The story behind the blueberry vanilla latte
Austin has a strange electricity to it. Everyone’s excited to be there. Everyone’s happy, hungry, and a bit hung over. And there’s this collective sense that everything’s going to work out just fine. So you go on that second date with the wrong person. Try another bar. And you float the river one extra time because maybe this will be the time you meet the person of your dreams.
In a place where everyone’s searching for their person, it’s easy to feel lost in the flurry of everything.
And I still can't believe that we found each other in this messy, complicated, beautiful city.
As it happens, we were on the same dating app at the same time. The city was drawing us together. After a week of exchanging messages on OKCupid, we met for the first time at my church. How awkward. I still think about that today, sitting next to this stranger in church and pretending to my friends that he was just a nobody. But he wasn’t. He was a cute boy I met online; a cutie who took me to coffee after church and then dinner later that day.
We get asked how we knew the other person was a good match, but so much of it is intangible. When we met, it was like two friends catching up after time apart.
We were in love almost instantly.
He showed me all this favorite places in the city. We explored Hamilton Pool, did Austin City Limits, found all the cheap date spots the city had to offer. And we learned that you can’t lose weight while only eating pizza rolls.
At the same time, we had a lot of real growing to do amidst the fun times. We were in our early twenties, silly, and broke. We were reckless with our words just as much as we were with our hearts. And we hurt each other so much. That’s the thing about relationships. No one tells you how sanctifying it is. You can follow all the instagram couples to see the fun stuff, but when two people get together, they bring their baggage and weaknesses and bare their hearts for the other person in such a vulnerable way.
Austin was the place where we had to grow up. For the first time, we were close enough to someone to be forced into kindness and gentleness, being more considerate and less selfish. We learned to be together in a way that didn’t diminish the other person and we finally started growing up in our faith.
Austin was where we met and when we thought about all the things that happened in that city, we imagined a drink that attracted good, weird, fun-loving people. The blueberry vanilla latte is a fun combination of coffee, fruit, and spice and a winner all around.
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