About LAUREN

Most days you can find me cuddling with Stella, the cutest yellow lab of all time, cleaning, organizing and reorganizing my house, cooking healthy paleo dinners for my hunky surfer husband, hunting in the Target clearance aisle like it’s a profession, or trying to convince Kyle we should go on some sort of crazy international trip or do some sort of outlandish project at our house (becoming chicken farmers, re-painting rooms, re-grouting…stuff like that).

I am mostly known for being the girl who’s worked in church ministry since the moment I graduated Bible college, being single for almost all of my twenties (i.e. surviving the Christian dating scene…gross), and being in school for about a decade. I started out at Moody Bible Institute where I studied Women’s Ministries and then Talbot School of Theology where I studied Biblical Exposition. Fun fact: I don’t like reading. Give me an audio book or a podcast and I’m in. As Audible says, “listening is the new reading.”

How We Met

You know when people say they met their husband when they least expected it? Yeah. Well that happened to me.

One summer I was up in Washington leading a missions trip for young adults. I met this couple at the church who asked if I’d ever met their nephew since he was also in ministry and lived near me. They went on and on about how great he was and how much we had in common. I smiled and thought “Sure, sure, I bet your nephew is a real catch. Riiiiiiiight.” But Aunt Ginger was persistent. And 6 months later she asked me on social media if I could give her my number to pass on to him. I figured, why not? He’ll never reach out.

On Christmas Eve night I got a text from a cute surfer saying that, funny enough, his aunt insisted he reach out to a “cool girl,’ but that he was about to leave for a mission trip to El Salvador so he wanted to know if we could get coffee in January. We texted back and forth and I figured, if nothing else, we would at least laugh on our date because he had pretty witty text banter. Oddly enough about 6 months before this text I was complaining to the Lord about being single and I sensed him say “December.” I wasn’t used to God talking to me like that (you know, declaring dates for things) and so I made sure not to tell anyone accept my mentor.

On our first date we did laugh. And he left feeling certain there was a connection. I left wondering if we would talk again. Just one day later he sent me a silly text and asked what I was doing the next day…

As the months went on I started to feel nervous and anxious because I was falling in love with this man and starting to worry that it could all be taken away. After we had been together for 6 months he finally took me on a special surprise date where we went for a walk on the beach. We walked up to a little tent with a full front porch and camp kitchen set up. Kyle made me dinner right there on the beach and then we sat there and talked till the sun went down. He finally said, “I brought you out here to tell you I love you.” I said, “I know! I love you too.” I noticed a mosquito on his forehead so we both tried to brush the critters away. The next morning I woke up with like 40 mosquito bites mostly on my eyelids and hands. It was pretty hilarious.

Just 4 months later I started to get suspicious that Kyle had talked to my parents without me. I told my best friend that I could tell Kyle was dodging some of my questions and acting really weird. Well, I didn’t realize that she was in on it, and she told him that I was catching on to his engagement plans. Apparently he was so upset about it that he considered postponing until he could make it a surprise. But he devised a plan: he would take me on the most romantic elaborate date he could think of and then not propose in order to confuse me. It worked. I was depressed. I went into fatalistic thinking that it would never happen.

Then one Monday night we planned to go Christmas tree shopping. I showed up to his house super cranky because it had been a long day and I hit traffic. We drove to the Christmas tree lot and the guy working there welcomed us and asked if we wanted cocoa. I said no and started wandering through the trees. We turned down this one incredible aisle that had about 40 trees lining either side with string lights going across the whole way. Kyle nervously said, “wow, isn’t this cool? What’s that at the end?” I said, “Yeah it’s really pretty. What about this tree?” Then I looked down to the end of the aisle and noticed a whole set up with hay bails, trunks, and a carafe of hot cocoa. There was a stocking that had a huge “L” on it. I looked at Kyle with huge eyes and he started laughing and said “let’s go down there.” And right there in the cute little Christmas scene that he had built (string lights and all) he asked me to marry him.