High school seniors Chase Smith and Sadie Mills started dating six months ago and had planned to meet several huge life milestones together.
They envisioned graduating high school, going to college to continue their swimming and diving careers, and getting married.
But all in due time.
They were, after all, in no rush.
But they decided to skip a few of those milestones and head straight for the altar instead.
“We definitely were thinking about getting married in the future and we knew we wanted to,” Chase said in a video interview. “A lot of people do say, ‘Oh they’re getting married because he has a potential to pass away soon,’ and that’s not at all why we decided to get married. It was more of just a wake-up call that, ‘Hey, God wants you two together.’”
The wake-up call was a terminal diagnosis from Chase’s doctors telling him he had just three to five months to live.
Smith had been battling Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare type of cancer since he was 12 years old.
However, Smith learned in March that his cancer had returned causing tumors all over his body.
“We haven’t been without each other more than maybe like a day or two since our first date,” Chase told the Indy Star.
The couple, who attend rival high schools, met at an ice cream social after a swim meet. But Chase didn’t ask for Sadie’s number until a year later.
“He was so sweet. He’s very polite. He’s a good Christian boy,” Sadie told the Indy Star. “We just fell in love with each other’s personalities. Now, he is all that matters to me.”
After six months together and Chase’s diagnosis, they decided that it was God’s will for them to be married.
And their parents were supportive too.
“I have the best two parents I could possibly have. For them to be a hundred percent behind me and my choices and my decisions on who I love and who I wanted to marry when I wanted to marry, it couldn’t mean any more to me than what it did,” Chase said.
Now that the couple is married, they are making the most of every day they have together, filling their time with love and laughter.
“We, every day, pray for a miracle together because we trust in God,” Sadie said. “We pray that Chase would stay on this earth longer so we can bring more people our story of love.”
“The precious people in your life, the amount of time they are in your life, take every moment you have,” Chase said. “Enjoy and give everything you can in those relationships. And now there is so much possible with love when your love includes God.”
Sadly, after a six-year battle with Ewing’s sarcoma, Chase passed away. But still, the memories are those his loved ones will cherish forever.
