When Amber Met Alex

Welcome to the How We Met Series on MessyMom.com. Let’s jump right in and welcome Amber Kaufman as today’s guest writer sharing how she met her husband Alex. 

Alex and I attended college at Cincinnati Christian University. He was majoring in Missions and I was majoring in Deaf Studies. During our Sophomore year, we took a public speaking class together. I remember thinking he was cute but it didn’t really go past that because he did’t have long hair, piercings and tattoos. One day, he gave a how-to speech on changing a bicycle tire. He stood there at the front of the class, making small talk…and then he started rolling up his sleeves. I thought “OH MY WOW. He has nice forearms!” I was (maybe) a little more interested in him after that lol.

Weeks past and one day we needed up in a random discussion with friends about reading the Bible from beginning to end. I told everyone that I was trying to get through it but couldn’t because I was stuck in Leviticus.

“Leviticus is full of good stuff!” he said. “Look. You meet me here everyday, and we will read it together. I’ll help you get through it. ” I wasn’t at all excited about his proposal. But I did it and he kept his promise. Every day I spent with him, my heart grew more and more fond of him. He made Leviticus interesting and I loved that. I remember feeling sad once we reached the end of the book. After we read the last chapter, we both kind of sat there in silence.

Then, he looked at me and said, ” So….you wanna read Numbers together?” I smiled and said yes. A few months later, he took me out on our 2nd date. Alex wasn’t the type of guy that I would usually go for. I remember being up at night walking around my room trying to figure out why I liked him. He was clean cut…not a single piercing (to my knowledge) and didn’t have any tattoos. HA HA! I wasn’t even sure if he liked me that much. He was a pure country boy and I am somewhat of a city girl. Still, I found him very intriguing. After agreeing to the second date, I started wondering if he would want to make it “official”.

We went to a park in Price Hill, walked around and talked (I still to this day love talking to him). We sat on a bench and he put his arm around me, smiled real big and said, “You wanna be my girlfriend?” He was all up in my face too! Ha ha! I was so shocked at how sure he was of me. I smiled and said “Are you sure?” I remember thinking “This isn’t happening!” He assured me that this is what he wanted and I told him that I would love to be his girlfriend. We dated for 10 months. 10 months of getting to know each other and becoming more and more inseparable. 10 months of learning about each other cultures and embracing each others differences.

Our families grew closer, we had good times and bad times. We leaned on the Lord as we worked through struggles and built each other up.

The hardest part of our 10 months of dating was our time apart during the summer. It was 2006 and he had to go overseas for his degree (remember he was a missions major). He went to Africa for 3 months. I was torn because I knew I wanted to be with him but I also knew I wasn’t called to live overseas which is something he talked about often. The longer we were apart from each other, the more I knew that I didn’t want to live my life without him. I just started to pray and ask the Lord to help. I only heard from him a few times while he was there. The last email I got from was my favorite. He told me that he missed me and loved me and that the had already changed his major from Missions to Biblical Studies. “I’ve really been thinking about our future while here. I’ve been thinking about saving my money for a house and a couple rings *wink wink*”.

After reading that, my jaw hit the floor. I was so ready for him to come back! He did, safe and sound! We were once again inseparable. For 3 months, we looked at rings and talked about marriage. One day, I saw him coming back to campus wearing khakis and a sweater. I thought “Aww. he went and got my ring today!” I asked him why he was so fancy (for Alex, that is fancy) and he told me that all his other clothes were dirty and was behind on his laundry. Ha! Then, on a rainy day in November, he asked me to go out with him. I noticed he was wearing the same outfit that he wore when he “was behind on his laundry”. We went to dinner and had a great time. I was thrown off because he didn’t seem nervous or anything. I began to think maybe this was all in my head. But I knew something had to be up because he was wearing his “fancy” clothes! We drove back to campus (now I’m really thrown off), he got out and opened my car door like always. He took my hand,  got down on one knee in the rain and asked me to marry him. I smiled and took the ring from him so I could look at how beautiful it was. He gasped and said ” Hey! You can’t just take it from me! I have to put it on!….And, is that a ‘Yes’?” I gave the ring back, smiled and said “Yes!”

We have been married now for 9 years. About 2 years in, we thought it would just be amazing to have a big family. The Lord impressed on us to become licensed foster parents and before we knew it, we welcomed our first child into our family. We now have 7 children.  Five adopted: Lia-9, Eli-7, Ziyon-4, Naomi-3, Ezra-1 and our two foster children are 6 and 4.*

This isn’t at all how we thought we would be living our lives at 31 and 32 years old! We wouldn’t change it for the world! We are a happy learning and growing together. Alex is my best friend; my husband for life! After only dating for a few days, we were walking and talking and he stopped and looked at me, I’ll never forget it, and said “I dunno what’s going to happen here. But I promise you, no matter what happened, you WILL be a better person for having known me.” At first I thought “Well who does this guy think he is?!” But you know what? He was right.

*The foster children have disguised faces because they cannot show their faces online.