Love is a lot of things. We all know “Love is patient, Love is kind…”, but love is best when it is a surprise. I never imagined that the love of my life could have snuck into my life the way Heather did. We knew each other a long time before we started dating, and I’m willing to bet that neither of us expected what God had in store for us. She’s reminded me many times how weird and awkward she thought I was when we first worked together at Gill-Roy’s Hardware in Gaylord. Little did she know, that weirdness and awkwardness was the result of how intimidated I was by her! Either way, we began to form a friendship, and during the summer of 2019 we started to hang out a little more outside of work. It took some nudging from a few friends of mine, but I finally worked up the courage to ask her on a date to watch Spider-Man: Far From Home. However, I apparently didn’t make it obvious enough that it was a date (it was plenty obvious to ME), and so I had to ask her out on another date which I didn’t mind, I was just lucky she gave me a second chance! We kept going on dates, and on August 31st of that year I asked her to be my girlfriend. (Ask Heather for that embarrassing story and she’ll gladly tell you). It's been nearly four years since we began dating. Four years of day trips and weekend getaways. Four years of dinner-and-a-movie dates and lazy days. Four years of driving to each other because we can’t stand being apart. Four years of challenges and triumphs. Four years of building our relationship with each other as well as our families. Four years well spent. God knew what he was doing when he brought us together. We complete each other in ways nobody else can. This past season of our lives has been a blissful ending to one chapter of our story while beautifully foreshadowing the next. The luckiest man, Levi Irish