.our love story, part 2 - i blame haiti.

we arrive in Haiti and begin to dive right into ministry. mind you, many of my family members are on this trip and noticing how much time jarred & i are spending getting to know each other. i even at one point said to my sister-in-law, "i'm going to intentionally not hang out with him today. i am in no way wanting a relationship with anyone and i don't want hanging out with him to get in the way of why i'm on this trip." she just gave me this little chuckle and said, "okay!" in her most excited voice - i love that girl... this baby-snuggling guy was unintentionally putting off the "i'm awesome" vibes. the bottom baby is our future niece :)

we proceeded through our week filled with medical clinics and time at the mission (the orphanage), chats on the beach and in the hotel lobby in the evenings and time spent with family and friends, getting to know one another. the ignoring didn't work out so well for either of us. i mean how can you ignore a darling man in scrubs sewing up fingers and treating babies?!??! impossible.

it was evident by mid-trip that we really dug each other - friend or future spouses, whatever it be, we dug each other. my mom was walking with a friend by the pool and sandi said to my mom, "that's your future son-in-law, you know that right?" what sandi failed to realize is that jarred was within ear shot of her :) neither of us had any clue at that point how true those words were. for me, it was just a camp crush - we'd go home and it would all be over.

after many late nights talking on the above beach of amazingness, we decided the last night that we finally needed to talk about this "thing" that everyone around us was talking about and we were avoiding - because neither of us were in a place to be in a relationship... what we determined was this: we dug each other, we wanted to stay friends, he had some loose ends to tie up at home & some choices to make so the idea of dating was tossed out the window, we planned to see each other about 3 months later when he made his way up the california coast.

i look back now and i am incredibly thankful that neither of us were relationship-ready because we'd have been much more worried about impressing each other. instead it was a simple friendship of kindred spirits - sweaty, gross, exhausted, full-hearted kindred spirits, serving in haiti. we traded seats to sit together on the flight home and made each other playlists on our iphones just like crushing junior highers and went our separate ways. that's how we left it where we'd met - at the DFW airport. just friends. until...