TumbleDweeeb

— I’m posting this here as a hidden post and it’ll be made public the minute we sign these papers. Reason for doing this? To keep anyone from changing my mind, changing our minds. To keep the faithless away, like garlic to a vampire. Our minds are made up and they will not change.
…. — April 23 at 3:33 PM

Fourteen Days
A story about marriage, faith, and the one thing there is actually to lose
By: Emmitt Owens
(Index #04232026)

— “We met each other on Aprill 11th, 2026 & We Married May 1st, 2026.”

I am a storyteller by nature, just ask my children… ask anyone that knows me personally. It is not my profession… it’s a hobby, it’s more by instinct. I collect experiences the way other people collect excuses not to have them.
Let me give you a few examples so you understand exactly who is narrating this.
I once drove 400 miles south to Panama City Beach for a blind date I had never actually seen in person. We got matching tattoos. I barely saw her again after that. The tattoo is still there. The story is worth every mile.
I have seriously considered driving six hours to a random town, faking a breakdown on the side of the road, wandering into whatever diner the locals love, inventing an entirely fabricated backstory for myself over drink and food, and then quietly fixing the car … which was never broken … and disappearing before anyone thought to ask too many questions.
I have thought about finding a random public event … a family reunion, a convention, somebody’s open wedding reception… walking in like I belong there, fully committing to the bit, and slipping out before anyone questioned it.
I once had an idea that belongs in the pages of something that should probably not be written down… a friend and I fly to Montana, check into a hotel for a single night, have the kind of electric, consuming, “this absolutely should not be happening” experience that makes every nerve ending remind you that you are alive, and then fly home the next morning like it was completely ordinary. Because the story would be worth it. Because the experience would be worth it.
And about two months ago I had another idea. Find a friend. Fly to Vegas. Get married. Get it annulled the next day. Not out of loneliness. Not out of recklessness. Just to have the story. Just to be able to say “yeah, I did that. I was married and divorced all within one day and it was magnificent.
Some of these happened.
Some of them almost happened.
All of them lived in the part of my imagination that has never once asked “should I” before asking “what if”.
I mention all of this so you understand exactly who is narrating what comes next.

—

Her name is Tia.

We met on Saturday, April 11th, 2026. At a creek. In the sand. On the first day of my vacation, with my daughter beside me and nothing on my mind but a quiet morning on the water.
On Saturday, April 25th, 2026… fourteen days later… we fill out the marriage forms. At the same place we met. At Quarter Creek, Bear Creek Reservoir… Haleyville, Alabama. The same sand. The same water.
Whether we mail them that same day is still being decided, if she says “yes” then that will be our wedding day, if she says “wait” our wedding day is in the making. Either way we will make our vows between us and God on the day we fill out the forms. That part is settled.
And on April 11th, 2027… one year to the day from the morning everything began… we will stand at that same water and say the words out loud in front of our family, the people we love and God again.
The place where He joined us will be the place where we make it official with a ceremony.

—

I know what you’re thinking. I’d be thinking it too. But stay with me… because this isn’t what it looks like. Or maybe it’s exactly what it looks like, and what it looks like is actually something worth understanding.
Four days in, the marriage topic came up. Not as a joke. Not as a passing comment. As a real topic, sitting between two people who were already aware that something unusual was happening. And we didn’t drop it. We kept returning to it, kept turning it over, kept letting it evolve over the next several days… two people in their forties who have both been through enough to know the difference between infatuation and something that settles differently in your chest.
By Friday, April 17th, we had our answer.
“Why not risk it? Why not go all the way in? What is there to actually lose?”

—

Here is how we think about it… and I want you to really hear this part.
We believe marriage is sacred. Genuinely, deeply, completely sacred. And our approach is biblical… not as a buzzword, not as a talking point, but as a framework. Because when you actually read the stories, the biblical model of love and commitment looks nothing like a modern dating checklist.
The night before I found her, I prayed. Not polished, not composed… just honest, the way you can only be with Someone who has never once asked you to be less than you are. I told God I was tired of waiting. I told Him I wasn’t sure she existed. I told Him I couldn’t do it alone anymore. And then I prayed the most specific prayer I think I have ever prayed —

“If this woman exists… if she is real… I need her now.”

Tia was praying too. Not the same words, not the same night, but the same prayer. Both of us, independently, asking God for our person. Both of us coming to the end of ourselves and laying it down at the same feet.
Neither of us knew the other existed.
And then that Saturday… bam!
Same beach. Same morning. Same answer to two different prayers prayed in the same direction.

—

Later in the week Tia and I discussed Isaac and Rebecca together. We sat with that story and recognized something in it… two people, open eyes, the plain light of an ordinary day holding something neither of them had arranged. She came, he lifted his eyes, she lifted hers, and he loved her. No long courtship. No compatibility assessment. No carefully managed progression of steps. A covenant was made. Faith preceded certainty… and that was the point.
That was the framework we held. But I have since found our story in other pages too. In Solomon’s words… “I found the one my soul loves” … no long courtship described, no careful progression, just recognition. Immediate, consuming, total. The soul knows its own.
And in the story of Tobias and Sarah… two people whose marriage God had arranged before they ever met, before either of them had spoken the other’s name, before either of them knew the other existed. When they came together it moved to marriage with almost no distance between the meeting and the covenant. And on their first night together they prayed… surrendering what they were beginning to the God who had already been building it long before either of them arrived.

We are not being reckless despite believing marriage is sacred.

We are doing this because we do.

—

Now let me tell you about the gamble… because I am honest enough to call it what it is.
And I am going to be more honest here than I have been so far.
When I say the only thing we lose is the cost of a divorce I am not telling you the whole truth. That is the financial cost. But I am a father. I have a daughter who already knows things before I do… who ran ahead of me at that creek toward Tia before I had taken a single step in that direction. Her stability matters to me more than any story I could ever tell. There is emotional trust at stake here too. The kind that, if broken, doesn’t just cost money… it costs something in the chest that takes a long time to rebuild. And there is spiritual confidence. If two people pray specifically for their person and then move in faith and it falls apart… that is a harder thing to carry than a filing fee.

I know that.
We both know that.

And we are moving forward anyway… not because we are blind to the cost but because we have looked at it clearly and decided that the cost of not moving is even higher.
And there is Tia’s stability too. I want to say that plainly. She has been hurt before… not just emotionally, but in ways that leave marks that don’t fully disappear. She has let people in who did not deserve to be there. She has trusted and had that trust used against her in the worst ways. For her to be standing at that creek on April 25th filling out those forms… that is not a small thing. That is one of the bravest things I have ever seen a person do. And I want her to know… and I want anyone reading this to know… I am not those men. She will be loved. She will be safe. She will know both every single day.
I also know what some of you are thinking… and I respect it enough to say it out loud.
This is desire dressed up as revelation. This is emotion that found a theological frame after the fact. People have been misreading God’s hand in their own wants since the beginning of time.

Maybe.

I cannot prove otherwise. Faith doesn’t come with documentation. What I can tell you is that two people prayed the same prayer from different places without knowing the other existed and ended up at the same creek on the same morning. What I can tell you is that it didn’t feel like coincidence to either of us… and we are both old enough and honest enough with ourselves to know the difference between what we want and what we have been given.
We know people will call this emotion dressed up as revelation. We are willing to stand in that tension. Because the alternative… talking ourselves out of something real because we couldn’t prove it… is its own kind of faithlessness.

—

We both have history. We’ve both had relationships. We both know how to make them work and how to watch them not work. And here is the thing that keeps surfacing when we talk about all of it… our histories mirror each other. Raised similarly. Backgrounds close enough that when one of us describes where we came from, the other one nods not out of politeness but out of recognition. We were shaped by similar things. We learned similar lessons through different experiences. That is not coincidence. That is two people who were prepared for each other before they ever met.

—

We are both in our forties.
That matters more than it might sound.

When you are in your forties you stop being afraid of the wrong things. You have already done careful. You have already done patient and measured and responsible. You know what that costs too. You understand that the real risk is not moving too fast… the real risk is letting something extraordinary walk out of your life because you were too sensible to reach for it.

We’ve done sensible.
Sensible has its own costs.

What we are walking toward now are the final numbered chapters of our lives. And we have both decided that we want those chapters written together. Not someday. Not eventually. Now. Because we are old enough to know that now is the only version of eventually that is guaranteed.

—

Either way… this is a great story.
Either it becomes the most beautiful love story we have ever had the privilege of living, or it becomes the most entertainingly absurd thing we have ever done. We have made peace with both outcomes. A storyteller can afford to be that honest because a storyteller knows that the only stories worth telling are the ones where something real was actually at stake.
Something real is at stake here.
We are both willing.

—

On April 25th, 2026 we will fill out the forms at the same sand where we met.

On April 11th, 2027 we will stand at that same water… one year to the day from the morning He introduced us… and say the words out loud.

Quarter Creek will be there the way it was the first time. The same reservoir. The same sand. The same light on the water.

The place where God joined us will be the place where we make it a covenant before the world.

—

But I want to leave you with the truest thing I know about all of it.
God may have introduced us.
What we do with that introduction is where faith, wisdom, and responsibility meet.
If God introduced us then this matters. It matters enormously. And what we build from it… the daily choice to show up, to be faithful, to become worthy of what we were given… that is on us.

Not on the creek.
Not on the timing.
Not on the story.

On us.

He knew before we did.
He always knew.

What we do next… we will answer for. Together.
Faith isn’t knowing this will work.

Faith is deciding it matters enough to try.

By the way, I uninstalled messenger ten days ago… questions? concerns??? talk to the hand.

—

“I found the one my soul loves.”

— Song of Solomon 3:4

“Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.”

— Isaiah 65:24

“And Isaac went out to meditate in the field at evening. He lifted his eyes and saw… and Rebekah lifted up her eyes, and when she saw Isaac… she became his wife, and he loved her.”

— Genesis 24:63–67