1 Year Ago

September 10, 2008, the day the Love of my life asked me to be his Wife. As I think back over the past year, so much has happened. Within the first hour that we were engaged (after I had stopped crying and come to the FULL realization that I was engaged), we were sitting on a stone bench talking about getting married. When we realized that August was 11 months away we started talking about June, which was only 9 months away. Dad was set on no earlier than August, but apparently he knew that it would come up again and wasn't surprised when we approached him in January about moving up the wedding date.

It's quite funny how you try to look into the future to guess what the following year, or just 6 months are going to look like, but you can never have more of an inclination to what that time may contain for you, because we can't know the future, but God does. I never would have dreamed 12 months ago, that I would be sitting in our living room, having been married for 3 months, and still struggling with having lost our first baby. But if we knew what the future held for us, there would be no fun, no anticipation of what's to come. Because we don't know what the future holds, we need to cling to our Father in every move that we make.

Yesterday the Lord gave me this passage in 2 Corinthians 5:9-10

"Therefore also we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad."

Along with this passage the Lord reminded me of Proverbs 31:30 today: "Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised (emphasis added)."

My deepest desire is to be a woman after God's own heart. I want to be living for Him in all that I do. One thing the Lord has shown me is that I need to fear Him, prefer Him. One day I will stand before God and give an account for all of my actions. I don't know when that day will be, but I do know this; it is very easy to become distracted by all that I need to do, even just my daily routine is distracting. Every morning when I awake, although I have an idea of certain things that I will do during the day, I cannot know every thing that will come up, and Satan loves to distract us away from Him who gives us strength for every situation that comes our way. But if I purpose to put Him first, to look to Him first, to always turn to Him in everything that I do, knowing that He is right there, and even if I think I can do something on my own, I still need Him, then although life is never easy, I'll be walking this road with the One who orders my day.

I don't know if any of that makes any sense. It's just all that has been going through my head over the past couple days.

Our Story

Part 2: The Proposal

Well, I'm finally back to write about how we got engaged. So, as I was saying, it didn't appear that Scott would propose until Christmas '08 or Spring '09. So I certainly was not on the watch for a proposal. But I was to be surprised. On September 10, 2008, Scott and I were going to Harkness Memorial Park and then out to lunch for the first time, by ourselves. Up to this point we had never gone out to eat just the two of us so this was a special (although I was unaware of just how special it would be). When Scott came to pick me up, he brought me a lovely bouquet of Roses. Then, as we were leaving, Scott grabbed a package from his car (we were taking my car). I said, "the roses weren't enough?" He said, "no, and you can't open the package until later." After we'd been driving for a bit, I asked him what was in the package? He said that he would give me a hint: "some stories have yet to be written." He thought for sure that I had figured it out, but I was totally clueless. I thought, "a journal? Does he want me to start writing out our story?" I was completely lost, which made it all the better for him. When we got to the park, we took a blanket and the package with us, and started walking. it was a beautiful, sun-shinny day and comfortably warm. I don't think there was a cloud in site. I figured that eventually we would sit down somewhere looking out over the ocean, and that that would be when I would open the package. We walked through the rock garden at Harkness, and when we reached the top of some steps, all of a sudden Scott said, "why don't you open the package now?" I said, "right now?" I thought this was an awkward place to open the package, standing up and all, but he was in charge of this day, so I would do whatever he wanted me to. So I opened up the package and found a book that's actually a box. So I opened the box, and it was full of peices of pink tissue paper. I was thinking "I don't get it, what is with all the tissue paper?" Finally Scott reached over and moved some of the paper, and uncovered a small black, velvet box. It still didn't dawn on me what was going on. I thought, "a necklace? No, the box is too small, it must be earrings." Scott took out the box, and was on his knee, by this time and yet I was still clueless. He opened the box and started talking, and finally it dawned on me that he was actually proposing, right now, that was a ring! I didn't say anything at first, and he kept talking and finally I realized that I hadn't responded so I all of a sudden said "yes" right in the middle of a sentence. It was wonderful. The ring is beautiful, and the inside is engraved with "My Angel Forever 4-08 (when it all started)," and on June 6, 2009 I am going to be the happiest and most blessed woman alive. God is so good.

Our Story

These were my first flowers from my Man. This bouquet, with it's single red rose started the tradition that every bouquet of flowers I receive always has at least one red rose in it.

How We Met
Our families have been close friends since before I was born. So I have known Scott my entire life. Over the years our families remained close. I prayed for Scott every night while he was in Thailand (just because he was a friend in another country) and we kept in touch through email during that time as well. There was never any possibility of anything between us. We just "knew each other." (And we were also 4 1/2 years apart.) As Scott's book started taking shape, I became his "most-faithful-blog-commenter" and got to read one of the drafts of his book and later pre-read the finished/unedited novel. I always had high regard for Scott and at one point I struggled with really liking him and had to work very hard to get over it (which never completely happened). In April of this year, one of my close friends (and Scott's sister), Laura, got married. At the Wedding, Scott was teaching me, my sister, and his brother a dance he had learned down south a few weeks before. We danced through the whole reception, after which my family went back to his house. That night we sat and talked at their kitchen table for 2 1/2 hours. We talked about a huge variety of things including the Bible and different things about the Bible. That day was the beginning of our relationship. We started emailing very long emails within the next couple days and got together a couple times to do some more dancing. Approximately 2 weeks later was my 18th birthday. Scott came over for lunch that day and shared with me that he wanted to take our friendship to the next step, relationship. He wanted to start doing Bible studies and different things together that you just can't do as "friends." A couple days later Scott met with my Dad and made it official. God was definitely orchastrating everything and looking back it is amazing to see just how much He was in it. Within just a couple weeks we were absolutely certain that God had a definite plan for us and that we were going to get married. (Although there were many things that had to come first.) As each month passed, it became quite clear in my mind that at the very earliest we could get married at the end of next year (2009), and I knew (or at least thought I did) that Scott wouldn't propose before Christmas, and most likely not till closer to Spring '09. But, that story is for another day. . .