☕ Friday, August 7, 2026

Good morning, friends. Today’s coffee comes with a whole lot of memories because today Matt and I have been married for 27 years. ❤️ Twenty-seven years! I’m really not sure how that happened because some days it honestly feels like we just got married. Then I look at our boys and everything we’ve lived through together and realize we’ve packed a whole lot of life into those 27 years.

Long before Matt and I were married, I remember lying in my bed at my dad’s house and talking to the Lord about my future. I wasn’t in church at the time, and I hadn’t been working for the Lord like I knew I needed to. The previous couple of years had been difficult with my parents’ divorce and multiple moves, and I just wasn’t ready to go back yet. Still, church was always something I knew I would return to. That night, I asked the Lord to send me a companion and a helpmate, someone who would one day go to church with me. I imagined myself married with children. I always knew I wanted two kids, and I wanted a good marriage with a Godly man.

Months later, my good friend Jessica and her boyfriend at the time, Larry, introduced me to Matt. Now this is where I could make our story sound really romantic and tell you it was love at first sight, but it absolutely was not. 😂 We went to the mall around Thanksgiving, barely talked to each other, and it was awkward. There were definitely no fireworks going off and no moment where I thought, “That’s the man I’m going to marry.”

I kept hanging out with Jessica, Larry and their group of friends, and Matt was usually there too. I even went out with another one of their friends a couple of times, but I knew pretty quickly he wasn’t the one either. Then one night we were all at Larry’s watching a movie, and that friend was rubbing my shoulders. I happened to look over and caught Matt staring at us, and he looked a little jealous. I thought it was kind of funny at the time, but something changed after that night. I stopped talking to the other guy, and somehow Matt and I started talking instead.

We kept hanging out with everyone, but by New Year’s we were talking every day.

On January 7, 1998, we officially became a couple, and we’ve been together ever since. By November we were engaged, and on August 7, 1999, I married him. Somewhere along the way, I knew he was the one. He wasn’t attending church regularly when we met, but he was willing to go with me because he knew it mattered to me, and all these years later I can look back and see how the Lord was working even when I didn’t recognize it.

Genesis 2:18 says, “And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.” I had asked God for a companion and helpmate, and then when He brought Matt into my life, I didn’t even like him at first. 😂 Isn’t that just like us sometimes? We have an idea of how God’s answer should arrive, and because it doesn’t look the way we imagined, we don’t recognize it.

Our 27 years haven’t been perfect because we’re two imperfect people. We’ve had good times, hard times, disagreements, laughter, worries, celebrations and seasons that tested us. We’ve also been given the two children I always dreamed about, although God brought them to us through a story I never could have written for myself. When I think back to that young woman lying in her bed asking God for a husband and two children, I wish I could tell her, “Just wait. God is writing something better than you can see right now.”

Today I’m simply thankful. I’m thankful for the man God gave me, thankful for the life we’ve built and thankful that after 27 years we’re still walking through it together. Sometimes God’s answers don’t arrive wrapped the way we expect them to, and sometimes it takes years before we can look backward and recognize just how much He was doing. Matt may not have been love at first sight, but he was the one God knew I needed.

❤️ Have you ever looked back years later and realized that something—or someone—you didn’t recognize at the time was actually an answer God had been preparing for you all along?

Happy Anniversary Matt!! I love you!!

Until tomorrow… Keep your coffee warm, your Bible close, and your eyes open for the blessings God places in your path today.

♥️Mandy

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