// May 17th, 2010 // 11 Comments » // Uncategorized
I am so thankful for the amazing woman of God that the Lord has brought into my life. Reflecting back on the beginning of our relationship and the fear, worldliness and lack of communication that characterized it during those days, it is clear that it is only by God’s grace that we are where we are today. God has truly used our relationship to grow and sanctify each of us and the individuals we used to be are hardly recognizable in the people we have become. Our time together has completely redefined our perceptions and understandings of relationships, deepened and grown our relationships with Christ and challenged everything we once held to be true, especially the lies of the world that we used to take for granted. The transformation from the fear that characterized our early relationship to the openness and willingness to discuss and challenge any assumption or topic is staggering and I am humbled by what has God done in our lives.
I proposed last Friday, only 36 hours or so before I would embark on a 3 month journey doing ministry with young men in the Dominican Republic. It had been on mind for a long time, as far back as my trip to the Dominican last fall and to be honest, I just didn’t know what I was waiting on anymore. I was waiting I suppose on the unexpected, something I might of missed, but in reality I knew God had blessed me with an amazing woman and that by God’s grace we had built our relationship on a firm foundation that neither of us really could have planned or imagined. Eventually, any doubts or questions that lingered were overwhelmed by my desire to start living life more fully with the love of my life and being able to share everything with her and my faith that, although we know hard times will comes and issues will rise, our foundation rests in Christ and by his grace we will persevere.
One of biggest fears in the whole process was talking to my family. Talking about feelings and things like this is pretty out of the ordinary for us, but on Friday I took my mom to lunch and shared my plan to propose.
The next step was to talk to Annette’s family. I had taken her father and step-father’s numbers out of her phone earlier in the week, but as I dialed her dad’s number and heard an automated reception for a business, I realized I had taken the wrong number. Shaken but determined to go through with proposing despite any obstacles I pressed on. Why allow a days imperfections to put off a decision that alters the rest of your life?
Annette and I had plans that night to meet a group of friends later that night to celebrate my birthday, my going away and her last day at her old job. Little did she know it also served an excellent opportunity to celebrate our engagement with some of those closest to us. Annette and I had been reading through Francis Chan’s book, Crazy Love, and made a date to finish the last chapter before dinner. It seemed like a perfect opportunity and would set the tone for the type of marriage we want to pursue. However, in the confusion of having the wrong phone number I had completely forgotten the book and with the looming deadline of dinner, I didn’t have to time to return home to retrieve it.
So I drove to Annette’s with little plan but to ask her to marry me and improvise the rest. As I entered her apartment, I confessed my forgetfulness but suggested we still head over to the small beach by her apartment before going to dinner. She said we could start a new book and returned to getting ready for dinner. As she straightened her hair, I snatched her phone from next to her asking something about if she had any scrabble games going on her iphone and seized the opportunity to go outside and call her dad. While I was still on the phone with her dad, she came outside and gave me a quizzical look as to why I was on the phone in the car. I thought I was busted, but she hadn’t realized it was her phone that I was on.
We headed to Davis Island Beach, new book in hand, and found a bench to sit and read. The new book wasn’t ideal but our conversation drifted to our relationship and after stalling… and stalling… and stalling… I finally said, “I meant everything we said. And I want to make it official.” “Wha?” she replied with a confused and startled look. I got down on one knee and asked, “Will you marry me?” She managed a yes before starting to cry uncontrollably.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed and leave a comment!
