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Sunday, December 2, 2012

engagement.

on October 26th i got to answer a question that i had been waiting for, dreaming about, wondering about, praying for, and hoping for for my whole life. the man of my dreams asked me to marry him!! since then, it has been a funny, frustrating, and eye-opening journey.

the way i had always dreamed of my engagement going was to get engaged, the next week be filled with UNBELIEVABLE joy and excitement. talking about plans and wishes with my family and anyone else. i always thought that within the first month of being engaged that i would already have the date, the engagement pictures done, and moving full speed ahead on any other decisions pertaining to THE day. i thought it would be all fairytales and butterflies.

well. i was wrong. granted, our situation is a little different than most, i would venture to say that no ones engagement is like that. jake and i have had to deal with alot of real life in the past 2 months and it has made our engagement incredible, but not at all what i had always dreamed of. there have been tears, arguments, hurt feelings, frustration, disappointment, and misunderstandings...

we started premarital counseling last week and the pastor doing it said something that really made some stuff click for me. he said, "it is impossible to enter into new things without false expectations. one of my jobs in our time here is to at least cut those false expectations in half so that you are both prepared. its better to get hit by a 2x4 if you know its coming, rather than be blindsided by it."

i entered into engagement with a million and one false expectations. i expected day-to-day life to be like engagement pictures. perfect, flawless, lovey-dovey, and care-free. the "pinterest engagement" if you will. and the hard times we have gone through in these past 2 months has been the Lord cutting out all my false expectations.

we are talking about marriage here. the first few steps to preparing for a lifetime covenant. a day-in-day-out relationship where life is constantly thrown at you. you are faced with financial issues, family problems and struggles, things not happening in your timing or in the way that you wanted them to...

what i have learned about myself, about jake, about the Lord, and about our relationship are things that i never want to lose. lessons that i pray will stay with me my entire life.

have these past 2 months been what i always thought and dreamed engagement would be like? no. not in the least. have these past 2 months been an incredible journey that i would not trade for anything? absolutely.

my gracious heavenly Father has validated this relationship over, and over, and over. in every hurt feeling, every tear, every frustration, every disappointment, every misunderstanding... everything has deepened my love for jake, built my excitement for our wedding day, and given me a peace that the Lord is not done with either of us yet.

i cannot wait till we set a date and know the day that will start the rest of our lives together. but what i cant wait for even more than that is the next day, and the next day, and the next day. i cant wait for our LIFETIME together. to do what we have been doing in our engagement - living life together.

abc.

i said yes!


i am so excited to finally have time to sit down and write out everything that has happened. this past week has gone by at like a million miles per hour…. i cant believe i am engaged!! it still hasn’t really sunk in. but, here is the story and some pictures!!
so on monday last week, my boss called me to change my schedule and informed me that i was going to be working with Deborah getting trained as the Personal Shopper/Stylist! My boss informed me that I would be working individually with clients and so I needed to come dressed very “wealthy” as she put it haha
So friday rolls around and i am PUMPED to go to work… but when i get there, to my dismay, i get to do NO styling. so i was confused and very angry. So my friend courtney and I had planned to go to dinner that night after work and i was really excited to get a margarita and vent to her about how i didn’t get to dress anyone! I also took my merry little time after work and bought myself some really pretty pitty jewelry (little did I know i would be having a WONDERFUL addition soon! ha) so i get home (30 mins late) and decide not to go inside and just wait in the car for Court to get there… what i didnt know was that she was creepily parked across the street in my neighbors drive way just watching me. so she calls and says she has to use the restroom and for me to go inside and wait for her. i told her she was lame but i obeyed and headed inside.
When i get up to my back door, there are 4 candles just sitting there lit. on the steps. and i think… “well that is just CREEPY” (i thought Jakes mom was at the beach and that my parents were at Lukes football game that Jake was coaching at. i legitimately had NO EARTHLY IDEA and was not expecting it at all). well once I open the door, i see the sign on the door that says “Forever and Always” (jake and I’s thing we would say to each other in high school haha ohhhhhh the cheese.) so then i start to get real emotional. I get to the next door and there is another sign with 3 things on it but i dont really remember what they said but basically it told me to walk inside and when i opened the door it was magical.
the entire house was candle lit and it was beautiful! there was a candle path to a little chair for me to sit in and watch a video he has put together. it was a slide show of pictures of us from 9th grade until now! complete with tim mcgraw, eli young, and dave barnes… the essential ‘mushers’ in jake and I’s minds! it was precious. at the end it told me to walk outside and he would meet me out there….
so i walk out of that room and walk up into our kitchen and when i turn the corner i lose it. my entire back yard (2 full acres) was lit up like a fairytale! every tree had white twinkling christmas lights, there were hundreds of little candles, little lanterns, and then big white paper lanterns hung in the tree…. i mean it literally took my breath away. so i start BALLING.
i walk towards the back door and before i walk out there is a frame at the end of the table and in the frame is a journal entry from the morning after he told me his feelings for me in Charleston back in January. this was one of my favorite parts of the whole thing. it was his prayer for our relationship. and it really showed just how well he knew me. he was thanking the Lord for bringing me back into his life and him saying that he KNEW that i was who the Lord had for him to spend the rest of his life with. But, it was also his prayer for the Lord to reveal that to me in His own timing because Jake knew that i didn’t know that yet. It may sound weird, but it was just so cool to me that Jake prayed for patience on his part because he knew that my heart hadn’t yet come to the same conclusion as his and he was ok with that.
so i try to pull myself together and then i walk outside where my Oh so handsome man is waiting for me! when i get there, the GREATEST thing happened. he told me he loved me. we agreed back in January that we didn’t want to grow accustomed or numb to those heavy words so we had not said them to each other. it was probably the greatest thing my ears have ever heard! im smiling just thinking about it ha.
so then he takes my hand and walks me to under my favorite tree in our backyard and tells me alot of wonderful things that i honestly cannot remember!! and then he got down on one knee….. and BOOM!
i said YES!!! 
 this is when he was telling me some wonderful things that i cant remember…
this is when he asked me to be his WIFE!!!!
this was right after i said YES!!!
 aaaaaaaand these are the cheesy “right after” shots that i am pretty obsessed with!!
 after all that we went inside and he had my favorite dinner waiting on me, then took me to JenSei (a favorite of mine) for what i thought was just for he and I and when i got there, about 25 of my close friends were waiting for us with champaign and wedding magazines! then after that, he told me we had one more stop. so we headed back to the house and he had my family, his family, and all our close family friends there waiting for us with a beautiful cake, yummy cupcakes, and story time! it really was the most perfect night of my life! 
i could not be more in love and i am so happy to FINALLY be able to freely say it!
 it is just so neat to me that the Lord loves me and jake enough to take us down the paths that he did, for us to learn in the ways that we did the things that we did, so that moments like October 26, 2012 could be so fully enjoyed. my heart could not be any more full!
abc.