Engagement Story

One Sunday evening at the beginning of November started with a phone call and a decision to work on our weekly Bible Study Fellowship homework at Tim’s apartment. True to form when either of us have an issue on our minds we talked for several hours instead of studying. The issue on hand was that of whether Tim and I could be compatible in the long-term despite my clear calling to foreign missions and Tim’s lack of individual calling to the same. By this time I was becoming desperate for an answer for in my mind this clear life calling which I received during some of my earliest memories could not simply be ignored for the convenience of marrying someone who, in all other departments, seemed perfect. By this time I had traveled enough and done enough overseas ministry to know that I feel most at peace, most fulfilled, when I am doing the formal work of a “missionary.” I also knew in principal and by experience that I must have peace about something as weighty and binding as marriage or I would always have doubts. We had been courting for eight months and this one, very important issue had not yet been resolved. Was I delaying the inevitable by hanging onto a doomed relationship for my own immature insecurity? Was I truly seeing Tim through rose colored glasses and missing other warning signs that we were not a good match, blessed by Jehovah (the God who provides)? Or was I demanding too much of God and not waiting on his clear direction?

Recognizing the obvious fact of biased thought, I attempted to reason. My close friends all liked him from the start, saying that they were impressed with his convictions and transparency but my parents, even by that time, had yet to have peace about the thought of the two of us being married despite immediate peace about Katherine and Dave almost the moment they met Dave. What if my friends simply didn’t know Tim well enough? Would they catch faults that I had missed? My parents didn’t seem to have anything concrete to criticize after eight months. Were they telling me the full truth about their reservations? I huffed immediately at the thought recognizing a seed of irrational discontentment. Of course my parents would be transparent with me if they had anything concrete to criticize about Tim! They want nothing but the best for me and any contrary thought is simply a lie. On the other hand, I know my tendency is to be impatient. What was God attempting to work in me before the learning process of this relationship, or this step of the relationship, was complete? Was I missing his lesson and thus continually pushing his final answer farther off? Was Tim missing a lesson? Or were we simply grasping at straws, drunk with puppy love, thinking we were asking for God’s direction either way when, in fact, we would only listen if we received the desired answer?

The back and forth polemic made my head spin and soured my countenance. The issue was only further muddled with the holidays’ swift approach and Tim’s increasing pressure to give him an answer on whether I would join him to visit his family in California. The conflict in my own heart was escalating to a breaking point; frustration was seeping its way into the perceptible world. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could not agree to join Tim with his family in California in this state. Either I needed an answer SOON (as in, within a week or two) or I would know that our relationship was not to be. All the while, I felt that I hadn’t received any communication from God whatsoever for months. I felt adrift, a wave crashing in the sea, a mist blown on the breeze of human reasoning. I needed something solid. I needed a confirmation either way and I needed it NOW.

Unbeknownst to me, a series of e-mails between Tim, my mom, and his parents, had struck a chord with him. Ever since we began our relationship we openly stated and agreed that we found a fundamental flaw in the idea of Tim following me to a foreign mission field with some self-sacrificial sense of pleasing me. That is not what either of us considered Biblical leadership nor is it something we could see leading to mutual contentment. It would be a poor foundation for our relationship and set the precedent for my leading major decisions (which was not something I needed encouragement for). We reasoned that either Tim needed to receive an individual calling for him to go to the mission field, my calling needed to change to a local one, our entire concept of the encompassing situation needed to metamorphose, or we were not meant to be married.

Eight months later we were left with the same conundrum and it was with this on our minds that our conversation began that day in November.

For an hour or two Tim voiced his garbled thoughts out loud in an attempt to order them. Once I realized that he was attempting to communicate to me that he did not see a debilitating conflict between my calling and his lack thereof I immediately started firing the same questions at him that I had been intensely mulling over in my head for several months. He parried them with ease and described how his understanding of headship had changed. (It is here that my memory begins to get muddy.) He described how he now saw his role as the husband, the leader of the wife and family, as one of careful, guided participation; that this was the proper balance, neither lording it over me nor simply kowtowing to my vision. Moreover, he could see that this principle applied to our situation by helping me to fulfill my clear calling, and thus, fulfill his calling to lead me into a purposeful, happy life. Once I understood that Tim truly believed that our relationship could work and be blessed despite his lack of clear calling to the foreign mission field my heart began to beat harder and pick up speed. As Tim usually does, and tends to do, he believes what he says with deeper conviction the more that he can explain it and prove it makes logical sense. His conviction, more passionate with each paragraph, to making our relationship work at one point elucidated the same thought I had at Amanda’s house eleven months prior: this is the kind of man I want to marry. Immediately a wave of supernatural peace overwhelmed me almost bringing me to tears. I stuffed the emotions back down my throat and focused hard. I silently prayed “God, is this you? Or am I making this up?” The peace from my heart did not dissipate as Tim continued to speak; the syllables from his mouth morphing into a tumbling, jumbled mass as I was too caught up in my own reality to listen any more. I realized that this was God talking to me for the first time in months. The Lord proceeded to open my eyes to the fact that He also did not see a conflict preventing us to be married. We simply needed to be content with not having all the answers when we want them. I somehow managed to hide my elation, saying nothing to Tim. Instead I asked God for a confirmation that this word was from Him and not my own deceitful heart; a request I knew could not be ignored. It would be against His very nature.

Our conversation ended soon thereafter. Tim had exhausted his thoughts on the subject and I was virtually mum, too confused by my own thoughts and emotions to say anything. I left his apartment with a strange mixture of elation, focus on discerning God’s will, and trepidation at what this could mean, all the while peace reigning in my heart. That peace is all I knew for certain...that, and I held the trump card: God’s nature demanded that I receive an answer to my question and, considering the circumstances, I would probably receive it soon.

When I returned home half a mile away I could no longer contain my excitement and an irrepressible Cheshire grin broke onto my face. “Oh, no.” I thought. “If mom is at the back door I’m going to have to explain what happened and I can’t hardly explain it to myself!” As anticipated, she was there working at the computer and immediately demanded to know the reason for my giddiness as soon as I opened the door. I brushed her off and walked straight to my room, hazy partial phrases more like gibberish than proper English alternately whispering and screaming in my brain were too overwhelming for verbal expression anyway. She followed me into my room and again eagerly demanded to know what had stretched my lips from ear to ear. I said or motioned something which signified that I didn’t want to talk about it. Mom somehow caught on that I was too engrossed in the news or too confused to talk so she mentioned that she had some things to tell me. I immediately insisted that she speak first, buying myself more time to simply order my discombobulated thought process into some semblance of coherence, then to decide whether to speak on the subject at all. To my surprise she talked about how she had been studying the letter to the Romans earlier that evening and a section had reminded her of Tim and me. As she read a passage she was impressed, for the first time, with the thought and a sense of peace that Tim and I are, in fact, right for each other and she proceeded to pray for us. My jaw dropped and I demanded to know what time that was. From what the two of us could figure, that happened at least within the same hour as my own revelation at Tim’s apartment, if not, the same instant! I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt this was the confirmation I asked for! Again, mom asked me what was on my mind and I insisted that she finish with what she wanted to tell me. The mud puddle had cleared a bit, but still not to the point that I could do justice to what happened just about 30 minutes earlier.

As requested, mom continued with her report, telling me of a conversation she had had that morning with a godly woman I greatly respected at church. Mom had bounced off of her the conundrum Tim and I faced with the “missionary problem.” At some point the other woman had said “It sounds like Tim needs to just step up and make a decision. Either he is going to make this work or he isn’t.” I gasped and my eyes filled with tears. That was the last piece of doubt shattered. All of a sudden the real reason for my hesitation those last four or five months was blatantly clear. It had solely to do with Tim making a decision! The “missionary problem” had essentially made me feel as if the whole decision about marriage rested on my shoulders. Some were even brave enough (or brazen enough, I don’t know) to pose to me the direct question “so what are you planning to do about that?” as if I was the only person standing in the way of us being married. Those who posed the question, all of whom not very involved in our relationship, had this idea that either I would decide to follow my calling to overseas missions and leave Tim in the dust or I would abandon that calling as inconsequential to marry Tim. That question with the inferred answer and the more common corresponding look only made me more hesitant. I knew in every fiber of my being that the whole scenario was wrong. I should not be the one this decision rests on; I could not be the one the decision of marriage rests on. As it turned out, I did not even understand that piece of the puzzle until it was put into place. Once I knew that Tim had made a decision, and he was the one to make it, then I was at peace.

I went to sleep that night rejoicing and praising God for answering me and bringing the two of us together. I felt truly blessed to be courted by Tim because on a very regular basis I was learning something more about God and so was Tim. As our relationship with God deepened, so did as our relationship with each other.

Two months later, on January 13^th, Tim took a knee and asked me to marry him. (After which I yelled, exasperated “I’ve been waiting two months for you to ask me that!”) That is another story in itself and you can find it on an earlier blog post.