Sixteen years ago…

Matt asked me to marry him sixteen years ago today! I thought it would be fun to post the story here today.

We were both college students with at least a year or two until graduation, and had been dating since April 1989. We broke up in December, and while I was trying to imagine my life without Matt, he was contemplating marrying me. After an agonizing month in which I tried to pretend that I wasn't crazy about my friend Matt, we started dating again.

A few weeks later, in early February, Matt told me he thought we needed to decide by the end of the semester whether or not we were going to get married! We had never talked about marriage before because early on in our dating relationship, Matt had said he didn’t want to talk about marriage unless we were serious about it. We decided that day to each ask one person to pray for us to make the right decision. I ran the whole eight blocks to my apartment to tell my roommate Karen, a real prayer warrior, only to find her not home!

I was leaving that day to visit my brother for the weekend, so I quickly packed up some things. I was a *tad* distracted and forgot a few things—like my contact case, toothbrush & toothpaste, etc. Before I left, Karen came home, and I told her what Matt and I had talked about. She was totally shocked, but of course agreed to pray for us.

That weekend, while I was gone, Matt and some of our friends were eating a big bag of conversation hearts. He saved out all the “good” ones—you know, “Kiss Me”, “Hug Me”, etc. When I was back, he gave me these candy hearts, one at a time. Little did I know he had saved one very special one for later.

Eight days after Valentine's Day, Matt had to work until 11:00 p.m., and I didn't know it, but he had something up his sleeve. I was the “emcee” for our Campus Crusade for Christ meeting. Every week we had “sharing time”, when people could share things God had been doing in their life that week. That evening when I asked if anyone had something to share, our friend Jay jumped up and ran to the front of the room, saying “I do! I do!” while holding up a small white envelope in his hand. He gave it to me and went back to where he had been sitting.

The front of the envelope said, written in Matt’s handwriting: “Amy—Open at the beginning of sharing time. Read to yourself.” I opened it and found a yellow piece of notebook paper, folded in thirds. The front said, “Amy will you?”. I opened it up, and saw “Amy will you?”, and opened it again to see “Amy will you?” written yet another time. Tucked in a flap of the paper was a purple conversation heart that said “Marry Me”! (In case you wondered, the photo above is of the envelope, note & candy heart he used.)

The room was silent. Someone finally asked what the note said, so I read it to them, and then someone else asked what my answer was. I said that when Matt got done with work that evening, I’d tell him yes! Jay’s wife, Diana, had made a cake with “Congratulations, Matt & Amy!” on it, feeling confident that I was going to say yes.

I now had an agonizing few hours to wait before Matt was done with work! A few of us went to the store to kill some time. I tried in vain to find something that said “Yes” on it, and decided I was just going to have to answer him uncreatively. Finally, after I had paced the floors at home for quite some time, Matt was at my apartment door. When I answered the door, he asked, smiling, “Well?”. I said, “Ask me yourself!” and he said, “Will you marry me?” to which I (obviously) said “YES!”

Matt asked me when I’d like to get married, but I thought he looked like he had a time in mind, so I asked him when he was thinking. He said something about when the semester was over, in May. I said, “May? Can you plan a wedding that fast?” and he said, “Oh, sure!”. We were all into having a short engagement and not having to deal with temptation so long.

We called my parents and Matt asked my dad for my hand in marriage (he had tried earlier, but they weren’t home). I think we woke my parents up, and they were a bit groggy, but they said yes. Later, we settled on a wedding date of May 5th, since a week later was Matt’s mother’s 50th high school reunion, and there were other things going on with my home church the other two weekends in May. So our engagement was only 10 weeks, 2 days long, which seemed SO long to us at the time.

I'm SO glad Matt asked me to marry him! I hope you enjoyed reading the story of his proposal. :)

It would be fun to read other people’s engagement stories, creative or not. I love hearing how other people got engaged! So, this is your chance--all of you who read my blog but don’t comment. Just click on “comments” below and type away. Thanks!!