HOW OUR PATHS (NEVER) CROSSED

          In March of 2016, Shauna attended a seminar hosted by authors and therapists John Eldredge and Dan Allender in Colorado Springs. It was an amazing seminar -- the kind that makes your hand tired from taking notes and your eyes red from crying. While Shauna was grabbing lunch at Cheddar’s during a break, she overheard some deep conversation from a nearby table of guys. She'd never heard men talk like that and was intrigued by their honesty and vulnerability. “I want a guy who has conversations like that," she thought. “I want the kind of guy who attends this conference." Little did she know that the poster-child of such conversations was also in attendance that weekend, a pastor from St. Louis named Ben.

 

But the seminar ended. Shauna flew back to LA, and Ben flew back to St. Louis. Their paths never crossed.

​

​

IS ST. LOUIS IN MISSISSIPPI?

        But before she got on the plane, Shauna stumbled on an Instagram post of Ben's through a hashtag for the seminar. Ben remarked to a friend who was with him in Colorado that a "pretty girl" had liked his Instagram post, and decided to follow her. At that point, Shauna looked at his profile. "My first thought was, 'This guy's cute.' My second thought was, 'He's husband material'!" But she wasn't even sure where St. Louis was -- Mississippi? She moved on.

 

Ben followed her account till May, when he finally reached out to congratulate her for graduating from California State. Direct Messages turned into long emails; long emails turned into constant texting; texting turned into six-hour phone conversations. They met up one July morning in the historic city of St. Augustine, a romantic halfway-point between where Shauna was living near Tampa and where Ben was vacationing in Hilton Head Island.

 

Walking to and from different tourist attractions in the Florida heat, learning about each other and eating popsicles along the way, Shauna felt as though her whole life had somehow been leading up to that point. At the end of their day together, Ben handed her a leather-bound notebook with a note inside that suggested they use it to write back and forth while living a thousand miles apart. He told his family the next day that he met the girl he was going to marry.

​

​

TAKING ADVICE FROM LORD TENNYSON

          They had no idea how the relationship would go anywhere or when. Shauna was looking into graduate schools at the time, and had her sights set on one in Seattle. But when she found out their program wasn't what she thought it was, Ben told her about Covenant Theological Seminary, just down the road from him in Creve Couer. Shauna was doubtful at this point that the kind of program she wanted for existed...and also determined not to move to a city "for a boy." But she agreed to look into it.

 

Covenant's approach turned out to be exactly what Shauna had been looking for; applying to their Masters of Arts in Counseling program was a no-brainer. Her interview was scheduled for Valentine's Day (which she swears she didn't orchestrate) of 2016. She toured the campus by day, and dined with Ben by candlelight at night.

 

They were both afraid -- for their own reasons, and to their own extents. But they agreed with Tennyson’s adage, "'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."