Hi.
Facebook has informed me that I have officially been dating the coolest, most handsome, sweetest, most talented, God-fearing, dorky man for a year. Even cooler, he asked me to marry him almost two months ago. I said yes, if you were wondering.
It was the perfect proposal…he completely surprised me, took me back to the place we met, got down on one knee, and did it at a time when our families were in town and able to celebrate with us right after – PERFECT.
*RECORD SCRATCH/FREEZE FRAME*
“He did that knowing you were leaving for a year? Is he nuts?”
Yes. Yes, he proposed knowing I would be gone for half of our engagement. Yes, he is nuts. It’s part of why I love him.
So here’s the sitch:
We are currently engaged, have started planning our wedding, and will begin counseling with our pastor in a few weeks. We won’t see each other as much this semester because I’m student teaching, and will probably make wedding planning/counseling video watching/meeting with our pastor be our set reasons to get together and make sure we’re still dating. Because that’s important.
“Couldn’t you have waited until you got back to get engaged? Why do some now and some later? It seems kind of stressful…”
It is stressful. We’ve rolled our eyes at each other and overeager family members, felt tension when I wanted to plan and he wanted to hang, and realized that weddings are EXPENSIVE and we are poor college students with no real income. But by working through some of this now, we’ve already seen growth in our relationship, in being honest and communicative, practicing being vulnerable, and deciding what’s really important to us.
We could have gone through all of that when I got home, but the main thought to getting engaged before I left was this: if we’re engaged before I leave, that is a promise to get married when I come back. We both loved the idea of being committed to each other and to start furthering our relationships with God and each other before an intense time in both of our lives. We wanted to have a symbol of our commitment to each other, and what better symbol than an engagement ring?
We know that God has big plans for us, to prosper our relationship, to give us hope while we’re apart, and a future together. We know that He is in this relationship and that He is in my desire to serve the nations – 11 of them to be exact. We know that a life with God does not mean a life of ease.
So yes, he’s okay with that. Because He’s okay with that.
