by Cole
I feel so extremely blessed for the relationship I have with Everleigh and that she calls me daddy. She calls Tommy dad as well. We told her the truth: yes, technically, I am her stepdad, but I would never tell her that she couldn’t call me dad if that’s what she wanted to call me, and there’s nothing wrong with having two dads. She’s just extra lucky is how she looks at it!
Relationships between stepparents and their stepkids can turn out poorly because of the tension either between them or the biological parents. God’s creation and plan for the family started with one man and one woman. Our family dynamic is obviously different than God’s intent, but that doesn’t mean this situation is too messy for Him to fix. It just means we may have a more difficult road than others.
I never wanted to take over Tommy’s spot as dad but simply to love wherever God calls me. It can be so easy to let Satan get in your head and become selfish, making “family” about “you.” This was the fight for me. I had to lay myself down and realize none of this was about me or Tommy and who was the dad. Whether Ev calls me dad or not shouldn’t be important. All it should ever be about is Everleigh. My job is to show her how a man treats a woman, how a husband loves a wife, how a godly father loves and sacrifices for his children, and just how a godly person loves other people every day.
I knew all the crazy stories from Tommy’s past, as told to me by Savannah, every one of her friends, and her family. People loved bringing up these stories that I, honestly, couldn’t believe were true. It angered me how terribly someone could or would treat any girl, much less my future wife. I also had to get used to the constant mockery I received from him when I first moved out there. Eventually I had to let all that go. And, if I’m being honest, I truly do hope and pray that one day Tommy and I can become friends. And not just kind-of friends but real friends. I think that would be so awesome and show how truly amazing God is. Two guys who obviously should hate each other turn out to be great friends only because of the love of God.
Our situation isn’t the most fun for anyone, but I try to put myself in his shoes and feel for him. It’s one of those things that will definitely take time and lots of God’s intervention. But Savannah and I pray for the best between all of us moving forward.
Savannah
Cole was bound to have a hard time adjusting to living in my mom’s house after he’d lived on his own with friends for a couple of years. Don’t get me wrong. My mom was totally for Cole moving into our house. Given how she prayed and prayed for me to get away from my past relationships and find a godly guy, she’d have been supportive of anything that kept Cole close. However, living with your mom as an adult isn’t easy, and living in your girlfriend’s mom’s house with her can be really tricky.
Living with my mom was completely normal for me. I’d always lived with her, even after my parents split up. When I went to college, I commuted to Saddleback Community College for my first two years. Later, when I transferred to Long Beach State and switched to a teaching major, I did all of my classes online from home. I might have moved out and gotten an apartment with some of my friends except I got pregnant when I was nineteen. After Everleigh was born, I needed my mom close by. She helped me so much with Ev, physically, emotionally, spiritually, and financially. I never could have made it without her.
After I turned twenty-one and started making a little money from social media, my mom asked me to start paying rent. Up until then she received child support for me from my dad. Along with the rent I also started paying for my own phone, car, insurance, and all the other things you have to take care of as an adult. The rent wasn’t much, but my attitude about it wasn’t the greatest. I pretty much griped all the time about having to pay rent to my mother. That ended after I started dating Cole. My heart didn’t get softer just toward God, it also became softer for my mom. Instead of being selfish, I looked at the situation through my mom’s eyes. After Cole and I started making videos together, I was making more money than my mom. Instead of thinking my mom owed me something because, you know, she’s my mom, I realized I needed to pay my own way and be independent.
My mom didn’t charge Cole rent. Instead, what he did was split the cost of my rent with me. It was a great arrangement, except for the fact that Cole had to adjust to living with a mom again. He had lived with three other guys in an apartment near his school. He was used to doing his own thing and being on his own. After he moved into our house, my mom kind of treated him like she did me, that is, like a kid. She’d tell him not to leave his dishes in the sink but to put them in the dishwasher, and she left notes around the house telling him not to leave his clothes lying around. Basically, she was just being a mom. I was used to it because I’d always lived at home. Cole wasn’t. When she got on to him for leaving his cereal bowl in the sink, he’d sort of give me a look like, Really? It’s not that my mom was being terrible, but when you haven’t lived with your mom for a while, you don’t want to be treated like a child. Nearly from the start he was ready to move out and get a place of his own. It wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate my mom’s generosity in letting him move into our house. He did. But he was ready to get on with his life. I was too. Even before Cole moved in, I was ready to move out and get a place of my own, but that’s hard to do for a single mom in Southern California because everything is so expensive.
One of us moving out also wouldn’t be good for us for another very big reason that we will talk about in a later chapter. For now, I’ll just leave it at this: Cole and I both knew that this arrangement was going to be temporary and the shorter the better. Eventually we were going to get married and move out on our own. He hadn’t asked me to marry him yet, but we talked about it all the time. At first, we’d talked about a long engagement. It didn’t take us long to figure out that neither of us wanted that. We loved each other and wanted to get married. But first, he’d have to ask me.
20
The Proposal
Cole
From the first time I held Savannah’s hand, I started thinking about how I wanted to ask her to marry me. I always knew she was the one. The next five months only convinced me that much more. I now had the ring. I just had to figure out the perfect time and place to propose. And the sooner the better.
Savannah
I really thought Cole was going to pop the question during the Passion conference in Atlanta. One of my friends came up to me during one of the breaks and told me that she heard that Cole talked to Louie Giglio, the main speaker and the founder of the Passion movement. I wasn’t sure why she told me that unless Cole had talked to Louie about pulling me up onstage during the conference and proposing in front of fifty thousand people. To me the timing seemed perfect. Passion marked the end of our long-distance relationship and the beginning of our time together. What better way to start the new chapter in our lives than for him to propose? We’d fly home to California engaged, which would be perfect. The two of us had even talked about how cool that would be, so it wasn’t like I was imagining things. I kept waiting for the big moment, but then the conference ended and he hadn’t proposed and I was like, oh well, maybe later. Surely later!
I knew Cole would ask me to marry him soon after he moved to California. He had talked about it for months. Since we’d gone to the Bahamas, practically every time we went someplace nice, he’d start talking about proposing someday. He’d say, “Oh my gosh, what if I asked you here, right now?” He’d even look over my shoulder and motion for people to come over, like my friends or family were there for the big event. I’d get excited, but then he’d laugh or say something like, “No, not today.” I’d laugh, like his joke didn’t fool me, but it sort of did. Every time.
Cole
I wanted my proposal to be something the two of us would remember for the rest of our lives. From what all my engaged and married friends had told me, Savannah and her mom would plan the actual wedding. They might ask my opinion, but for most couples, the guy’s main responsibility for the wedding is to choose enough groomsmen
to match the number of bridesmaids and to let his future wife plan the wedding exactly the way she wants it. But the proposal, that’s different. This was my time to show her how much I loved her.
Planning something really special takes a lot of time and preparation. I wanted to do it as soon as possible, but I also had to work around a very busy schedule. Everleigh was really into dance—she still is—and the dance competition season was about to start. I had to find a day that didn’t conflict with her dance practice and competition schedule. I also wanted both of our families and a lot of our friends to be there for the big day. I already planned on flying my family out. That meant working around my mom’s and dad’s work schedules and anything else my family might have going on. I also needed to find the perfect place—someplace romantic, available at a time that worked with everyone’s schedules, and had facilities nearby for a big celebration dinner. And I had to plan all of this while keeping everything a secret from Savannah. Yeah, good luck to me.
I ended up deciding I’d ask Savannah to marry me on Thursday, January 19. The day didn’t have any special meaning beyond being the one day that checked off all the boxes. Keep in mind that I moved to Cali on January 5. That only left me two weeks to finalize all my plans.
I found a great place to propose at the Monarch Beach Resort in Dana Point. The resort has a great gazebo that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. Finding romantic spots is a lot easier when you live near an ocean. My family flew out on January 18 and checked into a hotel near our home in Huntington Beach. They planned to meet us at the resort the next day. Savannah had no idea. I also made arrangements well ahead of time with her family and all her friends to meet us at the resort. Now I had to get Savannah there without giving everything away. I had a plan.
A few weeks before the big day arrived, I arranged for one of the companies with which we do YouTube business to send us a very official looking e-mail asking us to vlog at the Monarch Beach Resort on January 19. Because Monarch Beach is a really, really nice resort, doing a shoot there meant we had to dress up a bit. Savannah bought it. I think. I’m pretty sure she did. We did stuff like this all the time. Under normal circumstances she might have become suspicious about going to such a nice place. It seemed like exactly the kind of place where I would propose. That’s why I had tormented her with all those fake-out proposals. Since I acted like I was going to pop the question every time we went anywhere nice, she wouldn’t think that this day was going to be any different.
Selling the day to her as a business vlog also allowed me to add other little touches to make the day special without giving it away. We never do a vlog in only one location. I always add in other stops as well as shooting video on the car ride over. A lot of times we shoot video at places that doesn’t ever make it into what you see when you click on our YouTube channel. All of that meant that Savannah had no reason to become suspicious when I took her to her favorite nail place to get her nails done or when I brought her favorite coffee order to her. And because this resort is a really nice place, it didn’t look suspicious when we both dressed nicer than we do for a shoot in a place like Disneyland or a water park.
Before we did any of that, however, I had one more detail I had to take care of. I sat down with Everleigh over lunch right before the big day and I asked her if it would be okay if I asked her mommy to marry me. Everleigh said sure. I told her that when I became her mommy’s husband then I would be her daddy. I did not mean that I wanted to take the place of her other dad. I made it clear that she would now have two dads. Savannah and I were always very clear, open, and honest that it is perfectly okay for a kid to have two dads. It’s actually even better! I asked Ev if that was okay if I became her dad and she said it was. She actually loved the idea of two dads. We then ate our sandwiches. Four-year-olds are pretty simple that way. I also had her spend the rest of her day with her Gigi while Sav and I went and did the video shoot. If Everleigh had gone with us to the nail place or spent any time with us in the car, she would have blown everything. That’s what four-year-olds do.
Savannah
I was suspicious when Cole told me about the video shoot. We hardly ever did a video without Ev and it was unusual to have one where we needed to dress up. Monarch Beach Resort is a nice place, and it seemed exactly like the kind of place Cole might pick to propose. Of course, I’d thought the same thing about a hundred other places, and none of them turned out to be the place. This video was supposed to be a brand deal, which would explain everything. I decided to go along with it, but I also prepared myself, just in case.
The morning of the video shoot, Cole took off for a little while. He said he was going to go to the gym. I didn’t have any reason not to believe him although when he came home, he didn’t look like he’d been working out. Our video shoot wasn’t until the afternoon. At one point during the day, I was doing something work related on Cole’s computer when an iMessage popped up from one of my friends asking, Hey, what time do we all need to get there? Cole walked in just as the message popped up, so I said, “Be where? For what?” The whole thing really seemed to catch Cole off guard. He said something about some event. I don’t even remember exactly what he said, but I didn’t really believe him. Something was up.
I really became suspicious when we got in the car to go to the nail place. Cole didn’t seem at all like himself. Normally he talks a lot and is really goofy. Today he hardly said anything and he seemed really nervous. He looked like he had a lot more than a video shoot at a resort on his mind. I started to get really excited, but I’d had too many false alarms when I thought Cole was about to propose and he didn’t. I thought he was up to something, but I didn’t let myself really go there. However, once we got to the nail place, his phone started blowing up with text messages—I mean, even more than normal. That made me think, Oh my gosh. It could be today! Then afterward, on the drive from the nail place to the resort, he tried to act like this was just another vlog, but he seemed really uptight, really nervous. I had a pretty good idea what was making him so nervous, but I didn’t want to say anything and spoil the surprise.
Cole
It’s never cold in Southern California, and it hardly ever rains. On January 19, the day, we woke up to cold, pouring rain. It reminded me of the big, heavy thunderstorms in Alabama. Savannah looked outside and said she’d never seen it rain this hard before. All I could think was, Great! Of all the days for a storm. However, we had until five that evening for the sun to come out and warm everything up. I had high hopes.
Right after I got up, I told Savannah I was going to go to the gym to work out. Instead, I went to my family’s hotel and hung out with them for a while. I hadn’t seen them since I moved so I was really anxious to spend time with them. Everyone was so excited for me. They asked me if I was nervous (Yes!) and how I felt about the rain (Why today?!). My dad could see how nervous I was. He pulled me aside and said, “Hey, this is what’s supposed to happen. Everything is going to be great. Savannah’s going to say yes when you ask her to marry you and at the end of the day you guys will be engaged. Who cares about the stupid rain? It will make for a great story someday.” I love my dad’s positive attitude. He really helped me calm down and stop worrying about things I could not control . . . like the weather.
The rain finally stopped, but a cold wind blew—not cold for places like Indiana, but for Southern California, it was really cold. Savannah wore a beautiful, long sleeveless dress. Oh man, she looked so great in that dress. However, she didn’t wear a jacket. After we pulled up to the resort and parked the car, she cuddled up close to me to try to stay warm as we walked along. The sidewalk was still wet, and the sun was going down, which made it seem even colder. Proposing at sunset had seemed like a great idea before a cold front rolled in. But, hey, like my dad said, I couldn’t do anything about the weather, and if this beautiful woman needed to snuggle up close to me to stay warm, I didn’t mind.
We hadn’t walked very far when I told Savannah I needed to go to the restroom.
A videographer met me in the restroom to put on my mic. Savannah and I then walked up the drive around the ocean side of the resort. I looked around and pointed things out as if I had never been there before. Then we came to an opening, and I stopped and said, “Hey, look at that. How pretty.” I pointed toward the gazebo overlooking the ocean. I had wrapped it in string lights, like white Christmas tree lights. Savannah isn’t a big fan of flowers, but she loves string lights. Right then, she knew. If she didn’t, she did once we walked over closer and she could see red rose petals sprinkled across the floor of the gazebo. I tried to play dumb and kept saying things like “What is that?” but she knew. I could see it on her face, and I didn’t mind. She laughed and smiled and was so excited and happy, and so was I. This was a moment I’d been waiting for my whole life. Savannah was the most perfect woman on the planet, the one God had made for me—and made me for her. And I was about to ask her to be my wife.
Savannah
I can barely remember what happened next. I’m glad we have the whole thing on video because I was so happy and excited that my mind could barely take it all in. When we walked under the gazebo with the lights shining and the red rose petals under our feet, I grinned from ear to ear and kept saying, “Oh, babe. I cannot believe you did this!” Cole was like, “Did what?” I told him I knew what was happening, but he tried to play it cool. He took me by the hand and stood there for a moment, looking at me, and we both started laughing and smiling. All of a sudden, a guy with a guitar came out and started playing “Yours” by Russell Dickerson—our song! Two photographers and a videographer then appeared. Still, Cole didn’t say a word. He just smiled at me. Finally, our families came out of hiding as the sun sank behind us. It was the most perfect moment I could have ever hoped for.