Sorry it's so long, but it could have been much longer! Though I don't wish to write out every single detail, I did want to give a fairly complete timeline of how things transpired between us. I think it's a pretty interesting story, but maybe I'm just a bit biased!
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Sometime back, many years ago, two pastors' families lived in states that were very far apart. There were many similarities between the families: four children with only one daughter each, a great interest in the continent of Africa, many mutual friends and acquaintances, and most importantly, a shared love of God's Word. These families knew each other generally and at a couple times through the course of the years got to spend some time together. One of those families was mine, and the other was Ethan's. I don't remember much about him through the years, though I know there were at least three occasions when we were at the same conference, camp, or wedding.
When I moved to Africa in 2010, I wasn't worried about who I was going to marry. I knew that when the time was right, God would bring the right person to my attention. It wasn't past His power to make sure that I was in the right place at the right time. I was more interested in taking advantage of that opportunity to live in Africa! I was more scared of marrying the wrong person just because I wanted to be married, than the possibility of never marrying at all. In early 2011, one of the guys that came to Botswana for a missions module was from Ethan's church. When Nick got back to ND, Ethan heard all about me and how Ethan and I were perfect for each other, and that was initially what got Ethan's attention. Of course, he couldn't let on to Nick that he was actually interested, so he just blew it off and Nick soon dropped the subject. But the ball had started rolling, and Ethan began praying about the possibility and doing a bit of internet sleuthing.
As he talked to his parents about it and they all prayed through the summer of 2011, the Lord was also working in my life. In many ways, I felt like every day was precarious. My visa for Botswana was not yet approved, and for many months, I was living in the country almost from week to week, with the possibility of deportation hanging over my head. God taught me a lot about using my time wisely and just trusting Him for the way that things would work out. I was perfectly content with whatever the Lord had for me... I just really wanted to know what that was. How little did I realize this lesson would be repeated again and again in the coming months!
An inquiring email from Ethan's dad the end of August 2011 was a bit of a shock for me, since Ethan was not even on my radar, so to speak. Come to think of it, though it was Nick that originally told Ethan about me, I don't remember Nick ever talking to me about Ethan. I knew Ethan existed, but I didn't care anything about him. There was something to be said for his reputation, though, as I knew nothing bad about him and had always heard good things about him from mutual friends when they would speak of him. My interest was immediately piqued when we received that first email, and I agreed that I would be interested in getting to know him better. I knew enough about him to know that we shared common interests and passions in life, but I guess I never expected him to be interested in someone like me. :)
From that time, my parents and I began to pray about Ethan and about the possibility of a relationship starting. The dads planned to get together while we were back in the States in November of 2011, and they both enjoyed their conversation and decided that the next step would be for Ethan to spend time with my family. My dad wanted to be able to talk to him and see him for a period of time, rather than just talking to him on the phone, so Ethan began planning a trip to Africa.
The Lord worked so much in my life during those months, because in some ways from my perspective, it seemed like nothing was happening. All I could do was pray... I say "ALL" I could do. Looking back, that was the most crucial thing that I could do and the best way for the Lord to teach me all that He did. How easy it would have been (and I may or may not have started out this way) praying for the Lord to allow us to get married, but the Lord slowly changed my focus. What if the Lord had brought everything to this point just so that I could pray for Ethan? What if what was best for his life was not for us to be together, but for me to pray for him? He was making some decisions about his future and his ministry, and what if the Lord's will was simply for me to spend this time praying for him and then we would all walk away? It was a hard thing at first, but I'm so glad that I had that time to learn to pray for him, to pray for God's will in his life, whether that included me or not.
Now remember that up to this point, we had no communication with each other. He had a little bit of communication with my dad, but mostly, everything was hinging on his trip to Africa, which he planned for the last week of May 2012. I made plans to go away and stay with some friends while he was there, and wouldn't you know... it ended up being over my birthday! :)
While Ethan was in Botswana, I heard very little about 'how it was going.' I knew he arrived safely, and every once in a while my brother would text me a picture of some amazing food item that he and Ethan were making. On my birthday, they made bagels. Wasn't that nice of them? Ha! It wasn't until I got back home later on the day Ethan left that I heard my family's impressions on him. Suffice it to say that they all loved him and thought we would be perfect for each other. My dad wanted him to finalize a couple other things in his life before he and I began corresponding, so he was trying to downplay the whole thing, just in case it never worked out, but I could still tell that he was excited. ;o)
The beginning of July brought word that I was definitely leaving Botswana, and I began making plans about when I would be going back to the States. The end of July brought Ethan saying he was ready to begin communicating with me, and as you can imagine, my world was rather confusing for a bit. At least I knew that I wasn't going to be in Africa anymore, but beyond that, I had no idea where I was going to be living or what I was going to be doing. Once again, the Lord was teaching me valuable lessons about just following Him one step at a time and trusting that He had the details worked out.
We began corresponding on August 1st, and soon fell into a nice little rhythm of emailing back and forth every day. Ethan says that by this point, from what he felt the Lord was showing him and what he already knew about me from my blog and my family, he knew that he wanted to marry me. I was a little bit more skeptical. Well, not too skeptical. ;o) After all, I had been praying for him for eleven months and the Lord had given me nothing but peace about moving forward to each next step in the relationship. My family loved him, he passed all my dad's tests, and again, I knew nothing bad about him. However, I really didn't know him, so I had quite a list of questions for him that I wanted to see what he would say. It wasn't that my questions were hard or that there were even right or wrong answers to them. I was just interested in hearing what he would say, how he made decisions in his life, what his priorities were, and what sort of plans he had for his life. And I had a lot of questions. :)
Immediately, we both began realizing that we could practically write each other's emails. Each email there were repeated exclamations of "Me too!" and "I think the same exact thing". Of course, we are not exactly the same, but in our case, it was not opposites attracting!
The night before I was leaving Botswana, I had a conversation with my parents about Ethan. My dad asked me what I was thinking, and I told him that if Ethan asked, I would say yes. Now whether he would actually ask, or when he would ask... that was up to him. Until then, I was keeping a firm hold on my heart and doing my best to not get emotionally attached to him. Easier said than done, but once again, the Lord was teaching me so much through that time.
Ethan wrote my dad the first week of September and said that he knew he wanted to marry me. He didn't even need to see me in person before making the decision; he was ready to make it official. My dad let him wait on pins and needles for almost an entire week (in dad's defense, he was out of town for a couple days and then had internet problems, as well as the time difference challenge), but they were finally able to talk on Saturday, September 8th. Dad gave his full blessing and then gave Ethan my phone number, so that he could call and ask me for himself.
That was quite a nice phone call to receive, and we hardly stopped talking on the phone after that! We went from three and four page daily emails to two and three hour daily phone calls. I much preferred the phone calls to the emails, but I like actual in-person daily conversation better than just phone calls! ;o)
Ethan flew out to Pennsylvania to see me the next week on September 15th, and we announced our engagement to our churches the next day. It may seem a bit strange that we were really 'meeting' each other for the first time after we were already engaged. But by the time Ethan showed up in PA, I could say that he was my closest friend and probably knew more about me than any of my other friends! We had a sort of intellectual and spiritual bond that came through our very deep and personal emails - it was merely learning to build on that emotionally, which wasn't too hard to do once we got past the first awkward moments.
The first date - coffee included, of course!
I realize that everyone's story is a bit different and there really isn't a certain box that we can put all relationships into and say, "This is the way that it should be." What worked for Ethan and me would not work for everyone and should not be the way that everyone does it. But it worked for us, and looking back, we can both see the Lord's hand in bringing us together and can recount the blessings and the lessons that we learned during that time. For myself, it was so important to me that I have that time before we began communicating to pray about him and for him, and to learn those lessons about faith and trusting in God during that time. Though some of those days were very hard (and I have the anguished journal entries to prove it!), I wouldn't trade those days for anything. It was important for me to have a time of getting to know Ethan through our emails that wouldn't have happened if I had met him in person sooner than I had.
It's been such a fun journey to be on, and I've quite enjoyed falling in love with and committing my life to Ethan. Every day I am more amazed and more thankful at just how perfect he is for me. I couldn't have planned it better myself and I'm so glad I didn't have to do any of the planning at all! Thankfully, the Lord had it all under control. :o)