Throughout college we were both involved in an on campus Christian ministry called Campus Outreach. We met through a retreat CO hosts, called Summer Beach Project. This two month ministry training experience was held in Myrtle Beach and holds a dear place in the hearts of many of those involved in CO. We left that retreat great friends. We kept in touch and a year later went on our first date! The rest is history!
A beautiful moment a year in the making. Mike had always wanted to show me around his hometown, Jamestown NC. We had to delay this trip for several months, but October 19th was finally the day! We spent the day exploring and visiting museums, shops, and restaurants! Our last stop was City Lake park to go and enjoy the scenery before it started to rain. We walked down to the lake and watched some ducks and talked about the last two years of our relationship. Before I knew what was happening, Mike was down on one knee, pokeball ring box in hand saying "I choose you". If you don't know anything about Pokemon (or my love for it) look it up, this all will make much more sense! Our good friend Dylan was there to capture the moment and cheers erupted around the park! From there we went to our church, King's Cross, and enjoyed sharing our moment with our family and friends!
While we are so excited to share this day with you, we recognize that this marriage points to something much more important. As we have grown in our walks with Christ, our desire for marriage grew because of its representation of the eternal marriage, between Christ and the church. Marriage is but a reflection of the love that Christ showed, and continues to show, us and the restoration that can be found in the Glory of the Cross. Christ paid the greatest cost, his own life, to save sinners like you and me. Jesus is fully God and fully man and came to us as an infant who walked this world and suffered its harsh reality due to the fallen nature of sin. Yet Christ remained sinless, but became sin and died on the cross, shedding his own blood, and walked through death and raised his own life back up from the ground. Christ ascended into heaven, where he sits at the right-hand throne of God, paying the greatest cost for his bride, the church. "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" -2 Corinthians 5:21