The Early Years

In his elementary years, Eric lived in Indiana. By God’s grace, he regularly attended an AWANA program and heard the Gospel of Jesus. Instead of fighting the Spirit, by faith, he believed. Eventually, his family moved to Illinois, where his dad became pastor at a church. Eric was about to enter junior high and the church youth group.  One summer, he took another step to demonstrate his faith by being baptized. However, his baptism was unique in that it took place in the backyard pond of some elderly friends within the church. Later, that elderly couple employed him to help them keep up with the property.

As an elementary-aged girl, redeemed by Christ’s love, I began to change. Before Christ, I was and wanted to be a “tomboy.” I didn’t really know what that meant, I just knew that I wanted to be like my brother and my dad. I looked up to them in so many ways, but also in a defiant sort of way. Whatever my idea of being a girl, or growing up into womanhood was, I really didn’t want a part of it. I didn’t want to get married or have children. I wanted to do what I wanted to do, and I didn’t want anyone to get in the way of that, whatever it was. Marriage and motherhood were for girly girls and weak women, and I wouldn’t be one of them.

But God, having filled me with His Spirit, began sanctifying me and changing my heart and mind, renewing me day by day. I started to read the Bible and listening to my parents. I started to see myself differently. Instead of just a tomboy, I saw myself as a princess, a daughter of the King. Believing that I belonged to God as his child, changed what I believed about my future. Just before entering junior high, I became convinced that God was calling me to marriage and motherhood. I began to refuse the idea that it was a weakness and began to see it as a gift and honor from God to serve Him and be loved by Him in that way.

Crossing Paths

While attending an all-night youth conference, called Super Bowl, I was walking to the shoe counter at a bowling alley somewhere around Indianapolis. I remember being struck by a thought, which caused me to literally look around at the people passing me. He’s here, I thought. My future husband is here. There were hundreds of youth kids in the room that night. Excited, confused, and eager to know what had just happened, I returned my shoes and walked back to my church’s youth group. I saw boys from my church camp and wondered, only to cringe at the thought of any of them as my husband. I knew the boys in my youth group and refused the idea altogether.

Regardless, the belief that I was to be a wife and mom stayed with me. It’s what I wanted for my future—a husband to love and be loved by, a home of our own to tend and build, and children to love and raise within it. All decision-making for my future was based on whether I could do the job and have generous time for my marriage and be present with my kids.

One Day My Prince Will Come

When it came time to choose between colleges, I couldn’t explain it, but I felt convinced that my Prince Charming was at the college with the castle. There were other good reasons to go there, but ultimately, it was the castle that most inspired my decision.

My first year at Eastern Illinois University, Eric was deployed with the Illinois Army National Guard to Afghanistan. Like Sarai, trying to make God’s calling and promises come true in her own timing, I was looking to get my MRS in all the wrong men. While Eric fought for freedom, I fought to keep my faith. The first week of my sophomore year, I noticed a new guy who walked into a Christian Campus House event I was working. I couldn’t explain it then, or even now, but there was just something about him. It’s as if something within me lit up when I saw him. Or maybe there was something about him that lit up. For just a moment, in my imagination, he radiated light. Beyond that, I didn’t think much of him. I was curious about him but also convinced I wouldn’t like him and really didn’t care to get to know him.

Don’t Be Suspicious

I was wrong. Somehow, we ended up getting to know one another that year. At the start of the next semester, we sat down at the same table. What started as awkward small talk developed into a conversation that went something like this,

“This is how I was raised …”

“Oh, me too!” Hehe, haha, girlish giggle.

“These are the books and movies my parents would or wouldn’t let us read or watch.”

“Ha! Me too!” Tehe, haha, tilting my head back.

“This is what it was like growing up as a pastor’s kid.”

“Yeah, me too!” Beaming, with eyes of disbelief, sitting back in my chair. (I wasn’t raised as a pastor’s kid, but for a while, my dad was on staff with Revive Our Hearts, so for a few years, I was a ministry kid, familiar with the unique criticisms and honors a family in ministry experiences. Now, admittedly, our experiences had little in common.)

I was saying “Me too!” so often that I began to think, This guy’s either going to think you’re a compulsive liar or you like him. Either way, tone it down. In future, I didn’t lie, I simply smiled and nodded my head, occasionally adding a “Mm hmm,” a “Hmm,” or even more dry, a “Yeahhhh …”

What’s Not to Like?

By my junior year, my belief that I wouldn’t like him and didn’t care to get to know him betrayed me time and time again. On a group camping trip, I awoke to the sounds of someone quietly moving around the campsite. I felt safe within my tent, so I didn’t bother to see who it was and fell back asleep. Later, before leaving my tent, I made sure my hair looked decent and put on something nicer than what I slept in. I may have even put on a touch of makeup. When I crawled out, a fire had been built. I walked over to the warm blaze, where a small circle of friends began to gather.

“Coffee?” He offered. Gushing with delight, and trying to hide it, I accepted the hot, pleasing drink.  Eric had been the first one up. Then, like a manly man’s man, he built a fire, boiled water, and made coffee. How could I not like this guy?

It wasn’t just the values we were raised with, we began to bond over other things, like ministry, a desire to understand God’s Word, running, biking, smaller friend groups, quieter evenings, campfires, and then, Haiti.

The Wrong Path

Suspecting he liked me, but tired of waiting on him to demonstrate his feelings, I nearly foiled the whole thing. I began dating someone who was more willing to express his thoughts and feelings about me. Through a message at the Passion 2011 conference, I was convicted that I really was making the wrong choice. It was as if I was at a fork in the road. I could see my two futures clearly. The one I was headed down on was doable, but not desirable. The other fork was Eric.

Eric had not expressly stated his feelings for me, yet here he was, the face of my future. Or, at the very least, he was the new standard for my future. It seemed illogical to be so certain, yet I was. Still, I waited two more months until I was nauseous and miserable before I broke things off. It did not go well. I really made a mess of things. Not only should I not have entered the relationship to begin with, but I also shouldn’t have waited so long to end it.

Thoroughly lowered, it was now a matter of waiting. It was out of my hands. I surrendered the entire calling—Eric, marriage, motherhood, my whole future. I would wait until he made a move. Then, Haiti.

A Second Chance

It was my second time going to Haiti on a short-term mission trip. The first time was just months after the 2010 earthquake. I was altogether terrified yet altogether convinced I needed to go. In May 2011, Eric and I were both on that trip. Though I wasn’t scared, I always felt safer when he was around. I did my best to be as neutral as possible, to not be strategic about where I sat or who I spoke with. Somehow, we ended up sitting next to each other often, even in the same conversations. It was all I could do to compose myself and be rational.

One night, it was too overwhelming. I sat on top of the flat roof at the school where we were observing and aiding. I bawled my eyes out and surrendered again. I wanted to control the outcome so badly. It wasn’t just Eric as the standard I wanted; it was him. I was no longer curious or wanted just to get to know him; I loved him. It was a love that was sincere enough to let him go. If he didn’t love me in return, I wouldn’t insist on having him. Yet, I knew I would be crushed, and I wouldn’t marry for a long time if it wasn’t him. If Eric wasn’t my husband, if I wasn’t meant to be married soon after college, then I would pursue the career I was getting a degree in, and I mean, really pursue it. I would marry teaching, the school would be my home, and my students would be my children. I would pour my life out for my job, and I would choose to be happy in it and wait on the Lord’s timing for the man he had set aside for me.

But the sovereign God of all life and time, who was and is and is to come, was working in Eric’s heart in Haiti. He cared for me before Haiti. Yet, somehow, through the sanctifying work of spending a week with people you only half know, enduring illness, heat, tiredness, language barriers, flight changes, personality conflicts, culture clashes, differences in work methods, food preferences, and the host of unsuspecting challenges that only arise due to the nature that is a mission trip, he became all in. We didn’t just happen to sit next to one another; Eric began to prove his affections.

He wasn’t just patient for the sake of getting along with Haitians or our American teammates, he found it easier because I was right next to him, laying rebar to build homes for those devastated by the previous year’s earthquake. He didn’t just end up last in our single-file line of people walking the streets of Port de Paix, he was protective and watching out for me. Eric wasn’t just interested in my wellbeing; it was his goal. Eric didn’t just care for me; he loved me.

Within a week of returning from Haiti, he began texting more often. Within a month, we were talking on the phone. Soon after, we went fishing—not because either of us cared about fishing, but because we were willing to do anything to spend time together. Next, we both made efforts to invite the other for a bike ride. A mutual friend invited us to sit around a fire and cook Haitian food. It was a balm to my soul, which had been wrecked both times spent in that beautiful, but demolished country. The fires were another way Eric and I could spend time together.

This Our Hymn of Grateful Praise

Finally, just before my senior year, and the last semester of his senior year started, Eric asked if I would like to get dinner with him. That night, our relationship became official. While I knew it was illogical, somehow, I was certain I was getting married. Six months later, we got engaged, just one year after God led me to that fork in the road. Four months after that, we were married, just a year after that trip to Haiti. We had three children in our first six years of marriage.

I don’t know for certain whether Eric was there in the bowling alley that night at Super Bowl. We both have memories of what we believe was the same Super Bowl year, so we trust we probably passed one another at some time during the night. I do know for certain that Eric was baptized in the pond of none other than Maurice and Gwen Fasig, whose plans were that their farmhouse, upon their deaths, would go to someone in the family. After employing some junior high kid to mow their lawn and help with odd jobs around the farm, they seemed to love him and treat him as their own. One day, he grew up and married a girl who had always dreamed of living on a farm …

https://www.instagram.com/12stonesfarmhouse/