To me this blog is more exciting that any I've done so far. The ministry implications that this event will have is incredible. Bringing my fiance Becca here to Franklin is going to drastically impact the high school in an eternal way. The story that follows is my best recollection of the wild, wild day that Saturday was.
For months and months I have thought about how I wanted to propose to Becca. We had been dating for a year and a half and after the first week of dating I told my mother that I wanted to marry her. The rest of that time I've spent trying to convince her that she wanted to marry me. As I've mentioned before, we asked Becca to come and lead on our Fall Weekend with us because we don't have any female leaders. However, I wanted her to go into the weekend knowing that she would be back in these girls lives, and not just there for the weekend. So I knew that I wanted to ask her before Nov. 30th.
In all honesty, I wanted to ask her much sooner. I graduated from Tech in May but she had another year of school left in Blacksburg. While selfishly I wanted to rush it I knew the Lord had intent in allowing us to be in different places for a year growing in different ways. While big things are happening here in Franklin, she is doing big, big things in Blacksburg. But as I prayed, waited and planned I saw that November 24th would be the perfect day. In the weeks leading up to it I asked her father, got the ring and planned out the whole day. The day finally came for me to head home for Thanksgiving and I did so with a ring in my pocket anxiously anticipating Saturday.
Now, the plan was that her family would come into town for the VT vs. UVA game. I knew I wanted to do it on a day we could have her family come in for and the game was the perfect excuse. It was also a great excuse for a lot of our friends to come into town without raising too much suspicion. When I talked to her our plan was to go to the game, spend some time with each other after the game, and then go out to dinner that night with our families as they met for the first time. I had other plans.
On Saturday morning I woke up after a good night's rest. I hadn't expected to get much sleep but it was a gift to get a good amount. I showered and headed over to her house to meet her parents for some breakfast before the tailgate. We had a few friends come over and stop by, and at one point I looked around and realized that everyone there knew that Becca was getting proposed to that day except for her. We had told a group of our friends we wanted to be at a party afterwards and word spread pretty quickly. Luckily they kept it away from her.
Soon enough she and her family left for the game while I stayed behind to "watch it with some other friends" because I "couldn't find a ticket". As they left my buddy Brendan and I headed right away to the Chapel where the proposal was to go down.
Here is where I need to take a break and explain some more things. The Chapel on Virginia Tech's campus is very dear to me. I have spent countless hours there over the last two years simply spending time with the Lord. I play a bit of piano and there is a gorgeous Steinway that is always unlocked at night. When I was a Freshman Fellowship leader at Virginia Tech I often went to the Chapel with guys and talked about life and Jesus late into the night. When Becca and I first met I had many conversations with friends and with Jesus there about her. It's a place to me that symbolizes my walk with Christ. It is the closest thing to a holy place that I know. Often Becca wanted me to take her there and play her piano but I never wanted to. To take her there meant taking her into the inmost part of who I am and who I am in Christ which is terrifying. I wasn't ready to do that until I was certain I wanted to marry her. That's why instead of trying to do something extravagant, I wanted to take her there.
So Brendan and I spent a while setting things up. I wanted him to be able to take picture to we moved some things around so he could hide between a pillar and fake tree with a good angle of where I would propose. We set up with the assumption that Becca would text me after the game, around 3 or so, and then I would pick her up and grab a bite to eat before taking her to the chapel for the big event. To my surprise I got a text at 1:18 that simply read "heading home". It was a cold day in Blacksburg so she and a few friends decided to head out a little early. Instead of an hour of time to kill it turned into two and a half. So Brendan and I prayed and it was time to head out. Nervous but ready as ever.
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