Cheeers to New Beginnings!

Weddings....Perhaps the most ridiculously hyped, expensive, and emotional roller coaster ride of one's life! And yet? Still the happiest day of my life by far. I plan to write about every detail of this journey but first want to prelude with the beginnings of our two souls colliding for my first entry to this fresh blog.

Benjamin and I met in high school theater. If drama is not already one of the most ridiculous parts of highschool...add THEATER to that equation. And better yet? HOMESCHOOLERS. You get the picture, we thought we were the most swankified and pious people you knew and our LIFE revolved around...well ourselves. We were all going to be the tightest knit friends till we looked of prunes of course. And there in the midst of my senior year I met Benjamin Taylor McMillan. He was a cool cat and way more hip then the rest of us so I thought he was cute and went on my pretty little way to missionary school that next fall, not even dreaming what would happen the next year.

I came home after serving in Ireland and was on most "spiritual high" I had ever experienced before. It was soooo high that I came crashing down under the reality of life when theater friends now had there own inside jokes, etc and I just missed all my sweet times living abroad in a mysteriously foreign land. In time I became more depressed and when my troupe decided to do a performance over the Summer I hopped on board, hoping to find some purpose in what I loved so much!

One day after work I biked across town to rehearsal. Therefore smelling like some serious body odor I sprayed myself down with some apple pie body spray. Weelll, fun fact about Ben...he ALWAYS smelled like Old Spice and it was quite nice. As he stood there laughing at what I was doing we put two and two together and became "Old Spice and Apple Pie" and it has stuck ever since; rather WE have stuck every since. It was there in the hall way at one of the rehearsals that I plopped down next to Ben and we started talking about his artwork. We started casually chatted about our churches and music and slowly over the warm months grew a friendship. I gave him my number not even thinking twice and soon received a phone call...

"Hello?"

"Hi Shelby this is Ben."

"Oh Hi what's up?"

"Nothing. I just wanted to call you."

"...Sweet." 0_0

In my pain and sadness Ben tried swooping in to be my hero and we crashed and burned into an odd couple of a relationship. Him with his angry music and me with my hopelessness. We were bitter rebels for quite some time (you probably know the ones: piercings, the most colorless outfits and of course that good 'ol 'tude), but we held on to each other with all the strength we had. God knew. He was there with us the whole time and there are moments I wonder how we didn't fall apart.. but then our Father picked our broken hearts up and began to piece us back together. He loves to do that I am learning :).

We were hungry for friendships and purpose and a new church was everything Benjamin and I needed. Vintage City Church welcomed us with open hearts and homes and though I spent a year bawling in the back of the church each service I was healing and so was Ben.

We sought counseling and love. Before you knew it marriage became a realistic and serious goal of the near future. So we prayed...and dreamed and dreamed. Mostly of not having to say goodbye, get into an icy cold car and drive home. One. More. Time. And you probably can guess the rest of this pretty little fairy tale. Benjamin put on his big boy pants and approached my dad with the question of..."Can I marry her?"...and so this marriage journey would begin.(Let's be real, we all know it was way more complicated then I can write in one little blog post. However, you get the idea...two hearts, we fell and love and what can we say?!)

Tune in next time. My dream is to simply blog about the simple little things in life that really are big things to be thankful to God for and encourage you all to share your own hearts with this world. I believe Jesus just smiles when we do that. And I'm giving Him all the glory for the McMillan family coming into being!

Soulful Love,
Shelby

p.s. The Old and the New!