“In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord establishes his step.” — Proverbs 16:9

A middle school crush to best friends and now forever. Will, You're Still The One…

It all started in sixth grade.

With a little help from mutual friends — and parents willing to drive 45 minutes — we started hanging out in groups. Will's Irmo little league games. Pelican's SnoBalls on weekends. Animated movies and the kind of easy memories I didn't know I'd carry with me for the rest of my life. We were just kids. But looking back now, I can see it so clearly: He was already holding it together.

By seventh grade, Will finally worked up the courage to stand across from me in the lunchroom and ask me out — even though I wasn't allowed to have a boyfriend until high school. (Oops!)

And from there, we just kind of grew up together. He was (and still is) my favorite person — the one I wanted to call first, the one who made everything more fun just by being there. Steady, loyal, and genuinely one of the hardest-working people I have ever known. I didn't have the words for it back then, but looking back, I think I always knew.

Will was always at practice — baseball, wrestling, track, football — and I loved cheering him on from the sidelines. When he was faced with the MLB draft after high school, he chose Clemson instead. He chose to stay and play both sports he loved — baseball and football — and I was still his biggest fan.

But our freshman year, we went our separate ways — and it was one of the hardest, most important seasons of our lives. The distance wasn't abandonment — it was preparation. While we were apart, I prayed for Will constantly and even kept a little prayer journal just for him, asking the Lord to draw close to him and grow him into the man God was calling him to be. I had no idea how faithfully He was listening. God was doing the slow, quiet work of maturing us both — teaching us what it meant to stand on our own, to seek Him first, to find our wholeness in Him alone — showing us what wholehearted devotion really looks like before He trusted us with forever. And gently, quietly, steadily, in His timing and not mine, He brought us back together.

And when He did, I knew. This was the man I had prayed for. Patient, faithful, loving — everything I had written in that little journal and more. It was always supposed to be us. I just needed the Lord to show me what that really meant.

After his junior year, Will was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates, and we stepped into yet another new season: long distance, big dreams, and learning again to hold our plans loosely and trust the Lord wherever life — and baseball — takes us. And I would do every bit of it again, because home has always been wherever he is.

Now, every time I look at him, I am reminded of the Lord's faithfulness to me. The answered prayers. The hard seasons that turned out to be gifts. The God who was before it all and in whom it has all held together.

All we can say is, "Thank you, Jesus!"

"He is before all things, and in him all things hold together." — Colossians 1:17