Meeting My Man

Today I am linking up with  Andrea at Momfessionals blog to talk about Meeting My Mate!

So, here's a little background on how I met my hubby. 

 First, I will share this little gem with you from my 11th birthday party where I had a "Wedding" at my party. Guess who was the bride? Me!! Good thing my mom didn't make me wear this dress. 

Let's get started. Matt and I met our Sophomore year in college at Jacksonville State University (January 2002). We actually had a math class together our first semester of Freshman year, but didn't even acknowledge each other then. Back to Sophomore year... we had a Geography class together and I was actually dating someone at the time (but that didn't last much longer). We had class and lab together and I had an old lab book (with answers-eek!) from one of my sorority sisters and he decided to start chatting with me because... well, let's face it, he just wanted the answers. 

So we started hanging out after class and had a little "study group" going which usually ended with us going mud riding in someone's jeep, and not really studying much. So after weeks of this, cutie finally asked me out on a real date. I pretty much knew by this point that I was going to marry this man. So our first date consisted of dinner at a little diner called Cecil's Place and a drive in movie. I should tell you here that Matt was about to go off on Summer Beach Project with Campus Outreach and his disciple mentors highly discouraged him from getting into a relationship. So, he followed their lead and told me we couldn't date, but maybe when he got back from project. Thankfully he just couldn't stay away from me and quickly decided he couldn't wait that long. Insert me saying hooray~~ This is a picture of us during May term when we made a little day trip over to Six Flags. 

So we spent the rest of the month of May hanging out everyday. We would go bike riding, have picnics, cook dinner, and just truly enjoyed each other's company. During that month he came home with me one weekend to meet my family. They were pretty much hooked from the get go too. He came to the lake with our family for Memorial Day weekend and this was our last weekend together before he left for project for two months. Boo hoo!

We wrote letters, called, and sent care packages and finally my family went down mid July and we got to see him. We headed home from the beach and he only had a few weeks left before he would head back to school. Hooray!

 We spent August enjoying each other's company and many fun 

weekends at the lake with my family. 

Our Junior year was fun and we enjoyed having time just being together. 

Matt quickly became the fifth member of our family and enjoyed all our family vacations. It was on this beach trip that I later found out that he asked my dad if could marry me. This was July 2003.

This was one of our engagement photos. Precious right. We got engaged in September 2003. It was a regular Saturday night and he cooked dinner for us at my apartment. Later he suggested we go get ice cream and then we drove up to the top of this mountain in Jacksonville where you can see the whole city. Lots of sweet words, fond memories and talk about the future and it was proposal time. With one rose for each verse, he handed them to me as he read 1 Corinthians 13 out of his Bible. With that he was on one knee and asked me to marry him. Yes, yes and yes!

My family and his were so happy for us. I had not always dated the best men and I was so thankful that the Lord was so gracious to me and allowed my husband to be such a Godly man that would lead our family to serve, love, and know the Lord better. 

So we spent the rest of our Senior year enjoying our engagement and planning our wedding. I graduated in April 2004 and Matt still had one semester to go. 

We were married July 10, 2004 (just a few days after we both turned 22). We were just babies! But we knew we couldn't wait to spend the rest of our lives together. 

The next day we were off on a plane to a romantic resort in Jamaica where we spent the week. 

Here we are a couple months later for our first Christmas as a married couple. 

And now, we are coming up on our 11th wedding anniversary and I couldn't be more in love with this man. I truly can say that I grow more and more in love with him each day. He is patient, kind, selfless, humble, and gospel driven. Thank you Lord for this marriage you have allowed us to have!