A Love Story

 

This is not a story of love at first sight. 

This is not a simple story of love, though this is the simple version. At times, it was messy and difficult and hard and required both people to die to their interest in each other. 

Nevertheless: this is my love story. 

I do not remember life without Joel—nor, I think, does he remember life without me. Since we met twenty-two years ago (when I was a babe of 3 months old, and he was a disinterested toddler 3 years of age), life and God have always kept us in touch one way or another. First, we were childhood playmates and friends. I loved the stories he would tell me, invented from his own imagination, and died from suspense as he made me wait week to week to hear the next part of the saga. Together, we explored the woods and played in musical ensembles; from him, I learned chess and the finer points of shooting a basketball into a basket. It was a simple time—three children (because Lauren was also part of our gang!) having delightful times together.

 

Top to bottom: 2004, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2010

As we grew older, our relationship necessarily became more distant. We challenged each other to read through series of books, we made music together with voice and instrument, and we saw each other weekly at church, but our friendship changed and was replaced by friends of the same gender.  

Somewhere along the way, I grew up. And with that growing up came a new awareness. I looked at Joel and admired his leadership, his passion, his purposefulness, his love for God and family, and his great mind, heart, and soul. Slowly and gradually, like the dawning of the sun, I began to think that he would make a wonderful husband and father.  

This was something I struggled with, because Joel had not pursued me. I had no basis and no permission to feel this way. So I prayed, I cried. I thought hard, I thought not at all. Gradually, God made me see that I needed to share this with my parents. If Joel found a nice girl and married her, I would desperately need my parents by my side! Moreover, if Joel decided I was that nice girl he should marry, then my parents would already know my heart.

So two years ago, I went to them and shared what I had never joked about with my girlfriends. What I had never uttered to Joel. What I had never even written in my journal. With tears and more nerves than one girl should have to deal with, I wondered aloud to them—was Joel the one? They listened to me and loved me. They didn’t condemn me, but nor did they encourage me. This was definitely out of our control, and we would just have to wait and see what God was going to do. My relationship with my parents has become even more sweet and precious since I shared my heart with them that night.

In January of 2012, I made a New Year’s Resolution. I usually avoid such resolutions for the obvious aversion to feeling like a failure. This year’s commitment, however, was inescapable, and so I resolved to make God preeminent in my life and on the throne of my affections, so that the things of this earth would grow strangely dim. 

God lovingly and graciously brought so many challenges into my life last year that brought me to just that place. But, oh, the pain.  

At the end of January, Joel took a job as law clerk in Maryland. He was in his last year of law school, and had been looking for just such an ideal job as this to begin to gain experience. Through this and many other circumstances, God ripped Joel from my heart—and replaced him with Himself. I completely died to my vision for my life and what I wanted, and I submitted myself to God’s plan for my life. (My blog post written in the midst of this journey through pain might make more sense now.)

This was also the year that I heard from God truly and clearly for the first time. The year that I came to know God like never before. The year that God became preeminent in my life, the King of my affections; the year that the things of this earth grew strangely dim. 

Then Joel came home for the holidays and to spend the next two months studying for his Bar Exam. I was very interested in not talking to him and, in fact, avoiding him, because I still didn’t trust my flighty heart! He, however, had other ideas. He wasted very little time in emailing my Papa about getting together. And so on December 31^st—the last day of that eventful year that I had given to God—he met with Papa and asked his permission to court me. On January 19^th, he came over to my house and, with the full permission of both sets of parents, asked me if he could court me, to which I joyfully agreed! 

On the night of our engagement!

 

Our courtship brought limited contact, as he was immersed in his studies for the Bar and went back to Maryland shortly thereafter. We certainly managed to make the most of our time together, however, and held email and phone conversations constantly! At the beginning of April, Mama, Papa, and I flew over to Maryland to spend ten days with Joel, and on April 6^th, Joel got down on one knee and proposed! I hardly let him finish, so great was my joy and confidence and delight in saying yes to one of the best men I have ever known.

At Gettysburg

 

There is much more to share—the details of how our courtship worked, the process God took me through to confirm that this was His will, and the wonderful story of our engagement. All this and more I will delight in writing about over the coming weeks.

 

For now, let me just remind you: God is good and God is great! I cannot stop marveling at how good He has been to me. He has truly been the author of my love story!