01. Meeting

All photos by the best wedding/engagement photographer on planet earth, Liam Good.

I didn’t think the incredibly handsome man with the super humble but intelligent thoughts and shy smile whose name I knew to be Johnny Fulford would ever talk to me.

I assumed that, like the way most middle-school crushes of the same calibre go, the nodding and acknowledging and occasional smiles we exchanged at Tuesday morning 9am Public Faith & Politics class would be the extent of our relationship.

But oh did I have a Heavenly Father who knew differently, One who knew exactly why those middle school crushes were nothing more than hormones. One who has extended such love and grace that the only possible response is to give Him all of my life.

And, any way, the more aligned I was becoming with Johnny Fulford before we had even once spoken had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with the way God was working in my life. Through beautiful friends, through enlivening the Word of the Bible like never before, transforming my heart and my spirit and my mind to true joy in having an intimate relationship with my One and Only God, Jesus.

I believe that Jesus revealing Himself to me as my Number One was absolutely vital for number two stepping in.

My first real conversation with Johnny, then, was on a car ride to Queen’s Park in Toronto for a class field trip. The everything-but-country-music-fanatic cringed a bit at my Shania-Twain-belting but I noticed that he was smiling at my soul.

While we were on the field trip, colleagues who had been in the car asked me, “Do you and Johnny have a thing? Sure seems like it.”

University isn’t the time for a boy, reverberated my mind. But the Holy Spirit was undeniably speaking something else.

When he asked me that night if he could take me for coffee, after highlighting that he was interested in what the Lord was doing in my life for His glory, I had the most overwhelming peace in Johnny’s intentions to know me; that knowing me more deeply would hopefully mean knowing Jesus and becoming more like Him.

Because of Jesus, the world had already started to look more colourful and beautiful even in all its brokenness; but that was only the beginning.