During this time apart it was not easy. However I knew it was God’s plan for us and that I needed to accept that. So I tried to focus on the spending time with the people that I did have in my life. I realized that I only had 6 months left with my family and decided to make it memorable. I started to savor every chance I got to spend time with my parents and my siblings. It was starting to hit me that I was going to leave it all in a few short months. 
       This was definitely a time of complete dependence on the Lord and His abundance grace because planning a wedding in the midst of Noah’s training was a huge gamble. But God put his hands over this time and pulled everything together into His perfect order. He provided so many wonderful people that helped with the wedding prep and cleanup. My family was also such a huge help to me since all of this was new to both of us. I am so blessed with all the helpful hands that served at my wedding.
       After six months apart it was so wonderful having my Noah back. I was overwhelmed with so many feeling! Feelings of great excitement, joy, (for having him back). I felt feelings of sadness for having to leave my family and church, feelings of extreme exhaustion from working overtime, planning a wedding and packing up my life. Noah came home on the 16^th of July and we were married four days later. I had a limited budget and a limited time frame but the joy that God blessed us with that day was limitless!!! We were finally together and I was/am so HAPPY! 
        We went on a beautiful honeymoon to Harpers Ferry WV to a really cool bed and breakfast. We completely relaxed and caught up with each other from the last few months away. Then we came back and moved to Delaware. 

Now because my family and I decided to go through relationships differently, I got LOTS of questions about it that I will try to answer. 

*I think one of the most common questions and concern was that Noah and I prolonged our physical intimacy until marriage (even kissing). So many people said to me “Well, what if he is a bad kisser?” And I would reply “we have waited 19 months, do you really think it’s going to be a “bad” kiss?”  The thing is even  if we need practice kissing, we have the rest of our lives to perfect it. There is no one I would have liked to practice on before my husband.  But for the record we figured it out pretty quickly :P

* The next one was people were concerned that Noah and I had not lived together prior to getting married. People would say to me “What if you get married, start living together and Noah has some gross habit that you never knew about?”  This question was always a bit humorous to me because of two reasons. One, in a courtship it is a productive relationship where you are trying to see if this person is “marriageable” so you spend a lot of time in real life situations with real family, with real stress, getting to know each other in a real way. We did not just go to movies our whole relationship. Because of the time Noah spent at my house with my family and me at his, I knew what he was like. Before marriage I knew what he was like first thing in the morning, or sleep deprived or really stressed. Also we talked about everything from each other’s strengths to our weaknesses. We laid everything on the table so we each knew exactly what we were getting into.

The second reason I thought this question was funny was because If I choose to love Noah till death takes me home, why would discovering something new make a difference in my relationship? It makes no difference, because we have made a covenant before God to stick together for life. That means I will stick with him through mood changes, bad habits, job loses, etc. So I don’t have to live with him first, in order to love him unconditionally just as Christ loves us.