A Crazy Busy Engagment

He asked me to marry him on Flag Day; not by plan, just by happenstance.  It does make it easier to remember.  Since I had another year of night classes to finish we decided to marry the next spring.  Thus began one of the busiest years of my life.  I worked full time, planned a wedding, worked at a camp for a week, attended night classes and music lessons, talked on the phone to my fiance [a lot], totaled my car, house hunted, directed children’s choir at church, completed marriage counseling, did the normal things like eating and showering, and celebrated each month of our engagement.

memory-frame1Around the middle of each month we would do something more active than sitting at each other’s houses and watching movies.  We went to several live shows from high school to dinner theaters.  We went bowling and bought each other chocolate.  It’s mostly a blur with occasional times standing out in my mind.  The time he cooked a dinner and brought it to my house.  The time I cooked for him and we ate at a card table in my parent’s living room by candlelight.  The Easter basket he assembled just for me.  Him bringing lunch to me at my work.  The valentine’s day I had to leave church for work and found a gift in my car.  And always the letters back and forth. [Read more...]

Sweetheart, Will You Marry Me?

Those are the very words he said, but what did we do in between February of my senior year of high school until the next June?  I remember lots of phone calls, sitting together in church, getting together to watch movies [still on VHS], and writing letters.

Once I told a co-worker that my boyfriend was a pastor’s son.  She said, “Oh, they are the wildest guys, aren’t they!”  I was like, “Umm, not mine.”  I think her opinion of me changed that day.   Oh well.  He really wasn’t wild.

One day when I came home from work my mom mentioned that my boyfriend had been there that day.  I was surprised because he hadn’t mentioned it to me at all.  He brought a piano stool that needed fixed and……..he asked my dad for my hand in marriage.

The night he popped the question

We went to the mall with my mom and shopped at some jewelry stores, but I didn’t find anything that I really liked.  There was some I would have settled for, but who wants to settle for an engagement ring?  I know that some of you knew what kind of ring you wanted since elementary school, but I didn’t have a particular kind in mind.  I guess I was hoping for a sign that said, “This is the ring design you won’t mind wearing for the rest of your life.” [Read more...]