Throwback Thursday

It started with a name.

Four years ago today, my precious husband asked me to be his girlfriend and out on our first official date. The simple version of how we met is we spent the summer in Branson, MO at Discipleship Focus, a program associated with Young Life, where leaders spend the summer working at the theme parks during the day and do a bible study in the evenings. But the long version is much more interesting.

DFocus 2009

A lot of people talk about fate or destiny. I don't know what you believe, but it's hard for me to believe that life is a result of random interrelated chance occurrences. For me, life is designed by a Master Creator- a string of orchestrated events, perfectly fitting together at just the right time.

In summer 2008, I had just finished a wonderful but quite tumulus freshman year at Baylor University. I spent the summer in Houston whiling away the hours folding clothes at American Eagle and taking two online literature courses. At some point during the summer, I felt an incredible weight on me. It was a story I had in my head that just wouldn't go away, a story that needed to be told. The thought I just could not get out of my head was a love story. Not the typical boy-meets-girl, boy-falls-for-girl, boy-and-girl-overcome-impossible-odds, boy-and-girl-get-married-and-live-happily-ever-after story. But a story that began when both were children and told the story of how they grew up and their story of how they ended up meeting- of how everything in their life cumulated in meeting each other. The story behind the love story. 

I have a slight obsession with name meanings, and I love when a person's name perfectly fits who they are. Keeping this in mind, I researched name meanings to develop the names of the two people who were in my story. The name I picked for the boy in my story, was Braden.

Over the course of the next year, I worked on this story off and on, but the story of Braden and the girl were never far from my mind. The weight that this was a story I needed to figure out just kept growing.  I shared my story with a number of close friends who all echoed the sentiment I felt in my heart- Melissa, this is a story you need to tell. 

Come May of 2009 and I had finished my sophomore year of college and packed up my car to head up to Branson, MO for the 10 week Discipleship Focus program. I really had no idea what to expect- I didn't know anyone going or anyone who had been. I had heard about the program the previous year when I was at Work Week at Wilderness, a Young Life camp in Colorado. I was given a flyer which somehow ended up back in my bag, which ended up under my bed, which I ended up finding later on when I was cleaning out from under said bed. I read it and knew that was what I was supposed to do the next summer. I applied, was accepted, and then all of a sudden, here I was pulling into a small gravel parking lot across the street from the back entrance to Silver Dollar City. On the property, everyone had an assigned cabin with about seven other people. Your names were posted on each cabin door. After getting my things unpacked, I couldn't help but notice one of the names on the boy's cabin next door was Braden. I had never met a Braden before. And I was intrigued.

Braden and I never officially met, or I guess you might say we never had a formal introduction. We were in a big group exploring SDC and going on all the rides when I overheard Braden complaining about how high the ride was- always being so nice, I turned around and said "Why don't you take some Midol and get over it?" 

A few days later, I went into the lodge and sat down next to Braden who was working on a puzzle with a group of people. We started talking. Throughout the course of our conversation, I realized that the Braden from my story, the story I felt so strongly that I needed to develop and work on, was one and the same with the real-life Braden sitting right in front of me. Every story he would tell me, each time expecting for it to be too much for me to handle, was no surprise. I already knew. 

At some point during our conversation, I asked if he knew what his name meant. Remember, I had specifically picked the name Braden for my story because of the meaning. He didn't. Of course I had to inform him, quickly adding, "I feel like your name is really prophetic of who you are!" (who does that?!) Luckily he didn't question why I knew the meaning of his name, or think it was creepy. 

I told him about the story about three weeks after that initial conversation. He took it all in stride, though found the whole thing pretty incredible. We spent the rest of the summer working- him policing the Lost River and listening to lots of "Boom Boom Pow" by the Black Eyed Peas, and me getting fantastic tan lines as a wave pool lifeguard at White Water, and going on lots of e-tads (date spelled backwards, as we weren't allowed to date). On August 8th, which was the day we were leaving Branson, Braden asked me to help carry some things to his car. I walked into his cabin where he was waiting with a bouquet of yellow roses (my favorite) and a Diet Coke. 

"Will you be my girlfriend and go with me on an official date tonight?"

Of course I said yes, and the rest is history.