It amazes me how quickly time flies.

Somehow, I have reached one whole year of knowing my little flower—the one who still cannot quite be named.

This month has been a messy one for me. I’ve been overwhelmed with work and family matters, and most recently, things within my calling in the Young Women presidency have thrown me off balance. A parent-leader miscommunication escalated into something much bigger than I ever expected, eventually leading to my YW president and first counselor asking to be released.

But I don’t want to dwell on that.

The whole situation has become so unnecessarily complicated that when I stopped and remembered all the wonderful things August also holds for me, I decided I would rather focus my heart there.

And one of the happiest parts of August is him.

My little flower.

The person I have somehow become so fond of that I genuinely don’t know what to do with myself anymore.

Sometimes I just want to tease him. Sometimes I want to drag him along to all the places I enjoy and give both of us a little breather from the endless busyness of adult life. I want to ask him about his day, vent to him about mine, and then sit there and listen as he calmly tells me all the sensible things I could do to make whatever situation I’m dealing with a little better.

He’s always so good at that.

And I love that about him.

When I’m quick to set a fire, he somehow slowly puts it out instead of adding fuel to it.

Sometimes I wonder how differently I would think or react today if I hadn’t spent the last year observing and trying to develop some of the Christlike attributes I see in him: staying calm, seeking to understand, being patient enough to listen, and choosing to act rationally instead of immediately reacting.

I’m still very much a work in progress.

I still have moments when my emotions get ahead of me. I still overthink. I still want answers before they’re ready to come. And sometimes I still want to set the metaphorical building on fire before I’ve even checked whether there’s actually a fire. 😂

But I think I’m learning.

And strangely enough, part of that learning has come simply from knowing another person whose way of moving through the world is different from mine.

Sometimes I wonder about something even bigger.

If I had declined my friend’s invitation to that so-called “double date” a year ago, would I have found the same hope and courage to move forward from a past I once feared would always have me hanging by a thread?

I don’t know.

What I do know is that he became part of my testimony of returning to my covenant path.

During a time when I was praying for a new light in my life—something that could remind me there was still goodness ahead of me—this quiet soul appeared.

He didn’t magically erase the shadows lingering in my heart. That was never his responsibility.

He simply reminded me that light still existed beyond them.

And perhaps that was enough.

August 19, 2025. 6:00 PM. Olive Garden.

I almost said no.

Almost.

I wasn’t ready to try getting to know another soul yet. I was still figuring myself out and trying to understand who I was after everything I had carried.

But as the day approached, I started asking myself what exactly I was afraid of.

I wasn’t agreeing to marry anyone. 😂

I was merely meeting another person, building a friendship, and trying to reconnect with people after having stepped away from church for so long.

I needed new friends.

So I went.

I remember arriving at Olive Garden nervous and spotting him already waiting near the entrance. I had never actually spoken to him before that day.

There he stood in his black dress shirt and slacks, looking—as I now like to tease him—as though he had just returned from a funeral.

My friend and her husband told me to get a table first, so there I was, gathering myself enough to step out, greet this complete stranger, and walk inside with him.

And somehow, we just started talking.

We talked about how I became a member of the Church. I told him about what our YSA group had been like back in my day. I asked how he liked Minnesota since he had moved here from Fresno, California.

I didn’t think much of any of it.

He was simply another human being we were all getting to know. Apparently, even my friend and her husband hadn’t gotten much of a chance to know him because he moved here around the time COVID hit, when social distancing and quarantining made forming new friendships difficult.

I remember thinking he was interesting.

And that was about it.

Then I barely spoke to him again for almost three months.

There was no instant spark.

No dramatic realization.

No movie moment where the world suddenly slowed down and I somehow knew this person would become important to me.

Nothing.

Just dinner.

And then life continued.

Eventually, he became acquainted with one of my old YSA friends, and the three of us went to Asia Mall in Eden Prairie.

We wandered around and talked about random things.

Then, somehow, they took me to a gun shop.

To this day, that remains the most information I have ever received about guns in one sitting. 😂

But there was another little thing I remember from that day.

He opened and closed the car door for me.

It felt so strange.

Nobody had ever really done that for me before, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react. Obviously, I am perfectly capable of opening my own car door.

But still…

Something about having someone do it for you feels nice.

It wasn’t the car door itself that mattered. I think it was simply being reminded that there are still small ways people can make you feel cared for without saying anything at all.

The next month, we toured the Mall of America with another friend. Somewhere in our conversations, I mentioned my Youth Camp fundraiser.

He donated.

And not just a little.

I remember being genuinely surprised by how generous he was because I hadn’t expected that from him at all.

Little by little, without realizing it, I was learning him.

Not through some grand conversation where we told each other everything about ourselves.

Through little things.

How he treats people. How he listens. The things he notices. The things he doesn’t say. The way he thinks before responding instead of immediately filling silence.

And perhaps that’s why it took me so long to realize I was becoming attached.

Nothing happened all at once.

Then came his 35th birthday dinner.

And this was actually the first time I asked him the very important question:

“What do you want to eat?”

His answer?

Sushi.

Of course it was sushi. 😂

So, Ichiban Sushi in Edina it was.

Anyone who knows me knows that sushi would not exactly be my first choice for dinner. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t make my list of choices at all.

But it was his birthday. I asked what he wanted, and apparently asking someone what they want means you have to accept the answer they give you.

So I made an exception for him.

And strangely, I didn’t even mind.

He seemed to enjoy it, and I think I enjoyed watching him enjoy it more than I cared about what was on my own plate.

Looking back, that little dinner feels more significant to me now because I think that was also the first day I truly noticed him.

Not just as someone from church.

Not just as my friend’s friend.

Not just as this quiet guy who occasionally ended up wherever I happened to be.

Him.

I noticed the way he questioned the ingredients in his food. His body language. The kinds of questions he asked. The way he responded to things.

I watched him.

Listened to him.

And then, for a few painfully awkward seconds, we just stared at each other.

Neither of us said anything.

I don’t even know what happened.

All I know is that eventually I had to slowly look away because apparently my brain had decided to stop functioning while I stared at him a little too long.

And somewhere that day, something unsettling stirred inside me.

At the time, I didn’t understand it.

I certainly didn’t know I was never going to recover from it. 😂

Once I finally realized what that unsettling feeling was, I did what I apparently do best whenever something gets a little too close to my heart.

I ran.

Not literally.

Emotionally, though?

Absolutely. 😂

I tried reasoning with myself. I reminded myself that he was simply a friend. I told myself I didn’t need to make anything out of whatever I was feeling. I thought perhaps if I created enough distance, whatever had begun stirring inside me would eventually settle down.

Except feelings are annoyingly uncooperative things.

Instead of disappearing, they followed me into my writing.

Because when I don’t know how to say something aloud, I write it.

I write the things I’m too frightened to confess.

I write the questions I don’t know how to ask.

I write until whatever is tangled inside me becomes something I can finally look at.

And somewhere along the way, he started appearing there too.

In flowers.

In sunlight.

In warmth.

In all the spaces between wanting to stay and convincing myself that I should leave.

There was one particular day when I noticed myself doing it again.

He came near me, and instead of simply allowing myself to exist beside him, I retreated.

Then he came near again.

And I moved away again.

It was ridiculous.

I remember going home afterward frustrated with myself because there was absolutely nothing frightening about him.

The frightening part was me.

Or, more accurately, what was happening inside me whenever he was near.

So I wrote:

I watched you today,
your laughter echoing across the court,
the curve of your smile catching light
that seemed only meant for me to see.
A brush of movement—
you passed too close,
and I turned, a shy retreat,
though every fiber of me
wanted to stay, to speak, to linger.

You came again,
standing near,
a presence so steady
that I felt my pulse in rhythm with yours.
And still, I fled—
leaving a piece of my heart behind
in the shadow of the doorway.

Around the corner,
I expected you to vanish,
but you followed.
And yet, I turned back,
choosing absence over confession,
silence over the tremble of my longing.

Why must I act this way?
To deny the warmth of being near you,
to let my own fear
dictate the distance
between us and the unsaid?

Still, your presence lingers,
soft and quiet,
like sunlight trapped in the corners of a room,
and I carry it home with me,
an ache both sweet and impossible.

And tomorrow, perhaps, I will learn
that the part of me
I hide from you
is the part that has always wanted
to stay.

Looking back at those words now, I realize something I couldn’t quite admit when I wrote them.

I wasn’t running from him.

He hadn’t done anything for me to run from.

I was running from vulnerability.

From wanting.

From the possibility of caring about someone enough that I could eventually be hurt again.

And perhaps most of all, I was running from the realization that someone had quietly gotten close enough to a part of my heart I thought I had learned how to protect.

The funny thing about running from your feelings, though, is that distance doesn’t necessarily make them disappear.

Sometimes it just gives you more room to write poetry about them. 😂

Eventually, I stopped trying so hard to make the feeling go away.

I didn’t need to chase it either.

I could simply acknowledge that this person had become precious to me and allow that truth to exist without demanding that it become anything more.

And here I am.

One year after meeting him.

Still thinking about him.

Still wondering where exactly I’m supposed to place someone I’ve been carrying quietly in my heart for so long.

But when I think about this past year, I don’t only think about him.

I think about myself.

I think about the woman who almost stayed home that first evening.

She was guarded. She was tired. She was trying to return to a faith she had once stepped away from while simultaneously figuring out what parts of herself she wanted to bring back with her.

She was afraid that certain things from her past would always have some kind of hold over her.

And I don’t think she was looking for romance.

Honestly, I don’t think she was looking for much of anything.

She was just trying to move forward.

One dinner.

One church activity.

One friendship.

One prayer at a time.

And maybe that’s what makes this anniversary meaningful to me.

Meeting him didn’t suddenly transform my life.

He didn’t rescue me.

He didn’t fix me.

He didn’t arrive carrying answers to everything I had been praying about.

But knowing him became one small part of a much bigger season in which I started allowing myself to participate in life again.

I started saying yes.

Yes to friendships.

Yes to serving.

Yes to going places.

Yes to letting people know me.

Yes to discovering that my heart could still become fond of another person without immediately needing to know what that meant.

Maybe that’s the part I’m most grateful for.

Because the woman writing this today still doesn’t have all the answers.

But she’s no longer the woman standing nervously outside Olive Garden wondering whether she should turn around and go home.

And I think that’s something worth celebrating.

Recently, we had dinner together again, and I think what I loved most about it was how ordinary it was.

He cut my bruschetta for me.

We ate. We talked. We laughed.

Nothing extraordinary happened.

And maybe that’s exactly why I treasured it so much.

I don’t think I need grand gestures from him. I don’t need every moment between us to mean something more than what it is.

Sometimes I simply want another dinner.

Another conversation.

Another opportunity to hear what’s going on inside that ridiculously thoughtful head of his.

I want more ordinary moments.

Moments when I can ask about his day.

Moments when I can tell him about mine.

Moments when I can listen to him reason through something that I have already emotionally declared a catastrophe.

Because somehow, when I’m ready to light the match, he’s usually the person calmly reminding me that perhaps burning everything down is not the most rational solution.

Unfortunately, he’s usually right.

I hate that. 😂

And I love that.

When we took the youth to the movies, I never planned for us to sit together.

Somehow, through the magic—or perhaps meddling—of my youth group, we ended up beside each other anyway.

But he didn’t seem entirely comfortable.

And strangely, instead of being disappointed by that, part of me wished the seating had worked out differently so he could have relaxed and simply enjoyed himself.

Of course I wanted to sit beside him.

But I would rather see him comfortable than have proximity to him simply because it’s what I want.

Maybe that’s something else this year has taught me about caring for someone.

Sometimes affection isn’t about getting closer.

Sometimes it’s knowing when to give someone room.

I don’t ever want my feelings to become something he has to carry for me.

Whatever is happening inside my heart belongs to me until the day I decide to share it, and he deserves the freedom to simply be himself around me without wondering whether every interaction is going to become something bigger.

I think there was once a version of me who believed that if something mattered deeply enough, I needed to know what it was becoming.

I needed certainty.

A label.

A destination.

Something that told me whether I should keep hoping or start letting go.

But perhaps one of the quieter lessons I’m learning is that not everything meaningful needs to be defined immediately.

Sometimes something can simply be precious because it happened.

Sometimes a person can matter without belonging to you.

Sometimes you can love the flower without plucking it.

And maybe that’s why, one year later, I’m surprisingly okay not knowing what happens next.

Of course I wonder.

I wonder whether there will be more dinners, more adventures, more random conversations, and more moments when he says something so logical that I have to reluctantly admit he’s right.

But somewhere along the way, I think I stopped needing every meaningful thing in my life to come with an explanation.

I don’t know what he will become in my story.

Maybe he’ll remain a dear friend.

Maybe one day I’ll find the courage to tell him what has been growing quietly inside my heart.

Maybe life will take both of us somewhere I haven’t imagined yet.

And strangely, I’m okay with that.

Because this year wasn’t only about developing feelings for someone.

It was about realizing that my heart could feel this way again.

I could look forward to someone’s company.

I could become excited over the smallest gestures.

I could laugh at myself for staring a little too long.

I could care deeply about another person’s happiness without needing anything from him in return.

Most importantly, I could hope again.

Maybe that is what my little flower has represented all along.

Not someone who came into my life to rescue me or heal what someone else had broken, but someone whose presence quietly reminded me that there were still parts of myself waiting to bloom.

So after one year, I still don’t know what to call this.

I don’t know where it is going.

And I don’t know whether this little flower will ever know just how fond of him I’ve become.

But I know I’m grateful.

Grateful for the friendship.

Grateful for the ordinary moments.

Grateful for everything I’ve learned simply by knowing him.

And grateful that somewhere in the process of admiring this little flower, I discovered that I was blooming again too.

Maybe that’s enough for now.

Love,
Ang 🌸