Engagement night

When i got to my parents house on October 26th I walked in the front door and was greeted by rose petals. They were leading to my room, so I followed! When I made it upstairs to my room Joshua was standing there with his guitar, 100 plus candles, and a little table with something on it (didn't pay attention to that much!). Before I could say anything Josh asked if he could sing me a song that he had written, I would post the words but they might embarrass Joshua so I won't. I said "yes of course." When he was done with his song he put his guitar down.

He took my hands and gave his little speech which was something like this:

"I love you

You are my best friend-the one my heart loves

In you, God has given me inspiration and hope

It's in you that I have seen what true beauty and purity are

you are the picture of perfection for me

My love, I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

To hold you

To cry with you

To make a future with you.

Most of all I want to love you through sacrifice.

I want to spend everyday for the rest of my life serving you as Christ would, showing you

love by sacrificing my wants and needs for yours

You are the one that I want,

The one that I need,

The one that I love.

Mikala Bryan, will you marry me?!"

Yes I keep every letter, card that Josh has given me these last two years! Now let me tell you that I was home for my birthday and I honestly wasn't expecting this. I thought with the table that maybe we were going to have a romantic dinner or something, so I was in utter shock. So much shock that I answered "yes of course" and our very first kiss EVER wasn't all that great! But the second one was all that I dreamed of and more!

So you want to know what was on the table when I walked upstairs?!?! Well there were two glass Dr. pepper bottles, so much better then anything I have ever tasted! And also a notebook/scrapbook that Joshua had put together with ALL of our facebook messages that we had written to each other since February of that year! Yea that is right I have the most thoughtful man in the world!

the "M" word

Yea so it was time to mention MARRIAGE to our parents. We had many thoughts on them, whether we should graduate then get married or me transfer to Joplin and we would get married in the summer and finish school together. I wasn't surprised by our parents answers...pray about it. They supported us in what our decision may be, they gave some advice here and there about things. Financial issues needed to be looked over, whether we could handle the stress of working full time and going to school. We talked, talked and we did a little more talking about it and well we didn't come to a decision at all before we both to school for the fall.
Now as a girl this was very frustrating. I knew growing up that my ultimate dream was to get married (relatively young) and have a family. Realizing that that dream could be 8+ months away was unbearable at times. We were now back to our long distant relationship...
It was overly frustrating at times. We had cell phone issues, we got to the point where we hated even talking on the phone because all we really wanted was to be together. We would see each other about every 4-6 weeks depending on money! But at the same time we were spending a lot of time with our friends, consulting with them or just hanging out. We knew that there was a possibility we would have to leave our singleness (well you know what i mean) and I would be moving away from the life I knew as a girl on her own from the last 2+ years.
Come October 26th I came home and found a wonderful early birthday present...

OK so I am sorry it has been so long, I know I just left you guys hanging!
So our first summer together was interesting to say the least. We had been dating about a month and a half when all of the sudden we lived in the same town, going to the same church and I was "the Joshua Casey" girlfriend. Now to make things more interesting his family was moving away to New Jersey to take a Senior Pastor Job. So I was now dating a guy who is a musician, an emotional and sensitive musician at that, who adores his family but was having to cope with them moving 2,000 miles away! Wow I had my work cut out for me!!
Joshua started his first internship at Cedar Ridge under Harold, who he admired a lot. So this was great, he was working in his church under his favorite person doing what he was called to do! This was perfect he was seeing the good, the bad and the ugly of the church. But he grew so much, maturity wise and spiritually. OK so lets go back to our relationship for a minute.
Thankfully Michele and the kids (his mom and siblings) were staying in Broken Arrow fro the summer because they hadn't sold the house yet. This was a blessing in disguise for the both of us. I was then given a chance to spend time with hos family and fall in love with his three youngest siblings. We were getting support from Michele and Craig in our relationship allowing to bloom. We then decided it was time to talk to our parents about the "M" word...

Our beginning

So here is my first post! Its sad because I started my blog before my husband and he has already posted twice! Speaking of my husband let me start there with our story.

In January of 2007 Josh posted on my facebook and we started writing back and forth to each other. It got the name of "The novel" because 80 plus pages later we had our beginning. We talked about everything under the sun...our family, our faith and our disappointments in life. Now if I go back a little further you would know that Josh and I had met at our church in Broken Arrow, but he was going to school in Missouri and I was in Arkansas. So we really didn't see much of each other unless we came home to visit our parents. 

On March 31 Josh asked me if I would go on a date with him and I of course said yes. He took me to Taco Bueno (my favorite) and the bowling alley which in time he beat me at both games! From then on out we started our long 

(distant) and complicated relationship with its typical ups and downs.