Our Story

Everyone always asks "How did you and your husband meet?".  

Well, there's an interesting story:

If ever either of us had a doubt that God has a plan for our lives, we became absolutely sure in July 2011.  G had been home from Iraq for two weeks of R&R and was scheduled to head back to war that day.  I was on my way to visit my sister's family at an Army base in Alabama.  We were both flying out of the Indianapolis airport, which was rare for me, because Chicago is usually my go to.  G’s flight was scheduled to leave at 10:45am, but he woke up late and took a long time saying goodbye to his family and missed his flight out.  The next flight heading to Atlanta was at 12:20pm, the flight I was on.  G says he noticed me in the terminal before I  had even said goodbye to my parents, I don't exactly remember seeing him. For those of you who don’t know, I get a bit anxious when travelling....so I said goodbye to my parents and headed through security and toward the gate almost an hour and a half early.  

As I walked up to the gate, I noticed the ONLY person sitting there was a really cute soldier. I could not help but stare at him as I walked up and then G caught me staring at him. I was incredibly embarrassed until he flashed me a huge smile.  Still embarrassed, I proceeded to sit as far away from him as possible.  Once again, my nervousness made me get up and move as the gate started to fill up.  Naturally, I went and bought Starbucks.  As I came back to the gate, we again made eye contact and smiled and I avoided G.  Finally, I got up again and when I came back the entire gate was full, not a seat could be found....except for the chair right next to G where he had conveniently placed his rucksack.  I noticed G had headphones in so as I was walking up to him, I was doing awkward hand gestures trying to ask if he'd move his bag so that I could sit next to him. Little did I know at the time that G didn't even have music playing and I looked like a total goof.  G happily moved his bag and thought he'd finally get to talk to me after an hour of me avoiding him.  But then I pulled out a Nicholas Sparks book.  After reading the same page three times, I finally turned and said ''Hi''.  We spent the next half hour talking about nothing and everything.  We both immediately felt a connection. He even texted his family saying he found the girl he was going to marry.  And then the flight started to board.  My section was called and as I got up to go, he asked if we could be facebook friends so that we could keep in touch while he was overseas.  Of course I said yes!

From then on we talked almost every day online.  It started with a few messages back and forth a day, and then finally after almost 2 months, I asked G to Skype, not realizing the 8 hour time difference meant it was after midnight in Iraq.  G didn't care and happily agreed.  Once we started video chatting on Skype, we tried to do so every day. We always made time even with the time difference and classes and activities.  We both loved getting to know each other and both felt like this could really work even though once G came home from his deployment, we would be living 3 hours apart in two different states but at least only 1 time zone away!

Finally, one day I got a message saying G was headed home to me. I was over the moon.  Even though I wouldn't admit it, over the 3 months since we had met, I had fallen in love with G without even going on one date, and he had fallen for me too.  Within a week of being in country, G managed to get debriefed, move home, buy a truck, and drive three hours to see me.  We were both really nervous since we hadn't actually been in the same room since the airport, but everything just clicked.

G proposed right before I graduated from college, and we were married 14 months later in July of 2014.  I am truly the luckiest girl in the world.