Covenant Handshake - Jordan and Patrick's love story

The last few days have been really great for the two of us. We have been catching up with family and friends, sharing the exciting news of our engagement. Jordan and I have been talking a lot about how many of Jordan's friends have never met me and how most of my friends and family have never met Jordan. We have shared a lot together during out friendship over the last 5 years. We also know that even some of the people closest to us in our lives do not know much about our relationship together and the love that has grown between us since we met over Christmas, 5 years ago. We want to share our story with you so that you can start to get to know us together a little bit now.

We met in Shreveport, LA in 2003 working on a project to provide people with new housing opportunities through a community building approach. Over the next year, Jordan lived in the Allendale neighborhood of Shreveport full time, and Patrick drove from South Bend to Louisiana every chance he had to help build houses for the neighborhood project. During this time we became fast friends. We spent a lot of time together and shared some very meaningful and formative experiences with one another.

Over the last three years we have kept in touch with each other sharing life with one another over the phone. When we would talk it would always be great to catch up and share our lives with each other - but it was also a little sad to hang up the phone knowing that we were two people living two different lives a thousand miles away from each other. We would talk about how we missed each other, how Patrick had fallen head over heels in love with Jordan, but that is where the conversation always would end.

And then...

One December day after realizing that she had been comparing every man she met and dated to Patrick, she knew that she had to let him know just how wonderful she thought he was and how she missed him. Emails were sent. Phone calls were made. A ticket from Shreveport to Chicago was booked for December 27, 2008. Patrick and Jordan were excited to see each other.

Then came one of the worst days of traveling for Jordan. Ever. With butterflies in her stomach about getting to see Patrick later in the day, Jordan finally fell asleep about 1am. At 2:30am she was awoken by a ringing phone. Missed call. She checked the voicemail to hear a barely decipherable message from NW that her flight had been cancelled and moved to 6pm the next day. Jordan did not accept this and, determined to see her man as soon as possible, she was up at the crack of dawn and on her way to the Shreveport Airport at 6:30am. When she arrived, the kind man at the ticket counter told her that her chances of making it to Chicago that day were not good, but she boarded her flight to Memphis with her fingers crossed that she would make it to Chicago that day to see her love who had been waiting for her for the last three years.

After arriving in Memphis, Jordan learned that she missed her connecting flight by 20 minutes and began the fun, that we all know, of trying to figure out how to fly into Chicago on a wintery day. At this point, it was only 9am. Jordan was told that the next flight to Chicago was at 6:45pm. Jordan immediately started getting ready for a long day of fun and excitement at the expansive (not) Memphis Airport. Around 5pm, after hours of napping, reading, and talking on the phone, Jordan looked up to find a familiar face, like an oasis in a desert of sub par giftshops and overpriced sandwiches. It was her longtime family friend, David Parker. David was scheduled to be on the same flight to Chicago as Jordan as he made his way back to Buffalo, NY, for his medical residency. Patrick was relieved that Jordan had someone to spend some time with at the airport.

Jordan and David continued to wonder if they would ever make it to Chicago as their flight was delayed again and again. Finally they were able to board for Chicago at 8pm, but not before they both realized the real possibilty that David might miss his connecting flight to Buffalo out of Ohare that night.

Around 10:30pm, Jordan's flight finally landed in the windy city. Sure enough there was no chance that David was going to make it to Buffalo that night. So the romantic reunion of Patrick and Jordan blossomed into a modern day episode of Three's Company. After a long, long day of travel, Jordan struggled to get her suitcase over the turnstyle at the train station, with impatient Chicagoans giving her advice from behind, it was then that she looked up and saw Patrick walking towards her. It was great for Patrick and Jordan to see each other (This might be a bit of an understatement). That first evening was full of conversation and catching up and a lot of romance between Patrick and Jordan........and David. The next day, after sharing some laughs about the situation of the night before, we began to really share our lives with each other in earnest. We went to an all Hungarian mass together (this was not planned, and just another example of the hilarious events), had breakfast, and shared our first kiss. We talked about life and love and lots of other things in between.

Over the course of the next week it quickly became apparent to both of us that the best thing, the only thing, the way that we were going to be happy in life and doing what we need to do for God, ourselves, our families, and all the rest, was to be doing it together from this point forward. We discussed all of the things that we felt are the most important things to consider when thinking about marriage - and after a few days together - we knew without a doubt that we wanted to get married and begin spending the rest of our lives together - our love story. Early in the morning of January 1, 2009 , Patrick asked Jordan to marry him. Without a ring in hand at this moment, our love was sealed with the most romantic and hilarious "covenant handshake." That day we went out, bought a ring together, and came home for a proper and formal proposal. Jordan said yes. Patrick smiled and hasn't stopped.

We know that a lot of our friends and family know very little about our story and that is just one of the reasons that we wanted to tell it here. We are very much in love, could not be happier, and cannot wait to begin to build our married life together here in Chicago. We love all of our family and friends very much, and we look forward to all of you getting to know us together as a couple. Also, because we are both romantics, and our love is more than just an "agape kind of love," we wanted to share the emails that led to Jordan's journey to Chicago and helped begin our adventure together.