During my high school years, I spent a week each summer on a mission trip in Honduras. While on my last Honduran journey I got lucky enough to travel with the cutest guy I'd ever seen! He looked like the love child of Prince William and JFK, his name was "Ollie" which was so vintage and posh, and my 17 year old self was dying to meet him. He was very quiet; I didn't get many opportunities to naturally start a conversation and confess my undying love. It wasn't until one very very hot Honduran day when a group of us missionaries were walking to the soccer field that I had my golden opportunity. Fate found Ollie and I walking along a little behind the group, and Ollie used his long lanky God-given arms to accidentally brush the back of my pants. I stopped right there and grabbed his wrist to say in my best accusatory voice, "Did you just touch my butt?" (I figured, this was it. If he doesn't laugh it's a no go.) He looked me directly in the eye completely straight faced and said "Was it as good for you as it was for me?"
That's about as close to love at first sight as it gets.
(unfortunately, these represent all the photos I have from that trip)
When we landed back in Ohio I ran to my grandparents in the terminal and I said "I met this boy...." (which they now credit as the moment they knew I had met the man who would be my husband). Of course, it was difficult for us to be inseparable, seeing as how we lived an hour apart and neither of us drove. But through the help of AIM, rudimentary texting, and long distance phone calls, our relationship continued to grow.
Each Sunday Ollie would come for early church services with his mother, and then we'd walk to a nearby park and talk for hours or have a picnic next to the water. He was so smart, and interesting, and (maybe most importantly) he made me laugh.
We had lives planned after graduation that were set into motion before we met. I was early accepted into a fairly competitive small liberal arts college, Ollie was training for The Coast Guard Academy. It wasn't long before he started applying to Ohio colleges and spending less time researching the east coast. For Christmas, he took me to Connecticut to meet his brother and sister-in-law and their son. Because I had already financially invested in Marietta, I went away to school there for a year but was miserable. When it came time to schedule for classes the following Fall, I transferred to the local branch of the same college Ollie was attending. Luckily for us, our parents really supported our relationship and our church friends were constantly keeping us in their prayers, both of which buoyed us up when the distance made our relationship challenging.
2 years after we first met, Ollie took me back to that special park and proposed on the same bench we used when we were whiling away all those Sunday hours. We were 19 and too poor to afford an engagement ring, so my great-grandmother gave Ollie her engagement ring from the 1930's. Believe it or not, my great-grandfather and my husband have the same first name, not to mention my Mamaw thought Ollie was the bee's knees.
We got married in December of 2009.
Now we've been married for 5 and a half years, and each anniversary we celebrate is better than the one before.
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