at long last

So many questions over the last few days..."You're engaged?! I didn't know you were seeing anybody!"
Sorry folks, we kept it on the DL until we were O-fficial, so don't feel sad that I didn't say anything, and don't worry, I have known this guy for more than a month!

In case you weren't around for the story, here's the abbreviated version:
September 2004, Marc asks me out, I say "Sure" and we go on the greatest first date of all time. I in fact question whether I have just fallen in love at first-dinner...something I was skeptical of before!

December 2005, we are already starting to talk marriage...which was NOT a good idea...whole cart before the horse thing. In the midst of an amazingly great relationship though, we just didn't make the best choices.

May 2005, we break up...awful, horrible, terrible, lowest point of my life to date....BUT God used that summer (and the time since) to change me in SO many ways that I needed to be changed in. More on that later...

August 2005, Marc and I see each other at a friend's wedding and decide to try again. I am overjoyed, but still in the pit I spent the summer in, and things do not go well...long distance, student teaching stress, job searches, and emotionally fragile don't mix very well.

December 2005, we break up for the second, and what I thought was the final, time. I move home. God continues to work and work and work in me. He challenges me in so many ways, most of all in my understanding of His character. Not only did I learn, and really LEARN that God is the only one who will ever love me perfectly, and who will never, ever stop loving me, and with whom I cannot mess things up, but I also gained a huge amount of knowledge in terms of doctrine and theology. Sounds like a weird combination, I know, but I have so much more of a solid faith than I did before. The solidity of belief has totally changed the way I view dependance and prayer and God's working and His plan. All good, all necessary. In the meantime, God mended my broken heart too.

Summer 2006, Marc and I try to be friends, but I just can't handle it, so we stop talking in November 2006. I try my best to stop loving him, or at least just to stop thinking about him so much.

Good Friday 2007, I get an email from Marc! I read, and reread, and reread again...cry some, read again, and start praying like CRAZY. Marc wants to know if I have moved on...and I haven't, but I don't know at first whether even just talking to him is a wise plan. After a weekend of nonstop praying and thinking, I decide to call him, because despite my best efforts, I still love Marc. We talk (and talk and talk) for the next month, all while I'm still praying, evaluating, talking to my parents... I'm more and more convinced that Marc is the one for me each day that goes by. My parents though, well, not so much convinced.

Mother's Day 2007, Marc comes to Albuquerque for the weekend - it's the first time we've seen each other in almost a year and a half! We have a pretty wonderful weekend, made incredible by the ending. Marc sits down and talks with my parents, ultimately asking if he can marry me, and they say YES!!! They call me in to tell me that they're for Marc, and I start to cry, so overwhelmed...and the four of us pray together, which was unbelievably wonderful.

May 18, 2007, Marc and I are going to a wedding of a friend in Kentucky, so I fly to Dallas and then we fly together to Nashville. I'm ecstatic to see him in Dallas, but it had been a very long week at school, so I kinda doze a bit on the plane to Nashville. After we're in the air for a little while, I wake up a little, and Marc and I start talking...and then he says that he has a present for me, and I have to close my eyes. I, the dense one, think he's giving me a cookie or something (right, I know, I'm ridiculously dense), and so close my eyes with glee at the prospect of a present. As I sit there with my eyes closed, Marc says that seeing as how we're at 35,000 ft, and on top of the world, and on our first adventure together, it seems like a good time to tell me that he loves me with all his heart and he wants every adventure to be with me, and will I marry him?!!! My eyes fly open, and I say "YES!!!" and give him a hug, and then follow his pointed look at the tray table, only to see the little black box! Yes, THAT little black box! With a stunningly beautiful ring inside!! SO exciting!!! So I put it on and turn on the overhead light (because it is dark in the plane, like 9 pm) to see the sparkle. One of the stewardesses walks by and then does a quick turn around and leans over to ask me if we just got engaged. I tell her yes, and show off the ring, and she says congratulations. A few minutes later we hear the other steward come on to give the weather report, and in the middle of his report he says that they'd like to wish happily ever after to Marc and Sarah in row 23, they just got engaged! And the whole plane starts clapping for us! And then the stewardess brings us 2 little bottles of champagne and tiny glass goblets! Wow, what a proposal!! I think I floated off that plane (definitely no longer tired!) and pretty much floated through the entire weekend.

So now - we are getting married at the end of this summer. I'm moving to Dallas, where Marc lives. I got a job last weekend to teach physics and chemistry at a high school in a suburb just north of Dallas (a job which was entirely made possible by God, but that's another story for another time). What an incredible turn my life has taken...and what an amazing path God has taken us down. I think Marc and I knew that we were each other's "one" almost from moment one, but God had a lot of work to do on us before we could be. And now, in His perfect timing, we get to BE! Wahoooooooooo!!!!!

*Alas, el blogger won't let me upload pics, but I'll put them up soon!