It’s Our Anniversary!

Today, Austin and I have been married for 13 years! I am so happy to be married to this amazing guy. I thought I would take you down memory lane for just a few minutes.

How We Met

Austin and I met when I was 15 years old and he was 16. He moved to my hometown, Chesapeake, Va. when he was that age. In his search for a church, he met my best friend, Ruth in high school band.

She invited him to our church where he attended on a Sunday that she couldn’t stay. She promptly pawned Austin off on me so she could get to where she needed to go.

I glanced at him from across the room and I thought, “Maybe that is the guy I will marry one day”. When I looked at him a little better, I thought, “Oh God, please no!”.

Fortunately, when I got a closer look at him, I completely changed my mind and told God it would be ok if we got married.

He thought I was the Sunday School teacher, so he was pretty shocked to find out I was a few months younger than he was.

Our Friendship Took Off

When we met, he had a girlfriend, so we had no choice to be friends before we developed a romance…and friends we became. I loved spending time with him and I’m pretty sure he liked hanging out with me, too.

We Started Dating

About a month after he broke up with his girlfriend, we started dating. Our dating years were very long and drawn out. Since we started dating when I was 16, getting to the point we could get married was a long way off.

During our dating years, we kissed, hugged, held hands, and so on like most other couples. About two years into our relationship, we were going further physically than we wanted to. Since we both made a commitment to sexual purity, we stopped kissing altogether.

Since we didn’t have a physical relationship for several years, it made our friendship grow. We relied on our words to communicate everything. We filled our time with activities, not making out.

The Proposal

A few weeks ago, I talked about how Austin proposed to me. You can watch this YouTube video where I share about it in depth.

Long story short, he proposed to me from the pulpit after preaching his last sermon before heading off to college.

Our Wedding Day

We were engaged for about 10 months before we got married. It was our goal to have a wedding that would accommodate anyone that wanted to attend. I’ve never counted, but we filled our sanctuary at South Norfolk Baptist Church. I suspect there were close to 300 people there.

Our home church had been a very integral part of our relationship. That was the place where we both became Christians, got baptised, started dating, accepted our call to full time ministry, had countless people pour into us, and where Austin proposed to me. It was our hopes to have as many people be a part of putting on the wedding as possible.

Here are a few of the things that I still have that we used on our wedding day.

We have already celebrated our anniversary. You can check out what we did for our anniversary date here.

What about you? How did your proposal and wedding day go down?