So I will start in May 1999. My formal education had just officially ended. I was nearing eighteen years old, with plans to work full time as an administrative assistant for my father, and with hopes of someday doing the only thing I really felt passionate about: marrying a godly man and being his helpmeet for life. At that point, however, the chances of such a thing happening to me looked rather slim.

With my spare time I typically did one of two things: read or spend time online. When the latter activity makes up a great part of a person's life, it is viewed as a waste of time by many people. It is true that the hours we have been given precious. But for me, though for some time I didn't know it, the Internet was destined not to be wasteful, but to be the medium through which God would change my life in a wonderful way.

Summer 1999 - First Meeting

Online I had a cluster of friends and a hoard of acquaintances. In the first group was Kellie Mendoza, a friend I had made just a year or two before. In the second was Bethany C., a girl from Pennsylvania whose name I had seen everywhere. Bethany and I  talked from time to time, and although we said we wanted to be good friends, we didn't converse with much regularity.

Kellie is full of personality. She loves to laugh her heart out, to tease, and, perhaps above all, she is fond of all things sappy. As you can imagine, then, we could often be found engaged in conversations silly, sentimental, and sometimes a mixture of the two. It was in this vein of girlish laughter and romanticism that she decided that I should marry Bethany's older brother, Jonathan.

At that point, I had no idea that Bethany even had a brother, much less an older one named Jonathan. I highly doubt if he had any notion of my existence either. So I laughed at her suggestion, never for a split second thinking that it would come true, and it became part of our repertoire of jokes and amusing fantasies.

Another of my favorite pasttimes with Kellie was, and still is, the exchange of various and sundry pictures. One day she showed me a picture of Jonathan. "Look at this. He's 19 years old and he has a beard," she said. At that point the joke took on a more pleasant air. "Wow," thought I. The boy was adonis. And I liked his beard.

It was not long after that when Kellie decided something else. The song "Buongiorno Principessa" (the theme from the Italian movie "Life is Beautiful") would be good for use in any given wedding, she thought. I agreed with her on that count, and for some reason she believed that Bethany would like to know it. So she told Bethany, who told Jonathan, who thought the song too sad for a wedding.

"Well, that's that," I said to Kellie, "I can't marry him then." Unbeknownst to me, that comment, too, was passed along through the very short grapevine and soon thereafter, I received an instant message from someone named Theonomy20, which read, "So, you can't marry me, huh?"

I was rather embarrassed. But apparently he didn't consider me too freakish, because we talked. And talked. I liked him more and more.

But sometime in the spring or early summer of 2000, Jonathan and his family moved from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma and we lost touch. He said he would e-mail me, but despite my sending him two or three notes, he never responded with more than a couple of lines.

I wrote the following in my private journal on October 2, 2000:

"I talked to Jonathan online tonight. It's sort of hard to keep a conversation going with him on AIM because he gets disconnected from his ISP every few minutes and it takes quite a while to reconnect, but I do enjoy talking to him. He asked me if I would like to talk on the phone sometime, since he has some free long distance minutes. That surprised me. I said I would think about it and also that I would have to talk to my parents if I wanted to. The thing is, I don't know that I want to..."

I wrote at some length about the reasons for my uncertainty, which were mainly the fact that I can never think of anything to say on the phone and, vaguely, the fact that I liked him. The entry continues:

"If Dan had ever asked if I wanted to talk on the phone with him, I would have attributed it to his having 'intentions.' Funny how when Jonathan asks, I ascribe it to mere friendliness; which it may very well be, and probably is, but it's just ironic. That's because I would never entertain the thought of possibly becoming more than just Dan's friendly acquaintance, but somehow it doesn't seem so bad to think about that happening with Jonathan."

Later in the entry I wrote, "Since I wonder [about the possibility of being more than just friends], it makes me wonder if he wonders, too. I know it's stupid. It's stupid! God, please keep me from any trouble with this!"

We didn't talk much for a few weeks after that. In November I wrote, "I haven't talked to Jonathan since the last entry. He kept saying he would write, but he hasn't. I know he's very busy with work..." And other than one or two brief e-mails, I heard nothing from him again for months. I contributed to a group present for his 21st birthday in December (an album containing pictures of each participant's feet, as a joke, since he has an aversion to the sight or thought of them). I saw his name appear on my buddy list frequently, and although I certainly wanted to, somehow I couldn't work up the courage to initiate conversation with him.

Finally, in June 2001, he instant messaged me again. He mentioned the fact that we'd lost touch and said he'd wondered why I had never IMed him. I clearly recall him saying that Kellie had said I had a rule about not initiating conversation with males, and he still recalls her saying just that, but she says not, so I suppose we'll never know exactly what the reason was.

Jonathan was in my thoughts again almost immediately, and this time the feelings I'd had before were even stronger. We talked more, and more. Time went on and I could not help but notice how he was in a sense, as Austen's Harriet Smith said, "perfect in every particular." I began to see not just someone to converse with who happened to have the same theological beliefs as I; but someone I could deeply respect, who shared my whole vision for life, who wanted more than anything, as I did, to serve the Lord Jesus Christ (and, I later discovered, who could light up a whole room just by smiling).

I thought of him constantly and prayed like mad.

November 2001 - Face to face

In the fall he said he wanted to meet me and I gasped, like Meg Ryan in "You've Got Mail.""Meet?!" We arranged to do just that on November 10th in Branson, Missouri. My family and I were planning to take our annual vacation there and, since it is only a three-hour drive from Bartlesville (Oklahoma, where he lived at the time), it seemed the perfect opportunity.

It takes a day to drive from Houston to Little Rock and a couple of hours to go from Little Rock to Branson. I was undeniably nervous on the first day of travel, but that was nothing compared to the second. My body was very tired from a lack of sleep the previous night. My head fell back and jerked forward several times on the drive. But my mind was awake and so were the butterflies that were flitting around not only in my stomach but also through my veins, and I asked more than once, "Why are we doing this? What if it's awkward and then we're stuck with each other for two days?" But two days ended up being about a lifetime too short.

As we pulled up to first intersection into the main road through Branson, there he was: at the light on the road to our right, sitting in his little white rental car (having decided to leave his ancient and possibly unreliable truck at home) and looking extremely serious. We waved at him but he didn't see us.

We pulled into the parking lot of Applebee's at the same time. For some reason, my mother felt that she should rush my sisters and I into the restaurant before even greeting Jonathan. I thought this was strange, but I was too nervous to say anything, so, complying, I sat down with them at a round table for six. A moment later, Dad walked in with Jonathan, and my younger sister, Alanna, said, "Oh, he's short." But my heart skipped a beat. (He's about average, actually; my height, around 5'8".) 

It wasn't until we got to the condo where we were staying that we formally introduced ourselves. I had just stepped out of a room when he came up and offered his hand. "Hi, I'm Jonathan," he said, with a smile and a laugh. That was the first time I had ever heard him laugh and I will never forget the way the light looked in the room at that moment, or how it seemed to get brighter when he smiled. "Hi," I said, returning with a quiet chuckle, "I'm Rachael."

There are many details of that visit that I remember as if they happened only a few days ago. Most of them are split seconds when I caught him looking at me, or stupid mistakes I made, or little things we did. It was that first day that my thoughts and feelings became unmistakably clear.

We spent the afternoon and evening at Silver Dollar City, which is a theme park of sorts, full of shops, shows, a few rides, a cave, and plenty of good things to eat. We took a ride on a little train that plays Christmas songs and takes you around the whole park. We laughed, Jonathan and me and my sisters, and everything just felt right. It was perfect. When the night was over, we took a trolley to get back to the parking lot, and it was there, silently sitting next to him in the dark, that I knew. Something told me, right then, that this was not just a friendship or a crush or a whim. I didn't know when, or how, but I knew we were going somewhere farther than the parking lot.

The next day was spent playing games and talking. A strange and ridiculous thing happened between lunch and supper: we had a pillowfight. Those who know me are aware that I was never the type to do anything remotely like that. I never flirted (I hardly even talked to guys) and would have been too shy and too proper to ever consider such a thing as a pillowfight--and yet there I was, actively chasing a young man through a room in an effort to thwack him. The appropriateness of this activity may be debated, but, uncharacteristically, I went into it without any thought whatsoever. It seemed a perfectly natural thing to do.

That night we said goodbye. As I watched him drive away, I felt swallowed up by loneliness and couldn't sleep for hours. My sister snoozing peacefully by my side, I watched the minutes go by and tried to memorize the sound of his laughter.

My family and I still had several days left in our vacation. One evening, my mother checked her e-mail and I heard a gasp. "Oh my gosh," she said. "What?" I asked. She didn't answer, but I saw her motion to my sisters to come read her e-mail. Apparently it was a secret. I was very suspicious. Later it was revealed that Jonathan had e-mailed her in reference to the good visit we'd had, saying something to the effect of, "We shall see what the Lord has in store for me and Rachael."

Too shy and afraid to bring it up myself, I spent most of the remainder of the trip desperately wishing that someone would ask me about my thoughts and feelings toward Jonathan and trying to think of what I would say if they did. But no one said a word.

The next several weeks were spent in suspense. Whereas I had been praying for the ability to guard my heart, I was now seeking the Lord's blessing on bringing us together. I knew there was nothing I could do to make it happen--all I could do was wait. But I could feel myself reaching a point where I simply had to spill my guts to someone. When my friend, Laura, came from Indiana for a little visit, she talked about the guy in her life, and I wanted so much to talk about the one in mine; but something held me back. It wasn't long after she left that I wrote an e-mail to her telling her everything--but I never sent it. I thought that if I talked about it, it would make it seem to me like something had happened, when nothing actually had. But something had happened.

While I was tormented with those thoughts, Jonathan was thinking along similar lines. I didn't know that he had been so sentimental as to save his ticket stub to Silver Dollar City. And he was talking with my father about courting me. He was as serious as I was.

Winter 2001/2002 - Behind the scenes

Jonathan and I were talking more than ever. Many nights we would stay up until two or three in the morning, having long conversations about anything and everything in the world. He was perfectly respectful and not flirtatious in any sense of the word--but said he regarded me with "deep respect" and cared "very much" for me. I was still telling myself that maybe I just wanted him to like me, but it was becoming plainer and plainer that he really, truly did.

Earlier in the year, my father had planned a ski trip in Colorado to which I was invited. I was quite excited about it, since I'd never gone skiing before and I would get to see my uncle and cousin from Georgia. But one day I found out that I had been uninvited. Not only that, but someone else was taking my place: Jonathan. That made my disappointment all the worse. Skiing was now on the back burner; being with Jonathan again was at the forefront of my mind. Why would my father invite Jonathan, my friend, and refuse to let me come? Jonathan and I came up with a list of reasons why I should be allowed to come. Jonathan even offered to pay for my plane ticket. But there was a method to this madness.

January came and off Dad went to spend three or four fun-filled days with Jonathan and my uncle and cousin. I was sorely unhappy, but held onto the hope that there would be another opportunity to meet him again, since apparently he got on quite well with my father. And it was revealed later that our being together in the future was precisely the reason why I had been turned away: they were there to talk about courtship.

February 5, 2002 - Courtship

It was a drizzly Tuesday afternoon, and I was having a normal lunch at Cracker Barrel with my mother and sisters when my father waltzed in with a great smile on his face. There were whispers for a few moments and I knew something was up. When both my parents took my hands, I felt my breath catch in my chest. Dad then said the most shocking, yet most obvious and best thing I'd ever heard: "What would you say if I told you that Jonathan has asked about courting you? Because he has."

Everything around me faded away except for me, my father, and the thought of him. I said nothing for a few moments, trying to recover, and then said, "Yes," and started to cry. Needless to say, I left my lunch unfinished.

Over the course of the next year, we visited each other seven times (mostly him coming to visit me, I should say), and fell deeper and deeper in love. This period of our relationship was one of the sweetest and yet one of the most difficult to date. I spent many nights crying for missing him, and for not being allowed to tell him I loved him (my parents had some rules that I thought, and still think, were too strict), for having no exact timeframe of when he would move near me or when we would be able to marry, and for thinking that it would be a very long time. I'm sure I spent too much time worrying, but most of it I attribute to the mere state of being head over heels in love.

We were not allowed to have any physical contact for the first ten months or so of our courtship and were not allowed to be alone anywhere for any period of time until a year or so after that. It's true that we didn't actually have much opportunity to contact, living five hundred miles apart, but I found it to be a shockingly difficult and oppressive condition considering how we spent relatively little time together in person. Unfortunately, I can't say that we kept all the rules, but God was gracious and we learned very much. (Most of all we learned why Paul recommends marriage, and decided that it is not something to put off any longer than necessary!) In December, we received "an early Christmas present": permission to hold hands. Words cannot express how wonderful a surprise that was!

The biggest problem we faced during our courtship was a rule that my parents had for us which we referred to, perhaps a bit irreverently, as "the Duct Tape Rule." The Duct Tape Rule meant that we were not allowed to say, "I love you," or have any code words for such, etc. The idea was that it would keep us from "giving our hearts away" too quickly. Had it not been so painful, I would have laughed. Our hearts were given away long before the Duct Tape Rule was abolished (February 28, 2003)! (My parents have since changed some of their ideas about courtship, and it should be noted that I was their first experience in overseeing a romantic relationship, and that everything they did was with our best interest at heart.)

January 27, 2003 - Together at last

After six months of searching, the Lord finally brought us the perfect house to buy, and at just the right time! We closed on it the day after Jonathan moved to Texas from his home in Oklahoma, which was a bittersweet event, as in order to be with me, he left his family permanently, and for the first time. (Happily, they have since relocated and are only a few miles away.)

I thought that having Jonathan only six minutes from my house would be the best thing that could happen (other than marriage). For the most part, I was right. I got to see him pretty much every single day, since he was working for my father. We got to go to church together. We had many meals together. One of the most cherished memories I have is of my Jonathan standing outside my second-story window every other night when he was about to go home, telling me sweet things and looking long into my eyes. He would usually call me as soon as he got back, and we would talk until it was time to go to sleep.

But in many ways, having him so close was even more difficult than living in another state. Obviously, temptations became greater, and it was also hard to balance our wanting to be constantly together with my family's desire for time "alone." Those months seemed interminably long, as with each passing day the need to be truly together intensified, and God knows all the sighs and tears that were shed over the idea of having to wait another year. We felt ready in every sense of the word, but before we could marry or even get engaged, we had to wait for my father's go-ahead.

Yes, a year or so was the going estimate. No one had an exact time frame in mind, but it was always estimated that the earliest we could marry would be November. How I counted the days!

Things change. We are fully persuaded that we will do this, but the Lord has ordained that we will do that. Apparently He showed my parents months ahead of "schedule" that now was the time.

On Saturday, April 5, 2003, Jonathan went with me and my family to see a world class movie, "The Core." Afterwards, we went home (he had come with us in our car) and the plan was for him to go back to his house. But my dad invited him to "come sit in the living room for a few minutes to talk," which, of course, he did. I was almost immediately (and, for my part, reluctantly) whisked away to the grocery store with my sister, Alanna, who insisted upon my coming with her. When we arrived home, she told me to stay in the car for a minute, because she thought we might have to go out again. She ran inside, then ran back out and told me that she was wrong. Almost as soon as we walked through the door, my mother and sisters said they'd decided to go to the mall to return some stuff. Coincidentally, it was time for Jonathan to leave, too, and I tell you, he nearly ran out the door, barely saying goodbye to me! I thought that was strange, but I didn't know, of course, that the reason was that he was going to the mall, too...to buy a ring!

They were gone for a few hours. Meanwhile, I was online with our new computer, talking to Kellie. Dad was outside, doing some yardwork. He asked me to come outside and dance with him (there was music playing from his truck), another strange occurrence. I did. Then I went back inside and resumed my conversation with Kellie.

A few minutes later, Dad called me outside again. He had two glasses of white wine, one for him and one for me, and he asked if I'd sit with him on a bench in the garden. We sat there and he rambled on about things he wanted to do with the yard, etc., and then said, "Are you happy, Rachael?" I said I was. He said, "Except for one thing, right?" I didn't say anything, because I knew that he knew the answer. He said he loved me and we sat there for a little while longer, and then he got up and I went inside again. I told Kellie that people were acting really weird. I was very suspicious by now, but I didn't dare to hope beyond a fleeting thought that it could be what I wanted it to be. I posted a very brief entry in my online journal (blog) about this. It simply said, "Something strange is in the air. A good kind of strange. Hmm."

About that time, my mom and sisters arrived. Jonathan was not among them, so I decided then that the fleeting thought was, as I had told myself, ridiculous. In a few minutes, the phone rang. It was Jonathan. He'd "forgotten something" and wanted to know if he could come over and get it. Permission was granted, and soon he was there, and after supposedly retrieving whatever it was he'd "forgotten," he lingered with me in the kitchen. We stood there for a little while and then he asked if I'd like to take a walk outside. Almost every evening, we would meander through my family's backyard, with warm hints of summer and hoards of flowers surrounding us, doing nothing but talking and looking long into each other's eyes. I could never count the number of times we sighed and talked about how many months must pass before we could marry. I asked Dad if that would be okay (by this time in our relationship, we were allowed to take walks pretty much whenever we wanted, but I knew the respect in asking was appreciated). He said yes, and so we went.

By this time it was starting to get dark outside. There were some mosquitoes, but we didn't care. We meandered all over (the yard is very big, a couple of acres at least), talking about various things and wondering, as we had got to doing almost constantly of late, when we would at last be allowed to marry.

After a very little while, he said we should probably go inside, since it was really starting to get dark. We stopped in front of a white azalea bush, just steps away from the tree that bears our heart-encircled initials, and he said, "But before we go in, I just want to ask you something. We've talked about it before and I'm pretty sure I know what you think about this, but I just want to make sure." He was looking everywhere: at me, at his feet, at the yard, at the house... Finally he said, as he dropped to one knee and opened a small box containing a ring, "I was just wondering, will you marry me?" I said, "Yes!" and immediately started crying and laughing uncontrollably. Then he said, as he slipped the ring onto my finger, "And I know we had talked about a November wedding, but what do you think about sometime in May?" That was the biggest, most wonderful shock of all.

We stayed outside for a little while longer and hugged and kissed. I remember thinking it was all magic, as fireflies appeared, a soft breeze blew, and the scent of flowers really filled the air. It wasn't my imagination--it was simply the most beautiful night.

May 30, 2003 - The wedding

When I said everyone knew it was time, I meant everyone knew it was time. We had less than two months to plan the wedding. Some of Jonathan's relatives thought I must have been pregnant, hence the rush. But no; it was just...time.

A lot of people wondered if we would be able to pull it off in just seven weeks. We knew we could do it. Everything fell into place just in time, and although I didn't notice much except for my beloved, the pictures and video later proved that it turned out beautifully--but the most beautiful thing about it was not the flowers, though they were lovely; nor the bridesmaids, though they were all gorgeous; nor because the music, though it was sweet to the ears; but because we were together at last. 

More Pictures
Our Vows
Read Rachael's Reflections on Courtship

Set me as a seal upon your heart,
As a seal upon your arm;
For love is as strong as death.
-Song of Solomon 8:6