I met my husband in the summer of 2014. At the time, I was twenty-one years old, working full time for the State of Missouri, and raising my little girl who was only eighteen months old. Her biological father had chosen not to be in the picture, so it was just the two of us. My life revolved around being a mom and working, and I barely had the energy or time to meet new people. Eventually, I decided to give online dating a try. I told myself I would never answer a man who only sent me a lazy “hey.” But one morning, I opened my messages, and there it was. Just a single “hey.” For some reason, something inside me told me to answer. Against my own rule, I did.
We started talking and made plans to meet that same night after my shift ended. I was nervous and even told my coworkers who I was meeting and where, just in case something happened. At midnight, we met in the town where my dad lived. I remember being so anxious, but once we started talking, everything felt natural. We ended up driving around the whole night, sharing stories and laughing. It felt like I had known him for years. By the very next day, he asked me to be his girlfriend, and I surprised myself by saying yes without hesitation.
My husband was a traveling welder, which meant his job often kept him away. But we didn’t want to be apart. Not long after meeting, I made the bold decision to quit my job, pack bags for myself and my daughter, and join him on the road. We lived in hotels while he worked on jobs in different states. Life was moving quickly, and only a few months later, he proposed to me. It happened in his friend’s backyard. He was so nervous that he grabbed the wrong hand, and I remember laughing through my tears as I said yes.
Not long after, we discovered I was pregnant. That news changed everything. We decided to settle into a small house in Kansas near his family. It wasn’t easy being in a new town where I didn’t know anyone, especially while pregnant and raising a toddler, but I stayed busy planning our wedding. When our daughter Kinsey was born, she scared us at first because the umbilical cord had been wrapped around her, but she was strong and healthy. Six weeks later, we got married in a small venue, exactly one year after he had proposed.
Life was beautiful, but it was also hard. He continued to travel constantly for work, and I spent most of my time raising the kids and building a small business. I started redoing furniture, and eventually, it grew into a full crafting business that I worked on after the kids were asleep. We also went through heartbreak. I experienced a miscarriage, and it broke me. I was thankful my husband happened to be home that week, because I leaned on him through the pain. Later, we were blessed with another baby girl, and our family grew again.
During this time, we went through the process for my husband to adopt my oldest daughter. Her biological father gave up his rights, and the day the adoption was finalized was one of the happiest moments of my life. It felt like everything was finally falling into place.
Over the years, we welcomed more children and made the choice to move into a camper so we could travel as a family. Living on the road wasn’t always easy, especially being pregnant and dealing with cold winters, but it gave us something more valuable than comfort. It gave us time together. We had barbecue dinners outside, made s’mores with the kids, and went on little adventures to see waterfalls and parks.
We also had struggles. There was a time when I was so overwhelmed by the loneliness of him always being gone that I asked for a divorce. My heart was breaking, but when we truly sat down and talked, I realized what I wanted wasn’t separation. What I wanted was change. We canceled the divorce and promised to try again, this time side by side. That choice saved us.
Our family kept growing, and eventually we had a little boy. My husband left his welding job and started his own construction company. It was scary at first, but it turned out to be the best decision. Later, we bought land and started building a forever home on a farm, because we wanted our children to grow up the way we did.
Looking back, I can hardly believe it all started with a simple “hey.” That one word turned into a marriage, six children, countless moves, heartbreaks, new beginnings, and the kind of love story I used to only dream about.
If there is one thing I’ve learned from our journey, it’s that love is not about perfection. It is about choosing each other through the hard times, through the chaos, and through the unknown. It is about building a life together and never giving up, no matter how messy it gets. For me, that life has always been with him, and with the beautiful family we created.
