Holly’s Story:
Well, I first want you to know that I have told so many people about your website since meeting Brad. I am a firm believer in online dating for so many reasons, but have liked your site the most.
Brad and I exchanged a few emails on the site before exchanging phone numbers. We then communicated for a few days before our first date. He asked me at the end of the first date, “I’m ready to see you again, what are you doing tomorrow?” It has been an amazing and mind-blowing experience since that night.
Brad and I have both been married before, and they were both very destructive relationships. Those past relationships left us both broken, but much better people because of what we had learned and used for our personal benefit. Since that time in both of our lives, we have sought the Lord, His guidance, His blessings and favor for our final love relationship. I decided this time around that I wasn’t only going to be specific, picky and stick to the list of wants and desires, but I was going to add to that list. When the Lord gave me Brad, He fulfilled every dream and desire and way outdid Himself.
Yesterday Brad took me on a hot air balloon ride (a lifelong dream of mine) and asked me to be his wife. It was the most perfect day, a true fairytale. We have a date set for April 11, 2015!
Brad’s Story:
After separating from my ex, I spent about a year focusing on my relationship with God and healing from the pain of going through a divorce. I had family and friends trying to set me up on dates and asking if I was dating and, for a while, I just didn’t feel that I was ready to give all of myself to someone else in a relationship, and I didn’t think it was fair to not be completely involved. It wasn’t until last spring that I really felt I was ready to put myself back out there. I had never before done any online dating.
I signed up for ChristianMingle and Match.com at about the same time… around April 1st. I probably went on 50 dates over the past 9-10 months… most of them from Match, but 8-10 from ChristianMingle. I think some of my personal experiences with the two sites and feedback could be helpful. I seriously dated one person out of everyone that I had met over the past year before meeting Holly – she and I also met via ChristianMingle. I find it interesting that from all of the dates that I went on via Match, I didn’t consider one of them for a serious relationship. I met some amazing people – many of whom were certainly beautiful, smart, funny, etc. However, I kept finding myself noticing that something – or many things – were sure to become issues for us. That’s one area that this process really helped me with: I really figured out exactly what I wanted in a partner and I wasn’t going to settle in any way. It was going to take someone extraordinary. I found that more people on ChristianMingle were real and honest, while many of the people I met via Match were into games, looking to hookup or had other ulterior motives, and many didn’t really seem like Christians to me (I know it isn’t my place to judge, but sometimes it was brutally obvious). I found many women on Match who selected “Christian” in there profile, but in my opinion, they were just looking for a good man.
After about 9-10 months of putting in a lot of effort to find the right person for me, I started to get frustrated and felt like it was time to take a break from it all for a while. I had spent most of the Christmas to New Year’s vacation with my family, and they could see the hopelessness and despair in my eyes. They all know how badly I long to be a husband, first, and hopefully a father, God willing, one day. One month ago I saw no light at the end of the tunnel and that was sad.
Finding my extraordinary in Holly
Holly sent me a message during the first week of January and we started to correspond back and forth for almost a week. My Brother lives in the Orlando area, not too far from Holly, and I really wanted to meet her face-to-face so I figured I would drive up for the weekend, hoping we would be able to meet up for coffee. Well, we met up on Saturday, January 10th, but didn’t get any coffee… or food… or water for that matter! We had about three hours of the best conversation of my life and the waiter finally figured out that he should probably just leave us alone to talk. The next day (Sunday) we met at Universal City Walk and spent most of the day together. Our connection was so obvious it felt like fireworks going off continuously when we were together. We both knew we were falling hard for each other very fast. I’ve never been impulsive or moved fast in a romantic relationship in my life, but both of us have zero doubt in the world that God created us to be with one another. There is NO question about it and it also is the first time I’ve been in any relationship that each of the people were exactly as in love as the other. It always seems that one person is a little more in than the other, and that can be a big problem in my experience.
Holly is the most amazing person I’ve ever met. Of course, neither of us are perfect, but we are absolutely perfect for each other. God seriously didn’t miss one detail when He brought us together. She is the love of a lifetime for me and I am going to spend every day of the rest of my life making sure she knows exactly how amazing she is. We got engaged last Sunday… the day after our parents met.
We both are very thankful for ChristianMingle because that is how God chose to cross our paths. I know I have been blessed way beyond my wildest dreams with Holly and I believe that is saying a lot about her because I’ve always had very lofty hopes and expectations of what I wanted and hoped my marriage to look like.