Valentine's Day 2017

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope you are having fun celebrating with your friends, loved ones or that special someone. 

This is our first married, and it's got me feeling all sorts of nostalgic and lovey-dovey. I wasn't planning or expecting to do anything special for Valentines. We had a date night on Saturday and splurged more than we usually do, so I thought that would be it for our celebration, but then Derek decided we should at least go get each other a card. 

So I wake up this morning, and find on the dining room table, a card, a box of chocolate, and the best part of it all, was this great letter that was just...great! Derek totally won Valentine's Day this year, hands down. To which he said, "Stop, there's no winning, I just wanted to make it special for you." Gah! He wins even more.

It all got me thinking about how two weeks after we met, I heard a voice telling me, “this is it, this is love.” The only way I can describe that feeling is when you’ve saved up your entire life to go on vacation and see the ocean for the first time. So you finally get to pack your bags, and head out and land on a beach on a beautiful island. You walk to the shore line and wade in, anticipating a gentle caress of the ocean water, but instead, the tides catch you unprepared and knocks you off your feet. It's beautiful and overwhelming and fills you with joy and nervous energy all at the same time.

Until last year, I've never had a boyfriend on Valentine's day & last year we were long-distance, so 2017 was literally my first card and box of chocolate from a boy! So to a certain extent, I have to admit I was a bit incredulous to the possibility that my prayers would be answered when it came to falling in love. We’ve all been there, we make our lists and check them twice, and we think we know and are ready for what’s to come, but you never really know until everything you want hits you in the face. Then, we get a chance to choose whether we’ll open your arms to it, or run away from it.

That moment for me was after I made a mistake, a totally unnecessary mistake born out of a mix of shame and lack of faith. I told a lie of omission, because I didn’t think it would matter. Unfortunately, for something that “didn’t matter”, the guilt of it ate me up inside, because a part of me knew I was falling in love and there was no room for lies or misunderstandings where we were going. So I confessed, and the way that my then-new-boyfriend handled it, and his gracefulness in that moment did it for me, and that’s when I heard that voice — quickly followed by a mini panic attack on my end like, “oh my gosh is this it?! oh my gosh is this it?! oh my gosh this is it!!!!” 

I had a great talk with my mentors about how to navigate different seasons in life and they said something that marked me forever. They said, the first thing they look for is a Word from the Lord. 

Sometimes we’re placed in situations that require an unshakeable trust in the things that the Father has said to look for in that season. Knowing His word gives momentary things a purpose. If you don’t have a Word from the Lord, get one: ask Him and He’ll find a way to show you.

So here we are standing on the threshold of the rest of the rest of our lives and whatever “it” looks like. I know that we’re still in the “ladida” honeymoon phase of our relationship, but I’m so grateful to know that through good times and bad times, I can lean on His Word over our lives.

Married! Our Vows

We got married this weekend! There’s so much to share about the wedding and the whole planning process, and how we managed to plan an entire wedding WAY under budget! But first, a funny story:

We both wrote out our wedding vows a few weeks to a couple months before our wedding, and on the morning of, we were both so rushed, we ended up forgetting to print our vows out! Who forgets their wedding vows?!!! Lol. And on top of that, Derek’s phone decided to glitch out and switched off right when it was time to read our vows. So we ended up coming up with things to say on the spot.

We ended up reading the original vows to each other later that night, which somehow felt more meaningful, but we figured we would also share them here on the blog too, for everybody who wasn’t able to come, and for us to be able to look back on this and remember.

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Derek to Joanne

Joan, I take you to be my wife. I will love you unconditionally and without hesitation, for it is your heart that moves me, your spirit that inspires me, your humor that delights me, and your hand I want to hold for all of our days. 

I promise to love you, to always strive to encourage and inspire you, to laugh with you, and to comfort you in times of sorrow and struggle. I promise to love you when life seems easy and also when times become difficult, when our love is simple, and when things become complicated.

I will love you forever and always. You are so many things to me, and I am sure you will be many more in our life together. No one is perfect, but with all of your strengths and weaknesses, and with all of mine, together we are perfect. You complete me in more ways than I could have thought possible.

I will be the joy of your heart, and I will be the food of your soul. I promise to wash away your tears with my kisses, and hold you with passion. My affection will know no bounds. I promise to love, respect, and trust you, and give you the best of myself, for I know that together we will build a life far better than either of us could imagine alone.

Joanne to Derek

Derek, 

This is maybe the most important thing I’ve ever had to write and I have no idea where to start. How do I begin to tell you and the world, how much you mean to me. I have found the one who my soul loves, and not just my soul, but my mind, my heart, every part of me, has found love in you, in the deepest truest sense.

Every single journey I’ve been on, has led me straight to you, and I can honestly say, I’ve searched the entire world, and haven’t found a man quite like you, or experienced a love anywhere near ours. We’ve shared so much in only a drop of time, but every minute I’ve spent with you has felt like minutes where I fit more and more into God’s plans for my life.

You and I fit, in the weirdest, but the best ways, and share so much in common, it’s obvious from a million miles away, that somehow, some way, He would have had us find each other. The road hasn’t been easy, my life before you, or your life before me, but look where we are now. Our love lays no claim to perfection, there have been obstacles we have needed to cross, but we did it babe, and we’ll continue to do it.

I vow to stand by your side through it all, to be your unwavering shield and support, to defend you in all my power, to be your helper and your best friend. I vow to love you and honor you before all others. Your needs are my concern. I vow to be the wife I was created to be for you, to never shut you out, to always talk to you, to always share with you and to always give of myself to you. I vow to respect your uniqueness, and to help you grow to the highest areas of your potential. I vow to love and take care of you and of our children all the days of my life, and to help you build the home you dreamed of. I vow to be yours forever, for better or worse, for rich or for poor, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.

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I get emotional even reading these again. Ahh, love! So what to look forward to are: pictures and probably my favorite post to write will be how to plan a wedding under $2000, because I’m super proud of what we accomplished in this planning process! Check back soon!

Engaged!

I’ve been laugh-smiling for what seems like forever now. WE’RE ENGAGED!!!

I officially get to marry and spend forever with the love of my life!

We both knew and talked about wanting to get married from pretty much the week we met. But Derek had asked me if I wanted the official engagement to be a surprise, and I said yes. (Lol, I said yes :-D) Anyway, so a surprise was planned.

He told a couple of friends, and one of them almost let the cat out of the bag to me. Then, a few weeks later, I happened to check his email and saw a rush order for my engagement ring, and in the email he wrote the ring guy, he had said he needed the ring so he could propose on a certain date. I was so bummed to have accidentally found out and ruined the surprise, but it turned out the email wasn’t accurate, even though I had my nails done and makeup done and I was ready, lol. That day turned out to be a bust, and so I was back to being in suspense. Every time he picked me up to go out, I thought that would be the day, but it wasn’t.

Until today. I had the car today, so I had to go pick him up after work, and my hair wasn’t done, I had just un-manicured my hands, I just had shorts and a sweater on — all to say, I had no idea this was happening today! We drove around for a bit, because he said he had errands to run. I ended up picking up nail polish at Walmart, and did my nails absentimindedly in the car while I was waiting for him to run in and out of stores, “looking for something.”

Then we went to the post office, where he found out my ring hadn’t been delivered yet, and he was so disappointed, so I thought for sure, it wasn’t going to happen, and I couldn’t understand why he was upset, because I figured we had to wait until the weekend anyway, so it would be fine.

Well, we kept driving around town and just hanging out, and listening to music. We drove north through a couple of towns, and ended up getting off on a dirt road we’d been on before to go to these waterfalls we’d heard about but had never made it to. Our friends had wanted to go hiking the trail to these falls and had suggested it to us the weekend before, but he changed the subject so quick, it kind of raised my suspicions. So now heading down this road, I started guessing what was about to happen.

He still tried to confuse me though, until I noticed we’d driven around the same spot twice, and he finally gave up and made his way up to the trail. We got there, parked the car, and he went to get something out of the trunk, and to get my door. He walks up, hands me a dozen roses and leads me down this trail, and my heart is racing and I start to get all emotional, and I said, “I’m not crying, don’t look at me.” And he said, “Why are you crying?” And I said, “It’s a big deal!!!” Hahaha 😀

When we got to the falls, I was turned toward them, looking at the water, and I was petting our puppy Rex who was with us, and I turned around to Derek on his knee, with an open ring box in his hand! He gave a great speech and at the end asked, “Will you spend the rest of your life with me?”

I said, “YES!”

And it was the best moment ever!

We’re SO over the moon!

Somewhere along this hike, I asked him if he’d remembered to bring the bear spray, because hey, it’s bear season and all the bears are out of hibernation, and he said that he did. Only to tell me afterward that he didn’t but he didn’t want me to be worried the whole time. Lucky for him we didn’t see any 😉

More details to come…check out our Facebook and Instagram @therunyonranch

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Your love and well-wishes is present enough, but if we’re honored with a gift from you, a small envelope for our future is a delightful blessing. Check out the link to our Paypal Wedding Registry.

Our Love Story - Boy Meets Girl

The Woodsman’s Side

Hi there ladies and gents. I suppose you are all wondering what the story is behind how Joanne and I found life together. So, this is my perspective to the story. 

I was in transition moving from Indiana to northern Idaho, when a good friend of mine told me about this particular site that was intended for online dating, but also had enough filters to allow for one to find friendship of like faiths and personalities as well. So I got on and made a profile. After answering a bunch of questions, the site gave you matches based on compatibility percentages, so far, the closest percentage to me was only in the high 70’s. I’d talked to a few girls, but found that their profiles only said all the right things but their conversation was totally opposite. It was that way for a few weeks when one day I had decided to log on and delete the profile.

Little did I know that going online that last day was going to lead me to the woman that I am now writing about! When I logged on to delete my profile, I saw her. I saw a new profile at the very top of my page. The personality compatibility was 99%, by far the highest I had seen yet. Being very surprised to see the rating so high, I clicked on her profile to see what it could possibly have to say that matched her so close to me. It was almost too good to be true. It mentioned God everywhere! Her interests were the same, priorities of life were the same, desires were the same, pasts were very similar, future plans were the same, on and on it went, and I couldn’t help but message her and keep my profile active for a little while longer. 

I thought this was meant to be, right up until I realized she had seen my message but totally ignored me! (Later she explained the week she had had, which took some of the sting away, but still…) When she finally did respond, a day or so later, our conversation took right off. For two weeks straight, all we talked about was about our faith and what Yeshua meant to us and everything else I could think of under that umbrella. Her every answer was on the money what I was looking for. The interesting thing was that I was only looking for friendship, but I was quickly developing feelings of more interest for her. We were only on the app for a couple of days before I knew I had to get her number and find out more about this girl.

We talked all day, everyday for a couple more weeks, then started using Skype, and lost a lot of sleep because we would stay up late talking for hours. Things were going great, until this didn’t seem like enough either. I decided to come up with a plan to fly her out to Indiana to meet me in person for the first time and then meet my friends, family and fellowship group. 

I showed her around my home town in Indiana and met everyone of importance to my life there. After missing her flight home, we ended up driving cross country together to Idaho, where she met my friends and I showed her around before taking her home to California. The trip was originally intended to be for 10 days, which ended up turning into around 23 days, and it was truly the best time of my life thus far. The time with her was so great! 

We had a chance to experience everything together, or that’s what it seemed like. We had engine problems on our way to California that I had to fix myself on the side of the interstate. Then we got there only to discover that my identity had been stolen, which meant having to cancel all my cards, and being “stranded” in California, waiting for my bank to resolve the situation. We made the best out of a bad situation, and we were still together and having the best time. I was truly in love with by this time, I knew life was going to have her in it from now on, forever and always…which became the catch phrase I use on the scale of my love to her, by the way! 

After these amazing couple of weeks came the hardest part of this whole experience. The stolen money showed back up and it was now time to say goodbye and go back home. The whole drive back to Idaho I was a wreck, just reflecting on the great time we had, how much I loved her and how much I was going to miss being with her. We had talked a lot of what our days apart were going to look like and tried to come up with a plan as to how and when we would communicate with each other. 

We had to learn how to communicate in this long distance courtship and how to trust each other being thirteen hours apart. We battled through the obstacle of time and distance in this relationship to the degree of loving each other so much that we are now talking about when and how to take the next step in our love story…marriage! 

As of this day today, we are moving forward with life with each other and in a couple of weeks, my girl will be with me in northern Idaho learning how to maintain what we built in that long distance season, enjoy seeing each other everyday, and watching love grow in the order of Yahweh’s grand plan for our lives together.

There’s a couple of cool details, like her fitting qualities I had prayed for specifically with a friend a couple of months before, and ways that the Father has spoken to me about the purpose of our relationship, that I didn’t mention to keep this short, but I’ll save those stories for another day. Hope you enjoyed this…

Our Love Story - Girl Meets Boy

Joanne’s Side

Well, like most people I’ve wanted to be married and start a family for as long as I could remember and I was convinced I would be the first one to get married, right after High School graduation…well that didn’t happen, in fact the opposite happened and I didn’t even end up going on a date until I was 19! 😄 Things did not go exactly as I planned in those young teenage days.

Skipping forward through one bad relationship and plenty of bad dates, I found myself halfway across the world: new country, new culture, new lease on life and still wondering if a family was in the Father’s plans for me. Joyce Meyer said once, “God is never late, but He never seems to be in a rush either.” Have you ever just been stuck on a loop in what feels like one season with no end? Not just in singleness but maybe trying to find answers, or find healing, or get a promotion, or break an addiction? That was me, singleness was my season. I know people that get married when they’re in their 50’s, so by no means am I saying I had it rough, but man it was a struggle.

I’d fasted, prayed, made declarations, built my self-esteem, traveled the world by myself, worked, made money, lost money, made money, invested, planted, dreamed, researched, studied, learned — all the things that people say you need to do before you’re blessed with a family, and I was worn out and tired of the doing. So finally, last summer, I quit trying and doing and decided to take a break from all of that and “focus on me.” I packed up and went on a 2 week retreat, just me and no phone, no internet, no nothing. All I had was my computer, a couple of books, and a hard drive full of worship music. I didn’t pray about anything or have any agenda, I just read books, took walks, and sang my heart out to the Lord.

By the end of that summer, I wasn’t in a relationship yet, but my perspective changed and I knew the Father’s voice better than I’ve ever known it in my life. So I lived with this assurance of His plan over my life and a vision of what I believed He wanted for my spouse and for my future, but by Thanksgiving 2015, I felt restless again, and a thought came to my head, “what are you doing to put yourself out there?” The truth is you can pray until you’re blue in the face but, you will not meet anyone watching Netflix under your blankets. I did my best to start going out to different events, and gatherings, but one day, I was browsing through Tumblr and an ad for a dating app popped up. I decided to sign up for just one week and see what would happen. So I signed up, answered about 200 questions and waited.

That same week, my car engine exploded, my family was going through a hard time back home, I was having a hard time with work and things just piled up to where I was ready to pack it all up and go home and go back to my mommy, lol. So I totally forgot about this site, until Wednesday – the day before my one week trial ended, when the Woodsman, messaged me. Like I said, I’d had a rough week and I didn’t reply right away because I was planning on quitting the next day. So the next day when I went online to delete my account, I took another look at this guy, and it turned out that we had a 99% compatibility – way more than any “matches” I’d seen on the app, and the key words on his profile were almost identical to mine. (The app described you depending on your answers to the questions, and we had: kind, conservative, old-fashioned)

So I wrote him back and it was magical lol. But really, from the first conversation, it was like we knew each other forever and his questions were super intentional and he opened up from the get go. His heart and the things he said, felt like liquid gold, and I was hooked. We traded contact information pretty much the next day, and got off the app – after he’d taken his time to take pictures of all our conversations so we could remember how we met – did I mention how sweet he is?? About a week later, we started talking on Skype, pretty much all day. We’d Skype until 4AM and he’d have to wake up 3 hours later to go to work, come back from work, and we’d be back on Skype. We lost a lot of sleep, but those were the BEST days! We fell in love and I remember freaking out because I couldn’t believe this was happening after praying about it for so long! I was in love!!

A few weeks after that, I flew across the country to go meet him and his family in Indiana, and we drove cross country to Idaho, then back down to California for a couple of days. We spent probably 60 hours in the car together. I was wrong, THOSE were the best days, lol.

That’s my version of our love story, and it leads to where we are now, about to start a whole other adventure, and to be honest, there’s no one else in this world I would want to adventure with!

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Check out his side here 🙂

Love Week 2016!

This week is special to me for so many reasons. It’s my final week in California…eek! But also, by the end of this week, I get to see my love…yay! We’ve rocked this long-distance thing, but I am glad to be nearing the end of it!

Here’s a cool statistic, since being in a relationship, we’ve had probably a hundred phone calls and there’s only been exactly two times we’ve intentionally hung up without saying “I love you.” (Even though we called each other back and apologized, lol). I know that’s a corny statistic, I’ll make it even more corny by saying, my goal is to not make it 3.

Anyway, can you tell I’m excited?! And in love?! <insert heart eyes emoji>

In celebration of the week, and to channel all this excited energy, I have a couple of fun blogs lined up for this week: Our Love Story! We both sat down to write these down because when I read a couples blog, I always look for the love story first, and I’ve always wanted to do one, and now I get to do one!

So mine will post tomorrow, and D’s side will post on Wednesday. After that, we probably won’t have much going on as I disappear on a little “secret” trip, but I have some posts lined up to post while I’m away and I’ll be back next week with more!