Aaron will tell you that even though we were in the same youth group in high school, he never talked to me because he was a “wet blanket” (quiet and shy) and I was a “tornado” (loud and everywhere at once). So it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that we met through some mutual friends, but we were acquaintances at best as he lived in Hawaii and I was still in Nebraska. Then, just over a year ago, Aaron sent me a Facebook message in response to a blog post I had written and honestly, I was pretty taken with him from that point on. We exchanged messages more and more frequently until we found we were talking every single day for hours. After about a month, I wrote in my journal that for some reason I felt like Aaron would one day be my husband. It just felt so right from the start – so different than anything I had ever experienced. Around the same time, Aaron was planning a trip back to Nebraska for a friend’s wedding and I was so excited to see him and see if our deep connection over the phone was the same when we were in person. Before I picked him up from the airport I asked him, “What if we see each other and our lives are never the same?” Safe to say, they haven’t been.

Our long distance romance was full of surprises and trips to see each other and letters and cards mailed back and forth. It wasn’t easy to be so far apart, but we survived the distance with daily phone calls, FaceTime and hundreds of snaps on Snapchat. After Aaron’s trip to Nebraska last August, and both of our vacation balances running low, our next planned trip to see each other was over Christmas break in December. Little did I know, Aaron had other plans.

So let’s back up in the story just a bit.

When l was leaving Nebraska in August, I knew that I wanted to marry Lyndi. In fact, I have a picture from that day to prove it. As I was sitting in my plane on the runway of the Omaha airport, I could see Lyndi in the terminal, waiting for my plane to depart. I was so sad to leave her that day, but also so happy that I had found this amazing woman that I loved so much (and who didn’t seem to mind having me around either).

I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. So after I got back to Hawaii in August, I booked another flight to come back to Nebraska in November. This time, it was going to be a total surprise for Lyndi’s birthday. And it was! But not only was I surprising her for her birthday, I was also coming to ask her to marry me!

So on the night of November 11th, I got down on one knee at Lincoln Berean on the stage of the main auditorium. I chose to propose at Berean because it was the first place I saw her so long ago and it was also the first place we talked in person a couple of years ago. More importantly though, we talked very early on about how we had a desire for Christ to be the center of our relationship and how, as we seek to grow closer to Christ, we would also grow closer to one another. It became the heartbeat of our relationship. So that night I told her, “This is where I first saw you, this is where I first talked to you, and this is where our story is going to start.”