The timing couldn’t have been any worse. It was August 2013, and I had a hunch that I just met the girl I would end up marrying.

Two months earlier I had just finished my initial Ministry Team Development with Reliant, and spent my first summer on staff in Silver Bay, NY serving with the Adirondack Leadership Training program. I had just gotten back to campus at the University of Illinois, and my church, Illini Life, was in the midst of our big Fall kick-off event for the semester. Because I have a “loud” personality, I was responsible for being the MC of the night, and things were going smoothly, when from the corner of my eye I saw a beautiful young woman that I had never seen before. “Never seeing someone before” is kind of common for New Student Month, and people are constantly introducing themselves (“what’s your name? what’s your major?”) so I had an easy way to “break the ice” with this mysterious girl. Unfortunately, following the end of the service, several other guys were trying to “break the ice” with her as well, so I had to bide my time. A clearing opened and I ran-walked as fast as I could to say “hello.” I introduced myself, and she said she was “Megan” and that she was originally from San Diego. And the real kicker: she was a grad student! Which meant she might be my age!!! Praise the Lord.

Your willingness to be sacrificial will protect your spouse’s heart from bitterness and resentment towards you and towards your mission.

Now the moment you turn 22 in a college ministry, you become what they call “old.” At this point in my life I was 26, so, in the eyes of most college students, I was not only “old” – I was just a couple steps away from the grave. Being this old and decrepit in a college ministry usually means your prospects of meeting and dating a “peer” are slim. So when I found out that Megan was only 1 year younger than me, I turned my eyes to heaven and thanked the Lord for blessing me with sweet manna from heaven. There was only a minor hitch… She had a boyfriend.

I should pause here a moment and acknowledge that the editors of this fine blog have not requested a full regaling of my beautiful romance with my wife Megan, so let me cut to the chase: after a couple months she broke up with her boyfriend, she complimented a sermon I gave, I let her borrow my winter cap during a cold hay bale ride, we ate some tapas, and we got married. (Maybe in part 2 of this article, I can fill in the details of all that, but let’s just say it worked out real good).

You may be wondering though, But Russ, why was the timing so bad? It seemed to work out just fine? Well, (thanks for asking) the reason the timing was awful was because I had just committed to being on Reliant staff with my campus church, and Megan was a grad student studying technical theater for three years. If there’s one thing that is true about Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, it’s that there is not much of a theater scene. It was dumb luck (or divine providence) that Megan and I happened to meet while she was getting her MFA, but when we started talking we always had the weird subtext of “what’s going to happen after I graduate and need a job?” Even before we started dating, we had to wrestle with the question of whether or not our careers were aligned. God had bestowed on me a specific mission to be a campus missionary at the University of Illinois for an indeterminate amount of time. For Megan, her mission was to study theater, and to be a light in a dark world that has been wounded and shunned by many Christians in the church. Her post-graduate work would most likely pull her to a city like Milwaukee, Chicago, or New York, and I was confident that God wanted me to stay put in my small “semi-rural” town that doesn’t have much culture. Was there any way for our missions to co-mingle?

One of the most pivotal moments of our relationship came a month before we actually started dating. I had volunteered to drive Megan to O’Hare airport in Chicago. I did it under the guise of selfless chivalry, but really I just wanted to have extended time with her to get to know her, and to have a chance to show how “extremely cool and good looking I was from the profile side (you know the way someone looks when they’re driving).” During this drive I vividly remember hugging a turn on an exit ramp from I-90 to enter onto Lake Shore Drive, and feeling compelled that I needed to confess to her an anxiety that had been nagging me during our “intentional friendship.” The reason it had been nagging at me is that it was a topic that had led to break-ups in the past. I worked up the courage and tried my best to say it plainly: I no longer felt like I had much say in where I end up living. And if she wanted to date me, I couldn’t make her any “geographic promises.” Before I had met Megan I had made a commitment to relinquish my geographic rights to the Lord, and I was fully committed to staying where He led me to stay, even if it was a quasi-podunk college town to work with college students. I was worried that this would be a deal-breaker for her, because I knew what her job prospects would be in town. But, I had to be “up-front” with her, and tried my best to communicate that she would be making a decision to date “me” not so much my “geography”.

My mission was to follow the Lord’s lead into whatever “lands” he called me to, and I was hoping that Megan would be able to join in with that mission and embrace the “great geographic unknown.” For Megan, this was a huge ask, because her work is so region-specific, and the job prospects in our area are so very slim. But love has a way of motivating us to do crazy things, and even though it went badly with girls in the past, I knew I had to be honest with Megan about where things were at, and just lay it all out on the table before she made a choice to date me.

And that’s the most essential piece of advice I would give to a Reliant staffer (or someone considering staff) that is contemplating dating/marrying a non-Reliant staffer: Be honest with them. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, and don’t be ashamed of the work God is calling you to do. A lot of the time, people (like Megan) that are interested in (smokin’ hot) missionaries (like me) are going to most likely be interested in the work that you’re doing, and are going to be willing and excited to make sacrifices to be with you. Don’t feel guilty. Feel grateful. And thank them regularly for sacrificing their fame, fortune, and untapped potential to do the unglamorous work of missions.

The second piece of advice is don’t make your “mission” an idol; especially at the expense of your spouse. There may come a time when you need to defer to the career of your non-missionary spouse. Be willing to do it, and try to think of creative ways to stay on mission in a different location or context. Is there another collegiate church you could join, is there a seminary you could attend, is there a church you could serve at? Much of the time, our non-staff spouses just want to know that we’re willing to make sacrifices for them as well. That it’s not one-sided. Your willingness to be sacrificial will protect your spouse’s heart from bitterness and resentment towards you and towards your mission.

A mistake that missionaries can unintentionally commit is communicating (either overtly or covertly) that since our work is in the “spiritual” realm that it is by default a “higher” or “better” or “more legitimate” mission than the secular work that our non-staff spouses are pursuing. So we need to be mindful of affirming and supporting their professional work, and find ways for the mission of our work-week to overlap and integrate with one another. I constantly try to affirm Megan in her work as a theater technician and I greatly enjoy when we brainstorm ideas for different ways she can be a “missionary” to her friends and colleagues professionally.

Megan and I are beginning to look at the next five years as a married couple, and we’re starting to pursue God on what His mission will be for us as one flesh. I’m really excited to see how God provides a way for us to be on mission together, and I hope that by being honest and flexible, Megan and I are going to be in a good spot to hear from the Lord, and pursue His heart’s desires for us. I’m so grateful he crossed our paths, and maybe the timing wasn’t as terrible as I thought.