You asked, I answered: love edition

Happy Valentine's Day, my sweet friends!  I hope that no matter what season in life you are walking through you will choose embrace the red, pink, and hearts that are all around today.  You are loved.  You are so loved.  Maybe you feel love from your mom or from your sister or from your co-workers or from your girlfriends.  Or maybe today you just feel loved by Jesus.  No matter what, I know that you feel loved by someone today.  Embrace that.  Even if there won't be a man to take you to a fancy dinner or deliver flowers to your workplace, choose to remember that you are loved.  Choose to walk through today with a smile and a happy heart.  Choose to make today a good day.  February 14th comes each year whether we like it or not, so you might as well make the best of it, amen?  

Pep talk over. :)

Today, in honor of Valentine's Day, I wanted to answer some of your questions about Ty and me!  

"How did the two of you meet?"

Well... we met in high school.  Yes, really!  He was a senior and I was a sophomore and we really only knew each other because of baseball.  He was on the baseball team and I was a diamond girl.  We saw each other at games and randomly from time to time, but we really didn't have a whole lot of contact.  He graduated, went off to Ole Miss, and I went on with my high school years.  The June before my senior year of high school he contacted me out of the blue.  I'm not really positive how he got my number, but I remember I was in my bedroom the very first time his number popped up on my phone.  Instant butterflies.  And that was 10 months before we were ever really a couple.  

Throughout my senior year of high school I drove down to Oxford from time to time for football games... really, that was just an excuse to see him.  :)  We took things so slowly and neither one of us ever really came out and said what we were feeling.  By January of 2009 I think we both knew that we wanted to be together, but it wasn't until April 4th that we both knew that we were going to be a couple.  Come Summer, we would almost be inseparable.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  We dated... very slowly, fell in love, he got down on one knee, and now we will become husband and wife in just 22 days.  Thank you, Jesus.

"Why did you start dating Ty if he wasn't a strong Christian?  Do you feel like you "changed" him?

Oh, what a big question.  I think I could talk about this for days because I have such strong convictions now that we are almost on the other side of our dating relationship.  I will start off by saying that that I was not the Christian I should have been when Tyler and I started dating.  I was 18, I was naive, and I had in no way protected my heart from this relationship.  I grew up in a Christian home and I loved the Lord from a young age.  But, I knew that I was a "good girl" (read more about that here) and I really didn't have the desire to date around.  So all that "guarding your heart" stuff really didn't seem to "apply" to me.

I quickly begin to have feeling for Tyler and it just hit me one day that he didn't fully live his life for the Lord.  And I wasn't either.  We continued to date and I began to pray.  I prayed, I prayed, and I prayed.  And the Lord was faithful.  Over time the Lord has molded Ty into a man that is different from the 20 year old boy I began dating in 2009.  Tyler has grown into a mature, godly, respectable man that seeks the Lord above all else.  He's the man I prayed for.

Because we both weren't founded in the Lord from the beginning, our relationship has seen hurt, brokenness, and heartbreak.  We've been able to experience a relationship away from the Lord and now we get to experience a relationship that is close to the Lord.  And it is so, so sweet. 

Do I feel like I "changed" him?  No. Absolutely not.  I feel like the Lord changed him.  The Lord changed us.  I couldn't even begin to explain to you the grace that the Lord has poured out on us in our almost four years as a couple.  We've grown so much closer to the Lord and we're a completely different couple that we were in 2009.  Praise Jesus for that.

Our relationship should show you one thing:  Jesus and his faithfulness.  

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There were a few other questions about relationships, but I am going to save those for another post.  I think we've talked about relationships enough for this February 14th. ;)  

I love you girls so much.  Happy Valentine's Day!