My Great Love, Part 2

She wore a flowy organza dress as she sat on the shoreline at the beach. She wasn’t exactly sure how she got there, but she didn’t care because in the distance, she saw a horse approaching with a man on it. He was wearing flipflops, a white button up linen top and khaki pants. She said “I love you” and he responded “And I you”. This was the dream I had when I was 13. Back then, I just thought it was a dream. I had no idea that this was God’s way of queing me in when I met the man I was meant to marry. The first time I told Chris that I loved him (2 weeks in, by the way), he responded with “And I You”. You could’ve scraped me off the floor from melting to it so quickly. I told him so quickly because there was just something about him that I just knew he was the man for me and luckily he felt the same and I wasn’t just a crazy kid to him.

Everything about our relationship moved quickly (and quietly). Within a month, I had secretly grabbed my belongings and snuck them out of the house. I proceeded to call my father AFTER I had everything out of his home and into Chris’ that I had move in with “a friend”. According to my father, and I can’t remember but it’s probably true, I told him that I was living with a girl named Chris in her grandmother’s home and was baking cookies with her daughter. I remember leaving gender out of it because I don’t like lying to my dad, but to this day he swears this is what I said. He can laugh about it now, but my dad wasn’t happy when he finally found out I lied and who I was living with. However, he did (kind of) settle down a little when I told him who Chris’ grandmother was. You see, Chris and I have some really weird paths that have crossed over the years and we didn’t even know it. For example, his grandparents were very active in the church that I grew up in. So active, in fact, that his grandmother was my father’s and my Sunday School teacher. She was a wonderful, kind woman that just welcomed everyone into her heart without questions. But, more on this later because it does get weirder.

I have always thought of myself as an “old soul” and I think that’s why Chris and I get along so well. I enjoyed our long, deep conversations about life, love and the future. We wanted so much of the same things out of life, it was only natural that we would feel like marriage was on the horizon. And it was, within 2 months of dating, I asked him to marry me. Not to be out-awesomed, he asked Josie the following month for her permission to marry me. Although we didn’t exactly start the planning process, or tell anyone about our desire to be married in the next year, we did plan our lives together. Where we wanted to be in our relationship, when we wanted to have a child and how we wanted to photograph weddings together. Shortly after the new year began one of those plans was revealed to happen sooner than expected. I was pregnant with Bryce. I was both thrilled and disappointed as I wanted to wait at least a year until we had a child together, but then again, Bryce has never been a predictable child. 🙂