.our love story part 3 - our "first date".

just friends, right? until... our respective airplanes touched down in california and texas and he started texting me ridiculously frequently. and i started checking my phone ridiculously frequently. who could blame me really? so in perfect timing (as God is oh-so-famous for), i headed off for a few days of solitude sans cell phone. i needed to process my time in haiti- what i'd learned there, how God had changed me, what i was being asked to do out of that time. it's another story for another blog, but some incredible things came out of those 3 days listening to the still, small voice of God. crazy what happens when we stop and seek.

i turned my phone on monday morning only to find a voicemail from jarred asking me to call him back. so i did and we talked for my entire one and a half hour drive home. 40 minutes into the conversation, he tells me he'd ended his relationship. in girl speak, to me, this meant "he's totally into me and wants to date me." in his mind - i learned later - it meant "he made a hard choice to end something unhealthy and he needs a break from dating, but he wants to build a relationship with me because there's something about me..." oh men & women and their brains :)

throughout the next 2 weeks i learned two things 1) that there was a "haiti reunion" party/debrief at my parents' house two weeks later and 2) that Jarred was going back to haiti for 5 weeks. i'm no fool. i knew that if i didn't see him before he went back to haiti, the chances of us actually developing any sort of relationship would be decreased because of the lack of communication in haiti. i also needed to at some point talk to the organization we went to haiti with about future plans there, so i decided there was no time like the present & i missed a great friend's wedding and booked a plane ticket to texas.

i told him i was coming and he said he'd come too and stay the whole time with me at my parents' house (the perk of having spent 8 days with my parents in haiti). excitedly nervous didn't even begin to describe how i felt getting off that plane. i actually don't remember much about him picking me up from the airport and what i can assure you was an awkward conversation all the way to my parents' house. that night we'd planned to have dinner with a few of his friends and my cousin and then go out two-stepping. dinner was great, but i wasn't sure how to read him because he paid for my dinner as well as his friend's (a girl) because he owed her for something, or maybe because he's just nice that way, but it confused me. were we on a date? i still don't know. but we had a great time dancing and went home to my parents house. we were getting water and a midnight snack in the kitchen and he kissed me. in my parents' kitchen, am i 12 or 30? who knows, but that was the point where i knew this was our first date, he was into me and it was totally worth coming home to figure that out.

the rest of the weekend was an awesome blur with our haiti team, the medical missions board of directors and some time spent with my brothers and their wives. we met the guy that infamous "texas friend" said she was going to marry while lamenting over relationships in the ft lauderdale airport - they are married now :)

we even made a lunchtime stop at my niece's class to hang out with my favorite girl. he was a champ and won her over right away.

he took me to the airport and then 10 days later left for a month in haiti - absence makes the heart grow...

.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...

.our love story, part 1 - how we met.

***pre-post disclaimer: i promise to get to the wedding part... for my own sake more than yours, i want to have our story recorded here with pictures so i thought i'd start about 18 months ago and keep the suspense going :) march 2011 - DFW airport food court (most romantic meet-your-husband spot in the world) i roll in at 5am on a red eye flight from LAX. go ahead and picture me post all-night travel on my way to haiti for the first time by way of DFW. go ahead, i dare you. it's not pretty. i'm 3 weeks post-breakup, traveling to haiti on a scouting trip for work, mostly excited to spend 8 days with my parents, my sister-in-law, my aunt and a good friend from texas who i was meeting up with for the rest of the journey. my parents come and find me, we walk to get some breakfast at the food court where the rest of the crew was. i hug the 8 people i know and i very briefly meet the 5 i don't know (including my now husband). my initial thought is, "he's cute, but probably either married or too young for me and i'm not interested in him either way because i am anti-relationship right now and maybe forever. being single rules, you don't get hurt or waste time if you stay single." i proceeded to have an obnoxiously loud conversation with said texas friend over breakfast and think nothing more of jarred's presence. (below is our first team picture and is said to be the only picture from the trip where jarred & i are not standing together)

we get stranded in fort lauderdale. we sit, on the floor, for hours and i end up sitting with him and texas friend reading endless entries of "damnyouautocorrect" and laughing hysterically while other, more responsible adults (a.k.a. my parents) try to figure out how to get us to haiti.

we then sit in our same triad and start talking relationships, naturally. texas friend and i are both in/out of relationships and completely frustrated by it though at this point she tells me, "i think i'm gonna marry this one." we let out a girlish squeal and jarred looks at us like we're bananas. we are, but at least we're being ourselves. we then ask jarred about his relationship status and he says he doesn't want to talk about it. after much prodding from relentless women, he tells very little except that he's in a rocky relationship. i remember thinking, he's cute, but he's technically unavailable and i am so not dating anytime soon. i remember being charmed by his sarcastic sense of humor and impressed with the way he tolerated the girl talk. and i remember intentionally choosing to not hang around him because there was something about him i liked and i wasn't about to get hurt.

turns out our "stranded in fort lauderdale" story ended up being an overnight stranded. so we went to dinner and i remember sending my best friend a text after dinner saying, "uh-oh, i have a crush on a guy on our team. camp crush, i promise it won't go anywhere because neither of us are in a dating place." i had to confess to someone, right? i felt better having confessed. after dinner, 4 of us ended up going to the beach in fort lauderdale and opting for a midnight fully clothed swim in the atlantic.

at this point i was drawn to his adventurous spirit and realized how much i enjoyed spending time with him. i decided that the week was either going to be really good or really difficult. i mean who has a crush on a guy that's in a rocky relationship day one of a mission trip? (keep in mind we met when i was 29, not 15...) who does that?

haiti, here we come...