Today celebrates the day of 7 years of marriage to my beautiful bride Stephanie. As a memory of what brought our hearts together, today’s post is a story that we wrote for our wedding day. Stephanie, let’s continue to live intentionally!

Bryan and Stephanie Vignery's Engagement Picture

When God creates two people who are destined for each other, sometimes its many years before their paths actually cross and the introduction is made. Our paths were definitely destined to cross, and this is a story about the journey leading up to the start of two lives together.

Bryan’s Journey

I was living a life of uncertainty for many years spiritually. I found myself in and out of relationships with surface level connection that I unconsciously new was not right. As I continued to grow Spiritually, I found the more that I let God’s love in and the more I was obedient to the words that are given to each and everyone of us from the Bible, my life continued to become filled with more and more peace and joy.

In October of 2001 I was feeling a similar anxiousness that was familiar to me during another chapter of my life. The anxiousness was a sense of change brewing inside of me. Something was about to change and I felt the change was going to take place at the first of 2002. Little did I know just how much my life was actually going to change!

On January 2^nd, 2002, I found myself like many others, out of a job. I knew at this point the change that I felt just a few months before was coming to fruition. God was bringing in front of me a “new chapter” of my life’s journey. I was physically holding on to a relationship that I had been emotionally detached from for quite some time. People had told me many times that God was not going to bring me the right woman to marry until I get out of the relationship that I was in. With this on my heart and the loss of my job, I needed to get away and clear my mind. I was invited to go on a trip to Miami with my mentor and friend, Gary Kuzmich. It was a business trip for Gary and a soul searching trip for me. God had always seemed to use Gary to wake me up in the past and I believed God was now looking at the situation and saying, why stop a good thing?

On this trip I met a man that I will refer to as a messenger. We got to know each other in a short amount of time and talked about where my life was and all of the changes that had been taking place. I also talked about how my relationship with my girlfriend was just not working. He told me that he felt I was going to meet my future wife through this thing called Focus Seminars. He also affirmed that until I got out the relationship that I was in, it wasn’t going to happen.

After returning from Miami I met Gary for lunch and we talked about where I was at with life. I told him that I was just not happy and he directly said to me, “when are you going to get out of the relationship you are in? It’s not working and you are just hurting yourself and the other person.” I had heard these words many times but this time they hit home and I decided that I was going to move forward in my life without the current relationship.

The next morning, I volunteered to help out with the Focus Seminar that was already in process. I walked in the room where the seminar was being held and noticed a beautiful woman that caught my attention. I never had any conversations with her until the end of Focus II when I spotted Gary, of all people, talking with this beautiful woman. Her name happened to be Stephanie. That was the day that my life was changed forever.

Stephanie’s Journey

In December of 2001, I knew God was preparing me for a new chapter in my life, a plan that God only saw and desired for me. I was at a point in my life where nothing was working for me in my relationship. I was in a relationship of four years that was not going anywhere. It was draining me of my personal happiness as well as the relationship. I felt stuck. I was doing everything humanly possible to keep it going and could not. I had always desired to have that spiritual connectedness with a spouse, and it just was not happening.

After we broke up, I was searching for peace and joy that I knew God can only give.  I decided that the best thing for me to do during this time was to pray and go on a spiritual fast. During my spiritual fast my Aunt Carol confirmed to me that fasting was a way to show obedience to God and to find peace in life’s problems. She said that a 21 day fast was to break a habit and a 40 day fast was for new beginnings. I was definitely in need for a new beginning, so I turned my 21 day fast into a 40 day fast!

During this time, I was starting to feel more at peace within myself as well as with the trials I was experiencing. I found out about a personal growth seminar called Focus Seminars. A client had shared it with me, and I thought that it might be an answer to some of the things I had been praying about. Little did I know that I would eventually go through the seminar and it would help me heal from my broken relationship, not mend it. I was supposed to go to this seminar for myself and no one else. I truly believe that God works in ways we can’t see.

In January of 2002 my friend MaryAnn and I attended the seminar without knowing what was to come of it. During the first Focus I portion of the seminar, I began to write down characteristics of what I wanted in life and a husband. I found out that the relationship that I was in would not fulfill the things that I wanted and prayed for. I completed Focus I and felt a new energy in my life. I was seeing things more clearly and heard God tell me that I should not make any decisions before the end of January. I took those words to heart and continued to look forward to Focus II.

In Focus II God revealed a messenger to me.  He was a man in my focus group that represented a lot of what I wanted in a man when I saw his heart towards God and his wife. It gave me hope that I would meet someone with those similar qualities. It encouraged me to see that there are men out there that believe the way I do and I don’t have to settle for anything less than all that God desires for me.

Not only was Focus the greatest thing I have ever done for myself, but the icing on the cake was on Thursday January 24^th, 2002 the man of my dreams walked in the door of Focus and I asked myself, Oh my gosh, where did he come from? I also mentioned that I would love to marry a man like that.  He was incredibly HOT and his whole demeanor was full of life and energy. I figured he was taken and didn’t think anymore about it. His name was Bryan and I felt a place in my heart was reserved just for him.

The Meeting of Soul Mates

Our eyes connected during that day during Focus Seminars and it sparked a journey of personal change for both of us. It was the beginning of two hearts that were ready and willing to demand more out of life and to find out what unconditional love truly means. Due to our commitment to the Focus process, Stephanie and I agreed to wait 30 days before we went on our first date. As we counted down the days till our first date, we both had time to process and plan the journey we were about to start.

The first date happened on a snowy January Monday night in a restaurant in Westport. As we looked across the table at each other, we expressed the character traits that we desired in a significant other. I looked at Stephanie and asked her if she believed in love at first site, because that was what I was experiencing. It was so powerful to look in each others eyes and know, on the first date, that we were going to spend the rest of our lives together.

Here we are today continuing to grow individually in our relationship with God and as a couple. We are excited to begin the journey of becoming one in God’s name and to influence those around us to look at the potential that is within each of us. We are two people coming together willing to take on the challenges of life and to live a life being 100% according to God’s words as written in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13:

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

¹If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing. ⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. ⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. ¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.