I called my sister and her friend answered as a joke. We talked for 20 minutes, and now we’re married.

• I grew up in a strict home where I followed all the rules, including marrying young.
• After my divorce, my sisters took me on a trip to Seattle and we stayed at a friend’s house.
• I didn’t know it then, but I was sleeping in the bed of the man I would eventually marry.

I was raised in a conservative home where dating wasn’t allowed, and life followed a very specific roadmap: meet someone through church, get married young, stay married, and raise a family. I followed that plan for as long as I could.

At 22 years old, I married the first boy who ever took me on a date. Six years later, I was divorced and had a 1-year-old son. At the time, I felt like a failure.

Now I know I was just making space for the life I was meant to have. One that didn’t follow a standard rule book, one that was going to start in a very unexpected way.

My sisters planned a reset for me, and it changed my whole life

After my divorce, my sisters, Angelina and Michelle, planned a trip to Seattle over my birthday weekend in May 2009. Angelina’s longtime boyfriend had a childhood best friend named Mike who lived there. Since Mike was out of town, my sister arranged for us to stay at his beautiful condo in the Seattle neighborhood of Queen Anne, without ever meeting him.

During our trip, we had a great time exploring Pike’s Place and enjoyed a walking food tour. Each night, we collapsed into Mike’s bed, exhausted from the day. At the time, I had no idea I was sleeping in the bed of my future husband.

A random phone call turned into something special

A few months later, in February of 2010, my sister Angelina and her boyfriend went back to Seattle to visit Mike. I happened to call Angelina while they were all at a bar together. She had stepped away from the table, and as a joke, Mike picked up her phone. We ended up talking for 20 minutes, playfully joking about him answering the phone, flirting, and having an immediate and unexpected chemistry.

Then we started texting — and we didn’t stop.

That weekend, Angelina texted me, half amused, half annoyed, that Mike wasn’t spending time with them because he was too busy texting me. We hadn’t even seen each other, and no pictures had been exchanged, but we couldn’t stop talking. I began to fall for the person he was, just through the sound of his voice and the way we connected.

We built our relationship without expectations, and it worked

Within about a week of our first call, Mike sent me flowers for Valentine’s Day and asked if he could fly down to see me in Orange County to take me on our first date.

I was nervous about seeing him for the first time, but our date — dinner, and a walk by the beach — turned out to be amazing because we both felt like we already knew each other so well. We’d already talked about everything, family, work, values, before we met in person, but we talked all through dinner and had the best time.

After that first visit, we began flying back and forth between Seattle and Southern California. By Memorial Day — ironically, also my birthday weekend, just like my Seattle reset trip with my sisters only a year before — just three months after we started talking, Mike moved to California.

Now we raise our kids without a rulebook, too

Mike proposed at the Top of the Rock in New York City in September of 2011. We’ve now been together for 15 years, and we have two incredible boys and a life we’ve intentionally designed together, not based on expectations, but on joy, alignment, and clarity.

We’re raising our kids that way, too. No rulebook. Just an openness to follow what lights them up, build on their strengths, and shape a life that’s successful and meaningful for them as individuals.

Our story started with an unexpected phone call, but what it really became was proof that some of the best things in life happen when you toss the old plan and let something better unfold.

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