If I could title these images, I would call them “Before he leaves.”

Like every summer romance movie, it’s all smiles and kisses before the clock runs out.

In a few short weeks, these two amazing humans will be separated when Ben leaves for the Army. Young love is always wrought with moments of picture perfect happiness… and heart wrenching pain. It seems like you can’t have one without the other.

So often we discount the young when they are in love. We act like they don’t understand, or they don’t feel as strongly as adults do, but that isn’t the case at all. If it were true, then we wouldn’t romanticize “first love” and “high school sweethearts.” Love is love. Every shape, size, color, gender… and age.

My heart is breaking for them. To be separated from the one you love is an unspeakable agony. Even if it’s only temporary. I have watched Ben and Andie grow closer and closer since the summer they met. He was going into his senior year of high school, already committed to a military life… She was brand new to the school, and still trying to find her place. It was in summer rehearsals for the school show choir, “Rhapsody in Blue” that they found each other. She was struggling to find her footing in a new world, feeling ostracized and alone, and he was the friendly face that made her feel like she had a home. I heard his name here and there when she would come home from rehearsals, but I didn’t meet him until orientation.

He briefly wrapped one arm around her and said hello to us in the hallway. Then he walked away, and I could see “the look” all over her face. A mother knows these things. I looked at a boy that way once when I was her age. I love him with the same intensity to this very day, 17 years later.

The year that followed was full of late night phone conversations, laughter at his video game addiction, and bonding over the love they have for their much younger siblings.

I wish I could have stopped time for them… But the school year passed. Occasionally, Andie would come home from a date with him and collapse into tears in my arms. She knew time was running out. Then the last show choir performance came, then finals, then graduation. There was no more hiding. Time was nearly up.

They are facing a 5 year separation, and I know it is tearing them apart. So, I did what I do best… I kept the moments. I captured the happy. I froze a little bit of THIS time in these images, to make the time to come a little more bearable. The days are few before they are torn apart, and I will pray for strength and peace for both of them as they venture forward into a whole new world.

Good luck Ben, you have our love and respect. The US Army will be better with you in it. I promise I will help Andie in your absence.

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