My Engagement Story

I decided to write about this in light of my anniversary coming up.

I married my husband on the exact 5-years-to-the-day mark of 

the day we met, and in June we will be married 5 years. 

One decade with him.

There is a special memory I keep to myself.

It has stayed quiet for several years now.

The memory was beautiful, precious to me.

An important moment in the history of my relationship,

A defining moment in my life.

If it had all played out the way it was supposed to,

It would have set the scene for a positive change and

Five years of my life would have played out differently.

It was a short-lived moment of joy.

The reason it has been locked away,

Seldom to be spoken of again

 is because of the way that it fell apart,

it didn’t transpire until years later.

Now, I’m looking within to find the courage to acknowledge it

Embrace it as something not to be swept under the rug

But remembered, despite the sadness it causes.

I met my husband in June of 2009.

Though on the day we met, I did not make the immediate connection,

I noticed him as more than “just some guy” within a few days

Of the large luncheon event in which we were awkwardly seated

at the same table, one not knowing the other.

He extended interest in friendship, so I offered my number.

The next day, he noticed me waiting alone somewhere, and gave me a call.

Our romance blossomed from there, beginning with a

“date” to meet for coffee.

After he walked into the café that evening, we were inseparable.

Days, weeks later, we were still together almost 24/7.

Within a month, there was an evening that we were at his apartment,

And in the midst of a conversation I cannot recall the subject of now,

He said the words every woman wants to hear: “I love you.”

I didn’t say it back right away. I wanted to think for awhile.

I felt many feelings for him, among them attachment, ecstasy, infatuation,

Gratitude, attraction...but did I feel true love?

If I was going to say those words to him, it would be backed

With a silent inner promise to be for him what he needed me to be.

Why was that so hard?

Because he had confessed to me on our first date that he suffered from

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Thus far, he seemed to be mostly normal.

But I didn’t know when or if the condition would rear its ugly head.

If I truly “loved” him, I would stand beside him no matter how

unlovely he was being.

Was I ready to do that?

Was he worth it?

I think I woke him in the early hours of the morning to say it back to him.

It took me several hours, not several days or weeks.

But he always saw it as an insult,

The delay meant I laid heavy thought

into the inner workings of my own heart.

And that is why what came only two months after that moment

Was so easy for me.

My 22^nd birthday fell on a Saturday.

It was late August.

He and I had gone together to a weekend retreat

with the church we visited together. It was for college-age adults

who wanted to consider leading within the college ministry.

When it ended that afternoon, we went to our respective homes

and got ready for my birthday dinner.

I wore a little white sundress.

He slicked his hair and tucked in his button-down shirt.

Before we would make our way to the restaurant,

He wanted to take me for a walk along the stony wall of

the ancient coquina fort that sits on the bay-front of our town.

He reached a point in the wall where he felt was right,

And got down on one knee.

He asked me if I would marry him.

He even had a ring for me. It glimmered bright in the sun.

Some tourists saw this event unfold and clapped.

I had a feeling he would try to ask me.

We had talked about marriage,

despite only being together a few months.

It always felt deep-down that we were soul mates.

I should have waited to see what he would do next,

But I plucked the little ring from its box

And put it on, overjoyed at the prospect

Of being a wife.

Of being HIS wife.

I wish I could say that this moment marked the beginning

Of wedding planning, of a happily ever after.

I wish our families had embraced us, said

“I knew you two were meant to be!”

I wish we hadn’t gotten daunted by the expense of renting space

In one of the picturesque churches downtown

Or the cost of planning a catered reception

I wish we had set a wedding date right away, poor or not.

I wish we had been humble enough to be okay

With a tiny, simple, intimate ceremony

possibly at our honeymoon hotel,

and our honeymoon hotel could be one right in town.

It didn’t matter, we could still go off the grid and away from the world.

But we were young, immature, naïve.

And we quickly realized the costs of

the ceremony we thought we wanted

and the difficulties of starting a new life.

Coupled with the fact that neither set of our parents

Really thought that we should be married so young and so soon,

His post traumatic stress took over and he backed out.

A mere three weeks after I said I wanted to be his wife,

He changed the plan.

I stopped wearing a ring.

We stopped talking about it.

The following months were difficult for us both.

Even when things would get better for our relationship,

And we could talk about “someday being two become one”

It was still always so far off, like the horizon you see across the ocean.

No matter how much you sail, it never seems to come closer.

Don’t worry it’s not all bad.

There was a happy ending much later on.

After nearly five years of struggle from that birthday,

I finally got to walk to the altar on my dad’s arm,

My gorgeous boy waiting there for me, to say a vow.

We had 40 guests, our own modest little church,

Party trays of cheese and fruits,

Paper lanterns, seashells, a three-tiered cake.

It was glorious.

But the engagement was one made mutually.

We went six months prior and picked out rings at the mall

together, on purpose. we set a date not far away.

We dug our heels in.

I miss the romantic proposal sometimes.

After all these years, I finally made peace with it.

I like to skip over all the rocky, ugly parts in my mind.

I like to pretend that the special moment on my 22^nd birthday

Was the moment-

And there was just a very very long engagement.