As you may have noticed, I haven’t written much over the last month or so. I apologize for that. Not to you but to myself because I love writing and when I go a long period of time without doing it, I start feeling like I’ve left my wallet at home or forgotten to feed a dog that I have yet to buy. But there’s a reason for this absence…
I’m engaged.
What!?
Yeah. It’s insane.
I’ve been keeping this a secret from my now fiancé since this time last month. It’s honestly all I’ve thought about. And writing about it would have been a bad idea considering she didn’t know it was coming. But now I can write about it! Relief!
When I was younger, I thought that this moment in my life was going to be accompanied by something that would feel like angels playing harps. But it didn’t quite feel that way and I wondered if something was wrong with me until I heard Kayla’s response when someone asked her how she felt.
“It feels the same,” she said.
I didn’t want that to be true. I wanted it to feel different. But it does feel the same. Kayla and I have been preparing ourselves for this for some time now. We knew this is where we were headed the first moment we started dating. And even though it’s finally official, our hearts have been at this level of commitment for months. Only now she’s wearing a ring.
Perhaps a better question to ask is, “What’s different now?” Because it changes everything. Asking Kayla to marry me is the second best decision I’ve ever made in my life. Second only to, you guessed it, accepting Christ into my life. Interestingly enough, the two are very similar. They’re both accompanied by a strange rush in the beginning and then an acceptance (whether hard or easy) that nothing will ever be the same again. Both decisions require us to wake up the next day and use our lives to reflect the choice we’ve made.
Christ comes with the rush of his spirit and with that, “the old is passed away”. You can’t help but change because his spirit begins to tell you everything that you can do in your life to become more like Christ. Which is probably everything you aren’t doing. It’s hard but it’s good and it’s perfect because there’s nothing better than reflecting the one with whom the creator of everything is well pleased.
Asking Kayla to forever be a part of my life was and is very similar to that. Getting on one knee was accompanied by a realization that I had been waiting on that particular moment for more than a decade. All I could think was, this is happening, this is it, this is the moment that I’ve been waiting for, the woman I’ve been searching for. Right here. Right now. Putting the ring on her finger meant that I was accepting a new me, a new life, a new us.** I will never do anything without her in mind ever again and I will never be the same. She is a constant presence in my life that must (and will) be honored with everything I do. And how great to have the opportunity to honor such an amazing young woman!
What we do in accepting Christ into our lives and what Kayla and I have done with our engagement is announce that we’re serious. Serious about our faith and serious about our relationship.
And now everyone can see that. Even Facebook.
One thing that I found to be so special about our engagement is the fact that so many of our friends came together to make the event more special than it would have been without them. You know who you are. Thank you. I’m incredibly blessed to have you as a friend.
Forgive me if the majority of my posts for the next year or so make me look like a hopeless romantic.
** I’ve already seen this to be true. I’m such a better person now than I was before meeting Kayla. So much so that I’m embarrassed of the way I acted in certain situations before knowing her. Thank God for that.
