Finally!!!

At thirty-three years old, I am now, finally, engaged!  I am going to marry an amazing woman who, for some reason, loves me and wants to spend the rest of her life with me.  I am truly in love with her and I cannot wait to start our life together as one.  Let me tell you about my relationship with my wonderful, beautiful bride-to-be, Hannah.

Shes way out of my league

Our relationship has been a very interesting one, starting about a year and a half ago with a simple dinner between new friends.  Hannah had been coming to the young adult group I lead for a few months and I noticed that we had a lot in common, so I decided to ask her out.  I always knew that our first dinner was a date, but she still says that we were just friends.  She put up a lot of opposition due to some past relationship hurts, so we ended up just hanging out for a few months.  It was great getting to know Hannah during that time, just spending time with each other.

As our time together progressed, we noticed that things were starting to become a little bit more than just friends, so last spring we decided to take a break from seeing each other as much.  We thought that it was best that we remain friends and not ruin that by jumping into a full dating relationship.  During the summer, we really only saw each other at church, and that worked out well for us both.  Some of my friends thought that there was still something beneath the surface, and were not buying the whole non-dating concept.  I guess, looking back, they were right about that.

In September, I took a weekend trip with some friends, and Hannah and I started texting each other.  A lot.  I mean really a lot.  We decided to meet for coffee when I got back, and it’s then that we decided to start dating.  Since we had spent all of that time hanging out earlier that year, we already knew a lot about each other, so we both knew that this wasn’t going to be some sort of frivolous dating experience.  We figured we would start dating with a purpose (we actually told people I was courting her).  Over the past seven months, we grew very close to each other, and spent more time talking about our pasts, our presents and our dreams for the future.

While we were discussing our plans for the future, we started to realize that we couldn’t picture our lives without each other.  We just really enjoyed being together.  So, after a couple of months thinking about it and praying about it, we decided to get married.  So, that’s the basic gist of it all.  I will have more on some of the specifics in other posts I’m writing.  But, for those of you who want to know the basic scoop, that’s it.  We are planning on having the ceremony in Utah this June.  And for those of you wondering why so soon, don’t worry, it is not a shotgun wedding 🙂