When you see someone who you know is engaged, one of the first questions you typically ask (in an excitable tone) is “Will you tell me the proposal story?!” I ask my engaged friends the same thing and expect the entire story with all of the juicy details…
Joe’s post-op physical therapy appointment would last over an hour. I knew that he had a long day at work and wanted to have dinner ready for him when he came home. Throwing on some sweats, I walked over to his apartment, turned on some tunes and got to work. It was ready (or so I thought) by the time he walked in the door. While the white fish looked quite tasty plated, our taste buds didn’t agree. The fish tasted like a salt-soaked sardine and was a bit on the chewy side (note to self: don’t defrost fish in the microwave). Joe ate it all anyways and assured me that it was just one meal out of many that didn’t taste great. Ugh.
Over dinner, he asked me a few questions about our relationship and its growth in the past months. He is a gifted question-asker and typically has a goal in mind when he asks them. We cleaned up and I finished decorating the little Christmas tree. When I looked over at him, he had his eyes closed and was praying. As I curled up beside him, he told me there was something he wanted to show me. He opened up his ipad, and curiously my heart started beating a little faster … What an odd time to pick up his ipad.
He opened up an email account and said, I created this account for the woman who would be my wife and have been emailing letters to it for years.
You won’t believe my response. Not tears … but laughter—uncontrollable laughter! I still wonder what was going through Joe’s mind as he witnessed my reaction, perhaps I’m proposing to a mad woman? Perhaps…
I want you to read this one, he said. The email was dated only a few weeks after we had gone on our first date. It revealed that I was indeed the woman he had been praying for. The laughing subsided and my nerves faded away into tears of joy. At some point, he snuck into his room to get the ring. While I don’t remember his words verbatim, as I finished reading the email, he said something like this: Do you feel loved? I want you to think about how loved you feel in this moment and want you to know that we can never love each other as much as the Lord loves us.
He then bent down on one knee (not exactly easy with his shoulder out of commission) and continued:
You are the woman I want to spend my life with. I want to be your husband. Are you ready to be a wife? Will you marry me?
I’d always wondered how that moment would be—when he would ask for my hand in marriage. The scene in my head did not do justice to the love that filled every bit of me.
He opened up the ring box that he pulled out and I stared at it for a moment, stared at him (deer in the headlights), YES!
Then something rather embarrasing happened. Without thinking clearly or patiently waiting, I took that sparkly ring out of its little box and put it on my finger where it belonged. Gorgeous. We laugh about that moment now.
Emotional and filled with joy, we soaked in the realization that we would be spending our lives together.
Later that evening, we wrote a prayer to commemorate the occasion, which I encourage you to do with your fiance if you are Christians, and called families and friends. When I went back to my apartment that evening, I stayed up until the wee hours of the morning pouring over the rest of the emails in the account he created—an epistolary collection of thoughts, prayers and stories from my amazing future husband. Precious. We are getting married on June 1.
