"But you're SO young!"

This past Wednesday, I got a Facebook message from my aunt, Carla. She said something on the lines of this: 

"Hey Ash, just following up on a conversation we had back in September...I haven't said anything to anyone, but I'm curious how everything is going. Let me know!"

You can imagine my confusion when I read this cryptic message. I responded telling her I had no idea what she was talking about and she then asked me to call her. When I called her, she basically told me that she had received a call on her landline [who even has one of those anymore??!] back in September from someone who sounded just like and claimed to be me. And this person told her I was pregnant! She said she even asked how Casey felt about it and what my parents thought, to which they responded that Casey was thrilled but that I hadn't told my parents yet. 

So my poor aunt had been thinking for the past 2 months that I was pregnant and that she was keeping my dirty secret! She'd spent 2 whole months biting her tongue from asking my mom about it and waiting for my news to come out. 

HA!

After I consoled her and swore that I was definitely NOT pregnant and that it would literally be impossible for me to be so, we had a pretty good laugh. I'm not sure if she dreamt the whole situation or someone played a very cruel joke on her. Nonetheless, I think my aunt definitely deserves the #1 aunt award for keeping that secret so well! Even if it wasn't a real secret...

As funny of a conversation this was, I'm pretty sure this probably wasn't the only time someone questioned if I was pregnant when I got engaged in September at the age of only 20. Why on earth would anyone want to get married so young?! 

Casey and I met October 5th of last year and honestly, I could have never seen him again after that first night and I wouldn't have thought anything of it. At this point of my life, I was experiencing for the first time what it was like to be satisfied by my relationship with the Lord so much, that I had ZERO interest in having a boyfriend. So when Casey called me the night after we first met and asked me on a date, I was baffled when the word "Yes" escaped my lips. The conversation I was having with myself looked a little like this:

"jfkdls;afjdsoijpvdfsnafeaofjdsiopafjdkslafndsoaYESNOMAYBENOOKAYYESjdkls;afjkdlsjfklsa;fjdklsajfkjfkldsjafidjsklfndsklajfld;sjflkja"

I would give myself pep talks before every date about how I was going to let him take me on the next date, but that at the end of the date I was going to explain that we couldn't date anymore. I just wasn't interested in a relationship. I was too focused on other things. Turns out when a guy is pursuing you in a way that looks just like Jesus it's not very easy to turn down...We dated for about 4 weeks before he officially asked me to be his girlfriend and kissed me a few hours later...

Within 3 weeks after that, he dropped the L bomb and I said it too. I couldn't believe how quickly things were moving. For months after that, Casey would continue to pursue me so boldly and I would continue to go back and forth between whether he really was "the one" or not. I remember the sweat I broke out in when he first told me his plans of proposing around Christmas time 2012, and then marrying me the next summer. I almost wish we could have gotten that 
moment on tape. My face probably looked a little something like this:

 It sounded insane to me. I was NINETEEN, far from graduating college and had just watched my parents marriage of 24 years fall apart right before my eyes. Marriage wasn't even close to being within my 5 year plan.

But like I said before, when a guy is pursuing you in a way that looks like Jesus, it's not very easy to turn down. One day I woke up and I wasn't scared anymore. This, I knew, was the clarity I'd been praying for.  

So finally, in April, we began to seriously put some things on a timeline and think of what our future together would look like. He proposed in September and we will be married in June! 

I'll be 21 when we marry and Casey will be 23. 

And much like everything else in my life, getting married at 21 is absolutely nothing I ever thought I would want or would happen. If you would have told me a year ago that this is where we'd be, I would have laughed in your face. But also like everything else in my life, my future husband is way better than any dream guy I could have created in my imagination. He is the most honest, sacrificial, noble, sexy man I've ever met in my life and he pushes me towards Jesus every day. 
I can't really help when we met. Turns out God doesn't really ask our permission when he places your future spouse into your life. He just kinda does it!
So please, person with all sorts of thoughts and opinions, please, please, please stop telling me that I'm "SOOO young" to be getting married.

Oh, and because I just can't get over how awesome our engagement pictures turned out, here are a few of my favorites: