Well, I know this is interrupting my blog series of
character introductions, of which I am on Part 3 out of six-ish, but I have a very important, very wonderful story to tell you. It will probably take longer than I expected...but there's an excellent surprise revealed at the end! (Now don't you dare scroll down to find it before you read through the whole story!!!
Kidding...actually I can't do anything to stop you...) Anyway, here we go:
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Once upon a time, there was a girl who lived with her loving parents and her siblings, and they were all homeschooled. She was brought up in the church, had a wonderful family and friends, and she was generally very happy.
For many years, her family attended a Bible Study called "Bible Study Fellowship International" or BSF for short. This organization had many different classes for men, women, and children, and this girl had been going to these studies for pretty much as long as she could remember. In high school, she was part of a huge, history-making study group, with over twenty different highschoolers in attendance. In that large group, there were smaller groups; mainly those who attended the same sort of churches and had similar theological ideas tended to group together. In that group was the girl, her older brother, and a few friends, mostly guys, because for some reason girls just "didn't come" or something.
One of these friends in the group hosted a summer Bible Study at his house, with his younger brother and their friend groups, and our main characters, the girl and her brother, were invited to that group. It was a good study and they had some good times, but after that summer things simply got too busy to keep doing the study. The girl and her brother kept attending BSF and were still on good terms with the people from their other study there. It was a funny thing in homeschool Bible Study circles--everyone knew everyone else somehow or another, through mutual friends and acquaintances or distant connections.
The older brother, after graduating from high school, became part of a group that the young man who had hosted the Bible Study was also a part of. They became good friends over time, and the girl even occasionally made fun of her brother and his friends, because, well, that's what little sisters are for, right?
The year that she graduated from high school, there was an open house for someone else's graduation that she and her brother attended. Due to her somewhat awful mingling skills, she ended up sort of standing there waiting around, and the young man, her brother's friend, kindly started up a conversation with her so that it was less awkward. She was rather shocked, as he asked how her preparations for her first year of college were going, that he actually seemed to listen and pay attention to what she said. She had to read Stephen Hawking's A Briefer History of Time, which they both agreed would be awful...but it could be worse, they supposed, going to a public university.
A few weeks later, the girl went with her brother to a board game night with his friends, among which was the young man. They played "Ticket to Ride," and talked quite a bit, but she mostly listened and wondered how these peoples' brains worked so strangely? There was one moment that she could not forget, however. It was the young man's turn to play, but everyone else was busy talking as he quietly went about his turn. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the card had gotten flipped so that he could see what was coming next, which would benefit him greatly at that point. She watched, half-listening to the others and half-spying on the person across the table, as he hesitated for a moment and then muttered to himself, "That would be cheating," before replacing the card in the middle of the deck and drawing again, honestly. Nobody but her noticed, and she didn't say anything, but was genuinely impressed with the integrity she had seen; that he wouldn't cheat at a time when she, if she was honest with herself, probably would have.
About a week after that, the girl was going to go about thrift shopping with one of her girl friends. She didn't know it (because her brother sometimes neglected to tell her things and wasn’t the greatest planner), but there was another game night that night. Of course, she already had plans and wasn't able to go. When she got home, her brother went into great, mouth-watering detail about the excellent dinner and dessert (a chocolate cake, to be precise) that the young man had made for them all. It made her hungry, especially the cake part--she loved chocolate, and cake, and putting the two together made everything even better. And then as they sat in the living room that night, the girl with an open notebook on her lap, reading through a draft of something she had written, her brother asked, "What would you say if I told you that there was a reason he made that chocolate cake?"
She froze and listened, in total shock. As it turned out, the young man had done all that work in hopes of impressing her, thought she was smart, pretty, and had good theology, and wondered what she thought of him. Naturally, being only seventeen at the time, the girl had freaked out. She was far too young for this sort of thing! ACK! How was she supposed to respond to that????? And so she sat in dazed, confused silence, waiting for someone to tell her what to do. In the end, her brother told the young man that she was only seventeen (which for some reason, he had neglected to do sooner...sometimes brothers don't have the best of planning skills), and the whole matter was pushed aside and forgotten.
At least it was for her. After a good amount of time had passed, she started doing things with her brother's friend group again, and not a word of the chocolate cake incident passed between them. He kept his distance politely and didn't say anything, and she would have been far too busy and stressed with her college load that year to really bother if he had. They were friends again, thank goodness, and it wasn't even awkward.
But then it happened. He sent a text, asking if she wanted to go out for lunch, just the two of them, and, after thinking and groaning and freaking out for an agonizingly long time, she responded, in words much more steady than her fingers, that sure, that would be fine. So they did. He threw up three times that morning, he was so nervous, but she had no idea until far later--they were mutually nervous and freaked out, though she didn’t get sick. It ended up to be lots of fun and they enjoyed talking, even decided that sure, they could go sometime in a couple weeks and walk around a museum together.
Well, after that, she had to know what was going on, so she sent a terrifying, nerve-wracking text asking if they could address the elephant in the room. What was going on between them? What were his intentions? And in return he asked what she wanted, what she thought about them. It was at that time that she told him that she intended to give him a "chance," though nothing was set in stone for sure and she was still pretty young.
After that text, they kept getting together in group settings and just the two of them, but always in a public setting when just the two of them. They had lots of fun and enjoyed some adventures, such as people falling down escalators, forgetting ID cards at the shooting range, and many, many long text conversations in which they attempted to make sense of difficult, hard to approach topics of conversation.
She knew that he was set. He wanted to marry her and was perfectly certain, he had said so many times and she knew it. But she was not such a certain person when it came to big decisions of any kind. She tended to obsess over things and count pros and cons until everything could be seen as a pro or con depending on which way you looked at it. She would think "yes" until her mind asked "but is that what you REALLY think or are you just telling yourself that you think that?" and began to chase itself in circles that could never ever end. In her brain, she knew everything, but sometimes she freaked out and then her rational mind would shut down, running in circles again. She WANTED to want to marry him, really she did. But she just had trouble making decisions, and she really wanted someone to tell her what to do. Her brother told her she should just stop agonizing and go marry him. Her parents didn't tell her exactly what they thought she should do; they gave her advice to weigh all her options, to think carefully, and to do what she wanted to to, that they would support her in that. They thought he was a great guy and really liked him, but other than that wouldn't say much about what they thought she should do. She kept waiting for an epiphany moment, but it never came.
There were lots of tears and lying awake at night agonizing over things in those several months. Until one particular evening.
She had just been talking with her parents and brother about what to do and had heard the same sort of thing that she had heard all along; that it was, in the end, her decision. She took a shower and was internally freaking out the whole time, because she HATED making decisions and it was too hard, and what was she going to do?????? And then there was suddenly a song stuck in her head. "Standing on the Promises" was the song, and she had no idea how it got there. "Standing, standing, standing on the promises of God, my Savior, standing, standing, I'm standing on the promises of God." Or something like that.
That morning, she had attended Bible Study and they had talked quite a bit about the story of Joshua 1, and her mind went straight to the great promise and command that God gave to Joshua:
"Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."
And in that moment, she suddenly realized what she was going to do. She knew that even when she was doubting, even when she was scared, she still wanted to want to marry this guy. Yes, sometimes she got scared, but those first priests who stepped into the Jordan River must have been a little scared too. She sent a very personal email soon after this happened, and said, "This is a huge decision and I really wish that someone else could make it for me, because really, how do I know, for sure, that this is what I'm supposed to do? Some people are really good at deciding things and knowing things for sure, but I am not one of them. Even so, I THINK that this is what I am supposed to do, what I have been called to do. I'm going to have doubts, because I am a doubter, I'm going to be scared at times because I am easily frightened and because of my "panic mode." But overall, I think...I think that it is truly God's will that I should say yes and should marry this man. Which can be, in all honesty, a terrifying thought at times. But the promise to Joshua still stands: "Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go," and I think that is the promise to me and my panicky brain as well. "
After that day, her resolve and her decision only grew stronger. She now knew that she loved this man and, though it could be a fearsome, weighty thought, she wanted to marry him. Of course, he had known for months now, and he was completely set. It had just taken her a little while longer to understand than it had for him.
And so, seven months and thirteen days after their first awkward "date," several years after the Bible Study group, he knelt down, held out a ring, and asked her to marry him. Of course, her heart was beating so wildly that she didn't even remember his exact words after the fact, but she did remember that she said YES, an absolute YES with no confusion or doubt. And it felt wonderful.
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Sooo what was the point of that story??? you ask???
In short...I'm the girl in the story.
Yes.
I'm engaged.
Yes.
It's crazy.
Yes.
There is a LOT of planning to do before next July.
But yes.
I am the girl in the story. And I am engaged to a wonderful man who my BROTHER set me up with, and we are going to be getting married next July.
And yes.
Here is a picture of us.
And, in keeping with the above, yes, that's all I have to say!
