bekahcubed

This is the next installment in a rather long series about how Daniel and I met–and have become engaged. Click on the “Our Story” tag for context.

We’d arranged for our first date on Saturday, September 22.

I would go down to Lincoln and stay with my parents. Daniel would come up to Lincoln and stay with his parents.

Daniel would pick me up from my parents’ house and we’d go on our date.

A great plan, all told.

But as the time drew near, we ended up tweaking our plan a bit.

It was maybe the Wednesday or Thursday before our date when Daniel told me that he’d been thinking and had decided that it would be silly for us to SKYPE on Friday night when we’d already be in the same town. Maybe we should just meet for coffee that evening?

I happily agreed, since, by that time, I was starting to wonder how awkward it would be to meet Daniel in person for the first time in my parents’ presence–and to turn around and immediately introduce him to them.

The pre-date was set.

We met at The Mill in Lincoln’s Haymarket. I was just about to the door, and wondering whether he’d already be sitting down or if he’d be somewhere in the “front” of the store or… when I heard my name.

I turned to see Daniel, already my beloved, stand from where he’d been waiting outside.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

We stood and stared at each other a while (I think) before one of us said “This is so strange.”

It was. It was so different. So strange.

To be here, at last, face to face with the man I loved, the man I knew, the man who knew me so intimately.

We’d connected as minds first, as fellow believers, then emotionally. We’d come to be friends, confidantes, boyfriend and girlfriend-all without every having shaken one another’s hand or seen one another in person.

How does one interact in person with one they have never before met but have nonetheless known intimately?

It was all so strange.

And, yes, awkward.

Even though we knew no one was watching us, it felt like everyone had to be aware of the unusual nature of our relationship. Surely everyone had to know.

We chatted inconsequentially as Daniel sipped coffee and I a steamer (maybe?)

We tentatively tried to hold hands across the table. We concluded that this, too, was awkward.

“We’ll learn how to do this” we told each other. “I’m glad I get to learn it with you.”

We continued talking, conversation the same as normal except not at all the same as normal.

We paused frequently to marvel at how different everything was in person–and how the same.

Once our drinks were cold and our eyes drooping, we dropped off our cups in the bus tub and walked back to our cars.

We said goodnight, said goodbye. I got in my car and drove home.

My parents and sisters were still up, in the family room watching a movie.

“How was it?” they asked.

“Good,” I responded. “Awkward, but good.”

This is the next installment in a rather long series about how Daniel and I met–and have become engaged. Click on the “Our Story” tag for context.

It wasn’t until after we’d hung up that the doubts swarmed through my head.

Desperate for reassurance, I sent Daniel a text, saying nothing of my current turmoil, but thanking him for listening.

I carried my cell phone from Bunco table to Bunco table as I filled in for a missing player, waiting with increasing anxiety for the text that would ease my doubts, remind me of his love.

The text didn’t come. Daniel had his own activities that night, so I was left with my anxious thoughts.

I spent the evening putting a brave face over my inner struggle, smiling and nodding as my sister exulted in telling her coworkers and friends about my new beau.

Insecure. I felt insecure.

Not because I doubted Daniel’s love. Not even because I doubted that I loved him.

I felt insecure in my own ability to love.

That afternoon, I’d told Daniel about a couple of my past relationships, how I’d been heavily invested in each, how my mind had run on ahead of where the relationship actually was.

In the midst of the conversation, I was fine. I wanted Daniel to know me–my past and my present (and I wanted him to be my future.) I loved that we didn’t conceal anything from one another.

I wanted to share. It was right to share.

It’s just that now, recounting the conversation in my mind, I felt exposed.

How could I even think I could tell Daniel how I felt about him when my feelings had obviously led me astray before?

How did I know that I was not just a flighty thing, in love with being in love?

Now, when this wasn’t like the other times, when the love was mutual, how could I be sure that I wouldn’t let him down? How could I be sure that I actually could love him like I wanted to love him?

I wanted Daniel there beside me, wanted to share my current struggle with him, wanted his reassurance.

I wrote in my journal: “But he isn’t here and my heart is sick and I feel so insecure. Lord, I need You.”

In God’s mercy, Daniel was busy that night. He didn’t see my text until almost midnight.

Daniel not responding forced me into the arms of God–and I am so thankful.

God is my hiding place.

It’s a reality God has reiterated over and over again in the course of my relationship with Daniel.

So many times, I have wanted to run first to Daniel with my struggles, with my sorrows, with my sin. with my excitement. But in God’s great mercy, He has caused many of those things to happen when I couldn’t run directly to Daniel. I was forced to go first to God–and what a wonderful thing that is.

The truth is that Daniel can not bear my burdens. He cannot be my all in all. He cannot be my peace and my security.

I can take joy in Daniel’s love, but it is not his love that saves me. It is God’s love that rescues.

I am learning that once I have hidden myself in God, my sharing with Daniel is so much sweeter, so much greater.

I still share my heart with Daniel-my sorrows, my struggles, my sin–but it is no longer to dump them on him, expecting him to solve things he cannot solve, expecting him to bear burdens he cannot bear. Instead, I share them so that we, together, can cast our shared burdens on the Lord. I share them so that we, together, can go to the throne of grace.

I share them so that we can hide together in Christ.

(By the way, in another testament to the goodness of God–when I have circumvented this and run to Daniel first? Daniel has led me to the perfect place–right back to the throne of grace, right back to the Lover of my Soul. I am so blessed to have a man who loves for me to be hidden in Christ.)

This is the next installment in a rather long series about how Daniel and I met–and have become engaged. Click on the “Our Story” tag for context.

It seems I had managed to render my dad speechless twice in the same night. First, when he had wondered if Daniel had already proposed-and now when I told him that, while Daniel had not yet proposed, he had told me he wanted to  marry me.

When Dad recovered his power of speech, he advised me to get to know Daniel’s parents. After all, he said, it is from his parents that Daniel likely gets his idea of what a marriage looks like. It would behoove me to spend time with his family.

I recounted this story to Daniel later that week (yes, I told him everything-no coyness for this girl.)

After hearing my lively tale, Daniel said he might as well tell me what he was thinking of for a timeline.

“I’ve thought maybe we could spend time with each others’ families over the holidays…and then I’d propose in January or February and we’d get married sometime next summer.”

He paused a bit at this point. “You want a big church wedding, I’m guessing?”

“I’ve heard that those take at least six months to plan, so…”

He explained that a summer wedding makes the most sense to him, since his MBA work means he can’t just take off for a honeymoon in the middle of the school year.

He confessed that this timeline was already making him stressed. He felt maybe he was rushing things to be thinking of next summer–but he’d rather not have to wait all the way until summer of 2014.

I tried to reassure him, encouraged him not to stress about the timeline, not to feel rushed. People have gotten married during school for years. I told him we’d find a way to make it work if that’s the way it turned out.

I confessed to God in my journal:

“I love it. I love him. I love the way You’ve made him. And if things go according to his plan, I will rejoice. And if things work differently and we end up having to take just a weekend honeymoon or whatever, I will rejoice, because there will be a lifetime for knowing and loving him. And if we do not marry, I shall be grieved, but I will rejoice in God’s severe mercy in leading us elsewhere.”

I loved him-and very much wanted to marry him-but I did not want to make him an idol. I wanted God’s will even more than I wanted him, so even as I delighted in our continuing closeness, I was conscious to open my hand and offer him back to the Lord.

Whether we’d be married summer of 2013 or sometime in 2014 or not at all, I wanted God’s will to be done.

This is the next installment in a rather long series about how Daniel and I met–and have become engaged. Click on the “Our Story” tag for context.

We were sitting around my mom’s patio table sometime in the spring (possibly over Memorial Day?). It was Dad, myself, and at least one of my siblings.

We must have been talking about some couple we knew who’d been dating for a long while, wondering, perhaps, when they might become engaged. I might have commented that it’s better for them to deliberate, make sure they knew for sure before getting married, because Dad’s response was:

“Now, Rebekah, you can get married as quickly as you’d like.”

I was a little shocked, a little uncertain what to think.

Was this another “I want grandbabies” comment? But Dad didn’t usually make those comments to me. He made those comments to the people who could do something about it–my married brothers.

Dad must have seen the confusion on my face, because he clarified, “I think that when you’re a little older, more mature, you know yourself and what you want better. So you can make up your mind more quickly. You don’t have to wait around once you know.”

Dad’s earlier comment, made when I had no romantic interests whatsoever on the horizon, came back to me now and became rather an obsession.

What did he mean by that? Did he mean that? Now that things were no longer abstract… Now that I was dating a man who I rather already knew I wanted to marry… Now that I was dating a man who’d already told me that he wanted to marry me…

Did Dad’s earlier comment about timing still stand?

I texted Dad to set up a time to talk. We agreed to Skype on Thursday night, after Mom was done with worship practice so that she could be in on the conversation as well.

We opened our Skype conversation with a brief bit of small talk before I plunged into the question at hand:

“Remember when you said I could get married as quickly as I wanted to? Did you mean that?”

Mom and Dad looked at each other and looked back at me. They opened their mouths and closed them again. They looked at one another again. Finally, Dad spoke. “Do you have an offer on the table?”

I hadn’t realized what my question might mean to them. “No, I don’t. Sorry to have scared you there.”

Dad’s response was measured. “I don’t know. I think there’s definitely value in being deliberative, in making sure you’re sure. But then again, I’m a deliberative sort of guy.”

I laughed, teased a bit. “So you’re saying that if Daniel’s like you, he’ll finally decide to ask me to marry him three years from now?” (Mom and Dad dated for rather a long time before they became engaged.)

Dad’s response was more sober: “How do you know Daniel’s not like me?”

I’d jumped the gun on relationships before, had been thinking marriage when that wasn’t where the guy was at. I wondered if Dad was thinking of that.

But I had a response for Dad. “I know because he’s already told me that he’d like to marry me someday.”

I already knew where Daniel was taking us, knew that I wanted to go where he was taking us. I just needed to know if Dad meant what he’d said about it being okay to travel that route quickly.