Our Love Story

Our love story isn’t by any means epic, or crazy, or anything Disney fairytale but it’s special, and I love retelling it. So here it goes!

For a little back story, our parents had known each other from before having children. And both had been in the church for many years.

Click here to watch our love story in 30 seconds!

Fast forward to us as school-age kids, it was Park Creek Camp week and the Racine’s (Nathan’s family) had come down to stay with us for the first time before camp. Every year after that, they’d come and usually stay at our place the weekend before camp. We always had so much fun with their family. We’d eat so much, stay up way late, and get so excited for Park Creek. 

Okay so moving onto 12 year old me, and Nathan, 15, at camp. That year half the dorm had a crush on him- literally. And I was by no means popular.

I quietly had a crush on him but didn’t tell anyone, I decided it was pointless because- every girl did. 

So after that year of camp I didn’t think much anymore of it, but my brothers and Nathan and his brother were pretty close and stayed in contact. So I’d hear his name often in conversations, but I never spoke to him. Well, February of the following year after my birthday. I was going through our old kindle deleting contacts because we had so many outdated ones. And low and behold their was one with his name in it. Well, I was curious. I thought just mayyyybe it wasn’t legit, but then again if it was, there wasn’t any harm in just sending a simple email right? Riiiight. So I gave in and just sent an email. Something along the lines of: “Hi this is Shantel is this Nathan’s Racines email??” Literally written just like that. 

Well it just so happened it was his email, and he responded.

Anyways, after that we’d occasionally email for the next couple months. And that crush that had mostly gone away came back. He didn’t really like me then, he was interested in other girls at the time. And after a few months of emailing we stopped for a while, he didn’t show much interest, and he was also a one-word emailer- literally. But after camp that year we reconnected again. We found more things in common and enjoyed chatting about our everyday lives.

As time had it, the next 3+ years we became good friends- best friends at that. We’d email and write/facetime through “Hangouts”. And eventually, he confessed to me that he did have a crush on me. Well, fast forward to my sweet 16 birthday. It was so fun, we watched a movie on a projector out on the lawn. We had gotten most of the way through the movie when I turned around and he was standing right there! He had driven 7 hours down for the weekend to surprise me for my birthday. I was shocked! It was a huge surprise. But it was amazing and the sweetest gesture!

At that point, I was still in high school and he was in college so we remained “best friends” and boy did we get teased about THAT one all the time. Man oh, man!

We both wanted a lot of the same things, and we agreed doctrinally on important issues. Anyways, we had discussed what we each wanted to do with our lives; goals, dreams, who we wanted to be, and he expressed his desire to move here. In February the next year, he did it again and drove up Valentine’s weekend to surprise me. It was so sweet. I think then was when I really knew I was serious about him.

That July he moved here. It was so fun living in the same town as him. I was able to get to know him on a day to day basis. At 17 and 19 we went on our first date. We dated from that April to the following March. And that’s when he popped the question.

We were on vacation to the ocean, and he had come along with us on this trip. It was in my favorite place and he knew it. We went walking along the boardwalk in the rain and it was so cold. He was in a hurry and I just knew something was off. Well, we got to the top where there was a lookout and then he got down on one knee and asked! We were married in a barn about 8 months later. I have a blog post all about that magical day. Now here we are 2+ years into marriage with our wonderful son.

Everyone’s love story is different. And if you were to ask me if I personally believe in love at first sight I would say not for everyone. I didn’t know I was going to marry Nathan at 13. But I believe that in, investing time and learning someone you’ll know if you want to spend the rest of your life with them. We have so much to learn and so many areas to grow in. Allowing God to write our love story has been an adventure. There are really rough times and there are really fun times, surprises, and hard decisions. There are also blessings and joy. But finding your person to do life with and living for Christ is the best part of just that- life!

Well, that turned out longer than I thought, haha. If you’ve made it this far you get a gold star! Thanks so much for reading! I’d love to hear about your love story. Drop it in the comments below or pop me an email.

xoxo, Shantel