Engagement Story

I've promised this to several people and realized that there are others that would like to hear it, so here goes...

On Saturday, August 8th, I woke up to a rainy, dreary day. Amy and I had talked about going to Devil's Lake earlier in the week to do some hiking but it looked like the rain might prevent those plans from working out. But at my gentle prompting, we decided to just go and give it a try. If it didn't clear up we'd just make the most of it.

Well it did end up clearing up (thank God!) just before we pulled into the park and we spent much of the afternoon hiking around the lake. I had mentioned at one point in the afternoon that if we found an area where we could have some quiet and privacy, it would be fun to do lectio divina, a method of reading Scripture where one person reads a specific passage out loud several times as the other processes through what it is saying. (Sounds nerdy, but it's something we'd done several times together prior to this.)

After driving to Parfrey's Glen we decided to stop at a big, open prairie that doubled as a cross-country skiing trail. Since there weren't many people skiing on this humid August day, we had the whole area to ourselves. We searched for awhile for a spot in the shade. At one point, Amy said, "Chris, if we're not going to stop soon and sit down, let's just go to the car and drive home in the air conditioning!" Luckily, we soon found some shade and plopped down on a blanket in the grass.

So what follows is basically the proposal itself. But here's a disclaimer: I knew that I wanted to propose during our little excursion that day, but I had absolutely nothing planned when it came to a location or anything like that. It was all pretty spontaneous but luckily worked out really well seeing as I had no idea this prairie even existed three hours earlier.

We sat down and read through two of my favorite passages. Ephesians 1:4-6 and then Ephesians 5:25-33. I pulled out a journal where I had written out some things from that passage and how it made me want to love her in that way and to continue to pursue a relationship with her that modeled Christ to our family and friends. I then told her that I also wanted her to read the FIRST journal entry from that particular journal...

When she turned to the first page, she saw that it was dated September of 2008 and she immediately began to start balling! What followed was a serious of letters and journal entries from my time in East Asia that I would write whenever I missed her or couldn't talk to her. The journal had been in China on the Great Wall, Singapore, and Malaysia before eventually making its way to her!

She says she still had no idea that anything was coming at this point, but I then proceeded to grab one more small gift that I had for her, wrapped in tissue paper. She unwrapped the paper and found a much smaller journal. The first page said something like, "Amy, the last chapter of our lives is finally closed and we get to move on to a new one. Some pages might contain some ugly things, but others will be absolutely beautiful, and what's most important is that it's OURS. So if you're up for the adventure, turn the page..."

And in the next page was a box cut out of the rest of the journal with an engagement ring sitting in it! And...she said yes! Technically, there was just a lot of crying for the first several minutes, but she eventually got around to giving me some sort of verbal confirmation! :)

It was a perfect day and we got to take our time and enjoy the moment with no one else around. We drove back to Madison and celebrated at The Great Dane, our favorite restaurant, before we started making calls and telling everyone.

We are planning on getting married on Friday, April 16th at Blackhawk Church in Madison and you can pray for us as we try to figure out what comes after that!