In 18 days

I will be Mrs. Shayla Marie Linder.

What a journey this has been!  From writing letters, to spending random weekends with one another, the Lord has brought us together.  To some, it seems to all have happened so fast, but to us, it has been so natural.  Being friends for three years before you begin to date does help.

One of the most important things I have learned from this season is that God is full of surprises.  If you had told me when I met Darin that we would be getting married, I would have never believed you.  We were just friends. We laughed together, played video games, sang to Jesus and played music together during random worship nights in college, worked for housing and suffered through those challenges together, and generally just enjoyed one another in a completely platonic way.

When he left for Basic Training in the Army, we began writing letters....

....Ok, I have to admit that before he left, I kissed him.  It was totally impulsive and silly, and I sort of had an idea that he liked me, but the way he kissed me back confirmed it. Oh the risks we take in life! We shared life through words and pictures and in December we both attended Cru Winter Conference in Portland. We were both nervous to show affection, but it was totally clear that we were becoming head of heels for one another.

That December, I saw a strength in Darin I had never seen before. After only two months in training away from the life he knew, and the Lord had begun a mighty work in his life. He was more solid, more real. Still goofy as ever and willing to tell awful jokes, but more willing to dialogue about the reality of hurts and hopes in his life.

He went back to training and I will never forget the letter I wrote to him sometime in January.  I had come to a place where I had to admit that, no matter how much I liked him, in the back of my mind I kept thinking "well what about that handsome young man that I may meet at seminary? wherever and whenever that is?"  I was afraid to commit and afraid that there may be someone else out there for me. In this letter, I told him that I thought it was wonderful that he liked me, but that I needed to be emotionally guarded and that I could not pursue a relationship because I was unsure what the Lord had for me.  It was my attempt to write a gentle "dear john" letter.

He was hurt.  I knew he would be.  But instead of lashing out in anger or hurt, he continued to seek God and (much to my frustration at the time) continued to pursue me.  His maturing character began to show more and more through his letters. Amidst the drawings of guns and bullets that he was learning about and stories that made me laugh, a man of character began to emerge.  In one letter I am particularly fond of, he told me that through our pursuit of a romantic relationship, he had discovered that the life he had been living for the Lord was only a shadow of what it could be.  He found through this time that he desired to be a man after God's own heart, and that even though he thought he had been living this way, he realized he had not been.

My relationship with him was used as an instrument to call him into a more mature form of godly manhood.  To be used by the Lord that way is humbling and awe-inspiring. We began to "officially" date March 9th, 2012, although if you ask either one of us, we had been emotionally attached to one another much earlier than that.

And now we are engaged to be married.  I hope to write again soon about contour of our relationship and how we got to where we are today.

Grace and peace,
Shayla M.