How It All Began

If you had asked me how my life would have looked during high school, I would have told you I was going to be an actress…or a psychologist making loads of money.

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Instead my story took a wonderful turn and set me on the path that would shape the rest of my life. There has been a theme throughout my life, and that is crazy. The beginning of my adult life stayed true to that theme.

I had just graduated high school and was beginning my first year of university at Trinity Western University, where I planned to become a psychologist. I needed a job quickly to pay for my insanely expensive tuition, and felt like God was telling me to apply to a local restaurant.

During my first shift working as a busser, I saw a cute chef come back and begin to chop vegetables. Being the naive girl I was, I believed that chefs were formally trained and therefore this cute guy must have been some accomplished young man. Nope. Did you know anyone can cook at nice restaurants? Teenagers even? Yup. I will get to that. So I walked over to the incredibly handsome young man (or so I thought), and asked him what he wanted to do with his life. I was in a weird phase of asking ridiculous questions to people like life goals and what they ate for lunch. His response was “I want to work in an orphanage and care for orphans.”

I gathered my thoughts. Little did he know I had just finished reading an amazing book called Charla’s Children, and had indeed decided MY true goal was to care for orphans too. I knew if I told him that I would come across as some sort of stalker-type-girl…and from previous experience (that is another blog post) I knew I didn’t want to head down that road. Instead I let out a calm, cool, and collected “Oh, me too!”

That was it. I was in love. Professional chef…good looking…cares for children…what more does a girl need? I asked him out right away and we soon began dating.

It didn’t take long before I discovered the truth. The charming chef was not the distinguished man I thought he was, but instead was a TEENAGER in HIGH SCHOOL. OK. It is not as crazy as it sounds. He is only a year and a bit younger than me. But to a university student finding out her boyfriend is in high school, it almost made me call it quits. But I didn’t. Lucky he was cute.

It wasn’t long before we were madly in love and he was proposing. It was in the middle of the movie theatre parking lot with a $5 ring from Walmart (romance was clearly his strong suit). Did I mention it was 7 months after we started dating? Oh…and that he was still in high school? Looking back I still don’t know why he didn’t wait one more month until he graduated, but at least it made for some interesting experiences at the VERY small private school he attended. Did you know you can get expelled from a school you do not attend? You can.

Of course when everyone heard we were planning to wed…Daniel was 18, and I was 19, everyone said we were crazy. It was the beginning of the “C” word, which would follow us around for the rest of our lives.

His parents wanted us to wait a while before getting married, hoping for a summer wedding. Since he was 18, he required their signature to marry me, and his parents said they wouldn’t give it until after January 1st. Do you know what day we got married? January 2nd. A Thursday. We were clearly teenagers.

But we did it. Fifteen years later and we are still kicking it. And our crazy beginning to our life together sent us on an amazing path that brought us to each of our amazing children and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

To find out how our wedding went, be sure to check out A Teenager’s Wedding.