The Promise of Love...Whit's Love Story Part I

Dear Friends,

With Whit's permission, I wanted to share my daughter's love story with everyone. It is a story of remaining faithful to God and HIS faithfulness to us! When she was in the eighth grade, she had a teacher do a Bible Study on seeking God's desire for her husband. She was given a heart with the word God in the center. Next she was given a little bigger heart. She placed the God heart in the middle and then around that heart she wrote what she desired to be as a wife. (I had taught Whit about the Proverbs 31 Woman for years, so for her this was easy) She was then given a larger heart. She place the two hearts that she had finished in the middle of this heart. On the outside of this heart she wrote what she desired in a husband! She has prayed over this heart for years... At times sobbing asking where the good guys were. Well, as you can tell God was true to HIS promise! He provided her HEART in JD! Here is the first part of her story after meeting JD!

Hello beautiful world of bloggers!
I am dreadfully sorry that I haven't written in the past few months... but I kind of wanted to wait until a special event happened. As you may remember in May, I had a special cooking night with my manager Sarah in preparation for a "date night" with a special guy in my life. The guy that I called five of my closest friends after seeing him for the first time and said, "OMG. I just saw the most attractive guy I've ever seen in my life...." So I hooked him, reeled him in, and four months later, we're engaged.
---> WAIT. STOP THERE! How did this happen so quickly, you ask?
Well, we decided that if we were to date, that would be it. So we prayed intensely about it (I mean, I've been praying nine years for this man) and decided - ok, we'll meet each other's closest friends and family members and if we love them, we're definitely getting married.
---> So what's the hurry? Is it just because you're graduating in May and want to have security?
Oh, my friends... far from it! JD actually wasn't even sure if he wanted to date me in the first place. You see, he had made this commitment to God that he would go to Mobile, Ala., for the summer (2 months) to do inner-city missions work and then dedicate two years after he graduated (also in May) to missions work. He was undecided if it would be overseas or in America. ...And then he met me. :) He told me he wasn't sure if he wanted to date me because he knew he wouldn't be able to dedicate a lot of his time to me (because he would be in Mobile the entire summer), that he desired to pursue my heart with a steadfast fervency, but knew he couldn't over the summer. So we decided, ok - we'll just see how it goes over the summer, we probably won't talk every night but we'll evaluate how things are going in August and take it from there. I wrote him letters of encouragement every week and his pursuit of my heart was still relentless, even if he was in Mobile. Needless to say, he called every night, drove to our 4th of July party to meet my family (about a 10 hr drive altogether so I met him half-way), and we fell in love real quick. It was that weekend that he told me, "Whitney, I'm going overseas for two years when I graduate but I want you to be by my side and go with me." The weekend before his last week in Mobile, he drove down to St. George Island just to spend ONE day with me (also a 5 hr drive on the way there, 5 hrs back... but this one he drove solo). That was the day of our first kiss. It was beautiful and romantic. We pretty much decided that weekend, ok... we're getting married. I wouldn't rather spend the rest of my life with any other person than this man who rocked my world from the moment I saw him, to each 5-hr conversation we had in the coffee house, to every time he makes me laugh and smile - just by thinking about him. I have never had a man in my life that has pursued my heart in such a pure and fervent way. It's more than I could've asked for...