Our Story...

Hello blog... hello world of bloggers and blog readers. Its good to be back after a 6 month hiatus. Who would have known that in 6months my life could change as drastically as it has?!

Last summer (the last time I wrote on here) was a whirlwind of events. I had moved back to the city of Philadelphia the beginning of July after having spent a year at my mom's saving money and just being with family. I started getting involved in Ultimate Frisbee again (something I used to play quite religiously for the two years previous), playing most sunday and wednesday evenings with a group comprised of anywhere from 6-24 people. I transferred my job at starbucks to the city as well and had my first experience of real city life (living and working there). I was riding my bike to work everyday, playing frisbee a couple times a week, constantly surrounded by friends (I lived in a house with four other people), taking road trips, and really just loving life. Who would've thought it could get any better? Well.... I guess God did ; )

Throughout that summer there would be the random appearance of a boy named Daniel at frisbee. A boy I had met the year before, but only once, and only caught his name (and honestly didnt remember it...in fact for the first month at frisbee I kept calling him Chris). He came up to me the first day I saw him at frisbee and said "You're Jessica aren't you?" I was a little taken back, thinking 'where do I know this guy from? No one in Philly ever calls me Jessica, they all call me Jesse... and all my Jersey friends call me Jess. The only mention of the name Jessica comes when I'm at home with my family. ' Turned out he had remembered my name from the year before and according to him, had always wondered,' I wonder whatever happened to that girl?'

We didnt get to know each other at all the month of July, only saw each other at frisbee. It was in the month of August that things began their whirling. Oh, let me back track a bit first... it had turned out that Daniel and I had Almost crossed paths an incredibly large amount of  times in the year previous. In the year I was living in Jersey again, Dan had made friends with a guy named Scott and had been helping out on his house (the same house I had been living in 8 months prior and the same house I moved back into when I moved out of my mom's) laying hardwood floor, putting up drywall... all different stuff. Scott, just happened to have been one of my best friends and so the fact that I never heard mention of Dan, never ran into him there, whatever, is pretty crazy. Also, the house Dan was living in in NJ is owned by my friend Grant, whom I've known for about 6 years and who had asked me a couple times to come see his new home (where dan lived also), but I never made it there ; ) And the house where I had my garden last summer is owned by my friend Nathan, whom Grant used to live with, and where Dan had been on various occasions while I had my garden, just not while I was there. How crazy is that? And lastly, Dan and I had met the year previous (the exchange of names) at Liberti Church, where I had attended for a year, but had stopped going to when I moved back to Jersey (same time Dan was going there every week). So thats the backtracking.

In the middle of August I had a going away party for my friend Brad, who was moving to California, and I invited Daniel, along with many others to come. He was one of the first guests there and one of the last to leave. We honestly didnt spend any time that night getting to know each other, because I was dancing the whole time and he was more of a wall flower in the kitchen having conversations with people... we have very different social personalities. Before he left however, he asked if I was going to "Libertipalooza" the next day (a picnic/game day our church had about an hour and 1/2 outside the city once a year)... I said I wasnt planning on it... he offered me a ride, I still said no. The next morning I woke up at 8 am to the sound of a text message from Daniel telling me I had one more chance to decide and he could still come pick me up in 15 minutes. I changed my mind and decided to go. So off we went (with two other guys in the truck as well). All that day we didnt spend even a minute together other that the car ride there... we were both off doing our own things, hanging out with our own friends, but each gazing around to see what the other was up to, just trying to get an outside feel for what the other person was all about. By the end of the day, after all the sports, sun, and eating, we were all exhausted and were literally waiting on the ground by the truck until Dan came over with the keys. He has a big old truck with one of those big bench seats in the front, and so I asked if I could sit up front and lay down for the ride home. He said that was fine, gave me a blanket to use as a pillow, and the other two guys sat and slept in the back as Daniel drove us home. As I layed there, supposedly sleeping, with eyes closed and all, I listened to Dan gently singing under his breathe to the cd that he had put in (Chris Rice- a christian artist who I've really grown to love since then), and I had this thought pop into my head that was really very confusing to me... I thought " I could listen to this guy sing every day of my life, I feel so secure and comforted" then I thought "what am I thinking, I barely know him!" Ha! the games we play in our own minds. However, something that day told me that there was something very special about this man, and that he was very special to me, even though I barely knew him. That night, after we dropped the other guys off and went to my house, he stayed and watched a movie with me and Scott's dad, who was in town from Virginia. I didnt hear from him again until that wednesday. I wanted to see him again and so I texted him and asked him if he would be going to frisbee that night. He wrote back and said he couldnt because his sister and brother in-law were in town from Michigan, celebrating their anniversary in Atlantic City and that he was going there to have dinner with them. He then said, if I wanted to have dinner with some amazing folks I was more than welcome to go with him. My heart jumped out of my chest! I thought, " Is this a date? Is he just inviting me as a friend? If it is the first date, I'm meeting his sister and brother-in-law right off the bat? oh man!" I accepted of course and cancelled my plans for that night.

Dressed in a yellow dress with brown cowboy boots, feeling mighty confident, I drove to Dan's, at which point we would drive together to Atlantic City. An hour and 15 minute drive with a guy I barely knew still, going to Atlantic city to have dinner with his family... was I crazy??? I was crazy, crazy for worrying. It turned out to be the most wonderful, comfortable, laugh-filled, and memorable date I had ever been on, with a great dinner, desert at a fondue place, running along the beach, and getting to know him and his siblings. By the end of it I felt immensely close to Daniel and felt so confident that I could trust him and confide in him. We made plans to spend that next Saturday together. In the mean time, Daniel got an email in which he was offered a job at a helicopter facility up in Horse Heads, NY where the week before he had had an interview (4 hours away from philly). When I heard the news I was happy for him but at the same time, I felt like I took a punch to the gut.

From that Saturday on, we spent every single day together, whether on days off work, or right after work, we would rush to wherever the other was. We did everything we could think of, from him teaching me to change the oil on my car, a day trip to Horse Heads to try and find him a place to live, dinners with my family, a night trip with friends to go cliff jumping (at which I suddenly was too scared to jump), countless walks, frisbee tosses, dinners with friends, and the list goes on. We did this for two weeks at which point we took a 9 hour road trip down to SW Virginia to meet Daniel's parents. I somehow managed to get four days off for the trip and Daniel had just finished his job and had about two weeks before he had to move up to NY for the new job. By this point we already knew that we loved each other (we had both expressed it in the first week- as insane as that sounds), I already knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him, perhaps even from that first day in his truck (even if I thought it was crazy then), and from what I could tell, Daniel felt the same, although we hadnt had any conversation saying exactly that. I knew I was more in love than I ever thought possible and I had a connection with this man, who was very quickly becoming my best friend, that I never thought could exist. Everyday I had more and more chances to get to know him, more and more parts of him to discover, and more and more chances to be amazed at this person that it seemed God had made so perfectly for me, and I for him. I never thought I could find someone with all the quirky, wonderful, traits that Daniel had. Never thought I could find someone who shared as many silly little interests with me, and yet here he was right in front of me, and here we were in Virginia, meeting his family.

Those four days were wonderful, sometimes with a hint of nervousness, but wonderful all the while. Keep in mind, I was in someones home, surrounded by people I never met, and 9 hours from home with no where else to go as a sort of escape, all the time hoping and praying that I would just be myself and that would be enough. There was also an underlying sadness to the trip, not wanting it to end, knowing that when we went home we'd only have one week before he moved to NY. I tried not to think about it too much, but every now and then it would creep up on me and I would feel like I couldn't catch my breath from fear of losing this wonderful gift that had just appeared in my life one day. Well, the trip, like all trips came to an end, regardless of my wants for it to go on forever. We packed up the truck and headed home. Little did I know at the time that while Daniel and his dad were loading up some of our stuff, Dan said "Dad, I think I'm going to ask this girl to marry me, but I sure do like being single." and his dad replied simply "Well, you better not keep her on a rope for too long." and that was the end of the conversation, typical for men I suppose. Daniel heeded to his fathers advice and his own heart's instinct and about an hour into our 9 hour drive home, after having stopped for dinner, Daniel handed me his wallet and said, "Hold that for a minute for me", I responded "Can I look through it? (for some reason wanting to see his picture i.d.s) "sure" he said, "look in the pocket behind the license" I stuck my finger in there, felt around, assuming I was looking for a paper or something, and told him I didnt feel anything. He took the wallet back for a moment, felt around and handed it back to me and said "look again." I did, and what I pulled out made my stomache drop to the floor and my heart shoot through the roof . It was a copper ring he had handmade out of copper wire just for me. I just stared and stared for what felt like eternity trying to wrap my head around what this meant (probably in reality like 5 seconds) until he started speaking. He said "Jessica, I love you, I want to marry you. I'm not going to pull this truck over, and I'm not going to get down on one knee, but I love you and I want you to be my wife." Still in shock yet overjoyed all at once, I moved my head closer in towards his, with the biggest smile thats probably ever graced this face of mine and said over and over again "I want to marry you, I want to marry you, I want to marry you" We spent the next hour after that just gushing over each other and what had just happened, telling each other all the little details of our thoughts that went unsaid up to that point, yet had lead up to this very moment, this certainty that we wanted to be together always. Then for the rest of the trip we talked over every topic we could think of that would be wise to talk over before getting married. It was a night I think neither of us will ever forget.

The next week he went up to NY, lived out of his truck for about a week and then moved in with a young couple from a church up there that had a spare room for just such an event. Daniel drove home every weekend between the end of September to the end of November, at which point we had the most wonderful wedding, surrounded by loving and encouraging friends and family, and full of gratefulness for all that God had brought us through to bring us to this point in time.

We've been married for a month and a half now, living up in Elmira, a cute tiny city in the middle of no-where, NY which I love tremendously, and are excited to be adventuring through life together, loving everyday more than the last, learning how to love each other better and serve one another and God with all of our hearts. Like I said it was a whirlwind, but I wouldn't trade any one part of it. It was and is priceless to me.