She Said Yes!
On December 27, 2025, something beautiful happened, here at True North. Eli asked Jocelyn to marry him, and with her yes, our family story widened its arms and welcomed a future we already love.
Theirs is a kind of love a mother prays for when she holds her babies for the first time. Not the flashy or loud kind, but the steady kind, the safe kind. The kind that feels like home even on the hard days. When I held Eli in those first moments of his life, tiny, warm, brand new, I prayed someday he would find someone who saw his heart and cherished it. Someone kind and patient. Someone who would walk beside him instead of ahead of him or behind him. Someone who would choose him, every day, even when choosing is hard. Somehow, in the way the universe sometimes gets things impossibly right, that prayer grew up into Jocelyn.
She is warmth, grace, fierceness, and steadiness wrapped in gentleness. She loves him in the ways that matter, quietly, consistently, thoughtfully. The way she looks at him feels like trust. The way he looks at her feels like peace. Together, they feel like the kind of love that doesn’t rush, doesn’t force, doesn’t burn out, the kind that builds something solid and beautiful and lasting.
It mattered deeply to Eli that he asked her here at True North.
Not just because this land is beautiful, though it is, in that wide-sky, whispering-trees, soul-expanding kind of way, but because this place holds us. This land is our gathering place. Our healing place. Our celebration place. The place we come when life is joyful and when life is heavy. The place where laughter echoes through generations and tears fall safely into the soil, knowing they’ll be held.
True North is more than land. It's a promise. It’s home.
For Eli, this was the place where he wanted to begin his next chapter, rooted in love, surrounded by meaning, standing on ground that will witness our family’s joys, heartbreaks, healing, and hope for generations. He wanted Jocelyn’s yes, to live here in memory forever. And it does.
And as if the moment wasn’t already layered with meaning, he chose December 27, his Great Grandmother’s birthday. Proposing on her birthday felt right. Like love passing through generations, blessing what comes next. It felt impossible not to believe she was there in that moment, smiling, approving, wrapping her spirit around the beginning of something beautiful.
Watching Eli become this man, thoughtful, grounded, intentional, has been one of the great joys of my life. He is everything I hoped he would be. Watching him choose Jocelyn, and watching Jocelyn choose him right back, feels deeply right. Their love isn’t loud. It’s strong. It’s soft. It’s steady. It’s the kind of love that makes you exhale because you know, truly know, that these two are safe with each other. They laugh easily. They listen deeply. They move through the world with a quiet partnership that feels rooted and real.
Jocelyn, sweet, beautiful Jocelyn, you are everything I prayed for him and more than I knew how to name. You fit into this family not like someone joining, but like someone returning. It is like there has always been a hole in our family in the shape of you. You bring warmth into every space you enter. You love with sincerity. You move with grace. And the way you love all of us feels like the purest kind of gift. You have always been a daughter of my heart. Long before this ring. Long before this moment. Long before any titles changed. You were already mine in all the ways that matter. But today, I get the rare and sacred joy of saying it out loud and officially:
I am so grateful that the daughter of my heart,
is now my daughter by name, by promise, forever.
You Belong Here. You Always Have.
December 27, 2025 will forever live in our family story as a day of joy, of promise, of love choosing love. A day where past and future held hands. A day where roots grew deeper and hope grew taller.
