Where it all began (For me).

There are times in my life that I can’t figure out. I have no idea what selection of events had to fall into place at just the right time to bring things to pass. How I met, won and continue to keep my husband is right at the top of the list of “things that I have no idea how they happened.” To kick off our story, I am going to give you the beginning of mine.

I was in Western Washington University in Washington State (I am from Seattle) when God decided I was going to come to the One Thing internship in KC. I had just been rejected from a major where I was already excelling in the required classes, solely because the admitting professor didn’t like my essay. I have never gotten below an A on an essay in my entire life. I got a 790/800 verbal score on my SAT’s. I am a good writer, editorial, grammatical and tense mistakes in this post not withstanding. To be rejected based on such a trivial thing, when I was already winning awards for my work in that very major, was devastating. I remember thinking “Hmm…I wonder if I am supposed to be doing something else.” So, when Briana Carr (nee Leonhard) said “You should come with me to K.C., I am doing this 6 month internship.” I immediately said, “No way am I going to Missouri.”

Then her dad called me one morning while I was standing in the kitchen making pancakes. Well, truly her dad called my dad. My dad came up to me in the kitchen where I was standing over the griddle, watching pancakes bubble up and said, “I think we need to go out to the Carr’s house, Timothy has a Word for you.” My response, like any hungry teenager was “Can I at least eat my pancakes first?” I don’t remember if I did, but I do remember going out to the Carr’s, excited that someone had a Word for me.

 

 

Timothy ended up prophesying over me for about half an hour, and I believe my father still has a transcript of that prophecy somewhere. I know I kept it on my computer, and used to reread it when I felt like I was going crazy. The time with Timothy, where I sat in a lawnchair in the front yard and cried, ended with his daughter, Briana, smiling sweetly in a very knowing way and printing me off my IHOP Onething Internship application. I was skipping out on my college education to go to Missouri and sit in some room for 6 months and talk to God, who I’d just recently started to believe really existed in the first place and cared about me. Weird.

 

 

A few weeks, one plane ride, about 6 bags of luggage later, we arrived in KC to a wall of heat and humidity. July is not a pleasant time to meet Missouri, though it was made much easier by the smiling face of our ride, Josh Hawkins. Josh picked us up, put our luggage in his car, and politely made small talk while we gave exhausted and overheated one word answers. If you see Josh, smile at him, he’s a great guy. What felt like 16 hours earlier, my parting shot out the door to my parents was “I swear, I am not going to marry the first man I see, and I am NOT moving to Missouri.” I was only right about the first part.

 

 

A lot of when Briana and I arrived and got settled into our apartments next door to the house of prayer is kind of hazy. I do remember meeting all the leadership at the Club House, and thinking Isaac (Bennet, another guy com leader) was Aaron and vice versa. In true Jennifer style, I immediately forgot everyone’s names, and confused the ones I thought I remembered. That night I stood up for testimonies, and saw this guy sitting near the sound board and thought to myself “I hope he finds this funny,” as I launched into my schpeel about how I got to KC and who I was etc. I think he might have even laughed.

 

 

A few weeks (maybe days) later the internship leader Tracey Sliker took Beth (one of my roommates, ) and I out to Mexican food. Tracey asked “So what do you think of the boys?” Knowing of course, that I had already butted heads with a few of them, over the fact that they were annoying, immature, obnoxious and pigheaded. In other words, normal twenty something boys. I asked Tracey “The one that looks like Shaggy, from Scooby Doo, what is his name? He seems really sweet.” Tracey laughed, and told me his name was Aaron. “Hmm… Aaron. Nice name”, I thought to myself. Aaron had taken out a girl that lived below me, because she was homesick and had been having a really hard time. It made her smile a lot more, and feel much better. Her name is Sharon, and Aaron and her older brother had been friends for ages. I didn’t know that, and just thought he was doing something really kind hearted for an intern who was having a hard time. I had no idea how sweet and gentle he really was, but that was a cool insight into his personality.

 

 

The time I really recall seeing Aaron for the first time was at the Herrnhut pool. I was sitting on a chair by the pool side, reading a book. (What else do you do when it’s ten million degrees?) A guy was sitting with a bunch of other interns, dangling his very, very white legs in the water. He had a shirt on with his swim trunks, long hair in his eyes, and a lopsided grin in my direction, squinting into the sun to wave hello. I put my book down, stared at him hard and thought (prophetically) to myself “Huh. So THAT is the guy I am going to marry. Weird.”