If you had asked either of us a year ago where we might be on March 25th, 2011, I doubt either of us would have been able to predict correctly. The past year has been a year full of absolute madness in our lives...madness that has brought one crazy thing after another, each event bringing us closer to the place we're at now, a place of total reliance on the plans of our Creator to figure out what is next.
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| march 2010 |
January 9th, 2010 is when this all began. We traced the phone call on our cell phone records to be sure of it. Craig called me at 11pm one night and told me he wanted a future with me. We had been friends for years, but this was definitely new. As this new stage in our relationship began to unfold, he sent me a book called
A Million Miles in a Thousand Years by Donald Miller. The book talks about life as a story. Donald Miller points out that a compelling story involves challenges and obstacles; a good story involves characters overcoming things to reach goals that mean something. Craig had underlined all the same points in the book that struck me. I knew this was going somewhere.
After a lot of careful consideration and prayer, on May 21st, 2010 I moved up north to Star 51. My heart had melted the first time Craig kissed me in March, but it I had doubts that it could work. He was too far away. It took months for me to make the decision, but once I did, things got good.
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| july 2010 |
Life on Star 51 was different--slower, peaceful, healing. I was working as Ranch Camp director at Kidder Creek Camp and enjoying the freedom of living in a rustic cabin in a forest. Craig and I settled in to love and joked about getting married in July 2011. We thought that seemed really soon until one Sunday at the Scott Valley Berean Church, it struck me. 12-31-10. I teared up in church as I felt God challenge my heart...Would I trust Him with this? Craig and I talked about the options, and as our footloose and fancy free summer drew to a close, we knew decision time was drawing near.
A few weeks after we started talking about getting married on 12-31-10, we found ourselves at Shackleford Falls, a beautiful waterfall near Kidder Creek in Quartz Valley, CA. We were eating a snack we bought at Dave's Place in Fort Jones and sitting on the rocks by the waterfall. As we teetered on the edge of the rocks, the situation seemed strangely symbolic of where we stood in life. Could this really be the our story? Were we willing to jump into the water and trust that God was the one in charge, or would we hold for dear life to what we thought we
should be doing?
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| august 2010 |
These choices are never easy, but we were past the point of no return. Summer was ending and everything was up in the air, we had to choose a direction to set our course. The beauty of the waterfall was stunning, and the possibility of living a great story rushed into our hearts. We have a picture from that night at the waterfall on a dresser in our room. It's a great reminder of what we have chosen to do. It reminds us of the night we threw caution to the wind... the night we jumped.
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| Craig's romantic proposal in Bigfork, MT |
Craig proposed on August 24th, 2010, and soon after we set plans in motion for 12-31-10. The process was never conventional. We chose to get married at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation ranch in Vista, CA. The ranch echoed a distant dream that we had to start a ranch like it on Star 51.
12-31-10 finally arrived and it was perfect. It was disorganized, it was spontaneous, things didn't go according to plan, but, like I said, it was perfect. We were overwhelmed with love and support, and so many people that we couldn't have made it to this point in life without were there. We celebrated for three whole days and were absolutely exhausted by the end. We were excited to be married, and excited to take the focus off of us for a while.
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| getting hitched in Vista, CA |
We spent a few nights at La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, CA and relaxed together. We even got massages, it was delightful. We had done a lot of planning and traveling before our wedding, so actually being married was surreal. It had been a whirlwind and now we were standing on a new cliff, teetering once again on the edge of trusting God with our whole lives. Our first adventure as a married couple was an international voyage that was exploding with way more excitement than we could have planned. I think we'll begin our story there.
