I didn’t anticipate revoking my admission to my school of choice at 19 years old. Neither did I anticipate meeting my soon-to-be husband in a season of life that I wasn’t even interested in being in a relationship.

When I determined that I would take a semester to pursue my college degree locally before traveling away from everything I knew and called ‘home’, I was incredibly conflicted and just across that same, local campus was what would become my best friend, feeling the same level of conflicting emotion. See, the college that Ben had been attending (in Maryland) at the time, had been taken over by the school that I “coincidentally” enrolled in (in Pennsylvania) before I pursued my original plan to transfer to my school of choice in New York. So, he was also left with a decision to either part ways with all that was familiar to him and embark on an educational journey in Pennsylvania which was several hundred miles from his hometown in Virginia or, to begin to pursue his education in an unrelated school.

We were both entering a completely unpredicted season of life.

Yet, this season of life brought me one of the most incredible gifts I’ve ever encountered.

And you know, these are the stories that make up fairytales, right?! You know the ones; two strangers – completely blind-sided by love…except, that wasn’t quitttteee how it went for us.

My logic was based around the sole fact that I was only attending this school for a semester. I wouldn’t be there long so, I didn’t want my roots to be planted too deep. His good-willed attempt to reassign his seating arrangement himself, to strategically sit together, during those first days of class was gently shrugged off and his first request to spend the evening together at a local event was denied as ‘I wasn’t quite feeling up to it’. He was the guy on campus with the biggest heart and was the absolute best at getting anyone to smile; literally, everyone’s best friend. But, I was convinced that would always be his title to me: friend.

I quickly saw how wrong I was.

*a few of our very first iPhone photos together while we were just babies!*