The love of my life

• I stayed up late finishing an assignment last night to get it submitted on-line by midnight and then got up and started on the next assignment today. I need to get that done so I can get my other paper done so that Thursday I don’t have to worry about anything – It is Paul’s and my anniversary! I was going to wait until our actual anniversary to write this but I can’t wait, and truthfully, I don’t know when I will get it done so since I CAN’T sleep right now I am going to write my post about Paul…
• The first time I met Paul was when I went with my new friend Amanda to her home town Hamilton with some of her friends to a concert where the band was managed by someone we were going to school with. Paul was in that small group of 5 or 6 students and we didn’t talk although I entertained Paul by being my silly self and I thought that he was rather attractive – on the drive home I asked Amanda what his last name was and she stated “I think it is Black”. So, this started my crush on Paul Black. Paul popped up here and there in life between that outing in March. I was planning on going to a party with a friend of mine and Amanda (God bless her) talked me into going to this praise and worship bon fire on campus…I said I would go but I could only stay a little while. Well, I went and Paul was in my prayer group. That night I never made it to the party. I spent the entire evening with Paul. We were in a group of friends but I remember being so enthralled with him and just plain captivated…we hung out until the wee hours of the morning until it was just us and there was no choice but for me to have to go to bed. So Paul walked me to my dorm and that night I went back to my room and was so anxious to talk to my roommate who was gone for the weekend. So I stayed up later and wrote in my journal. I knew that night that I could marry the man who had just dropped me off at the door to my residence hall and I didn’t have anyone to tell.
• As I can only imagine, what Paul and I thought of each other was not able to be kept under wraps. I think it was pretty obvious that we were attracted to each other. So this forced me to do a lot of thinking. We only had a few more weeks before we both had to go home for the summer and we just met! The only thing that I could see if I pursued this thing was a long and painful summer. I was also scared. Paul and I had many talks and he blew me away. I had never been talked to or treated with such respect and care not only for me and who I was but for him-self and what God wanted for him and his future. He had a very clear head as to what he wanted from a dating relationship and he promised to honor me. I was blown away. Absolutely blown away. The night before the bon fire I had spent a lot of time thinking and praying and talking to people and had spent some time telling God how I was going to stop obsessing about relationships – start trying to fill my mind with what a God led and God filled relationship should look like and be patient for God to bring the man he created for me to me in His time and not my own – there went my crush on Mr. Black. All of this forced me to initiate the DTRT (Define the relationship talk). Things were going places and it was scary and something needed to be said. So, one afternoon, Paul and I sat in my dorm room on my couch and we had this long talk where I said everything I was thinking and feeling and Paul sat there with those dimples and blue eyes and just smiled at me and didn’t say a word. I basically said I thought we should hold off on all this real relationship stuff until we were back at WMU in the fall since we were going to be apart for the summer and see how things pan out. He made me so nervous because he was just looking at me and listening and I was babbling. But he agreed and we left that afternoon with me feeling like I had just had such a mile stone moment in my life and was such a mature college student. Well it didn’t take more than two days for me to see that the arrangement wasn’t going to work out. We had quickly become best of friends and spent all our time together or on the phone or thinking about each other. I knew that I could marry this small town boy and didn’t know weather to freak out or to do cartwheels. I think I did a bit of both.
• So, needless to say Paul and I started a relationship. I was smitten, I would visit him in the summers, we wrote letters ALL the time when we were apart and called each other occasionally. He wrote me poems, missed me and showered me with attention and down right spoiled me when we were together. I would visit him and he would visit me and during the school year we were just a part of each others lives. We knew that we didn’t want to be with anyone else. But we also knew how young we were so we waited. Until February 10 2001. Paul made me a dinner and after a meeting I had I met him at his apartment where we had a nice dinner and chit chatted – Then Paul sat me on the couch and had me close my eyes because he had a “valentine’s gift” for me. So I sat and waited, he brought something out to me and set it on my lap. I opened my eyes and saw a scrap book. I opened it at his request and saw that it was a scrap book of our relationship. Paul (who isn’t the creative type) took the time to make a scrap book of memories and events in our relationship. I was so touched and Paul sat next to me silently and just stared at me smiling (kind of like at the DTRT...Hm…I see a pattern) I kept flipping through making the appropriate girlie statements of how great this was and how impressed I was until I got to a page that looked like a letter:
  
  “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride;
  you have stolen my heart
  with one glance of your eyes,
  with one jewel of your necklace.
  How delightful is your love, my sister, my bride!
  How much more pleasing is your love than wine,
  and the fragrance of your perfume than any spice!
  Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb, my bride;
  milk and honey are under your tongue.
  The fragrance of your garments is like that of Lebanon.
  You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride;
  you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain. “
  Song of Solomon 4:9-12
  
  Lisa, I love you with all of my heart, my sister my bride. I want to spent my life committed to you. WILL YOU MARRY ME?
• I cried, I said “Of Corse”, he cried, we laughed, I was completely swept off my feet. To be proposed to so poetically and so powerfully by the use of scripture…could I say no?
• A year later we got married. It is to this day my favorite memory of all time. All I could think as I was walking down the isle to Paul was how marrying Paul is the best decision I had ever made. I kept thinking, or maybe marveling over that fact over and over. I have never felt the presence of the Lord the way that I did in that covenant ceremony. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing.
• Every moment that I have had with Paul since then has been just as incredible. I scare myself sometimes at the knowledge that I could die tomorrow a very happy and completely fulfilled woman - it is sort of a 'when will the other shoe drop' sort of feeling. I have my God and my soul mate. I fear at times that things are too good. That life is to happy and that things are too easy. Then I realize that my marriage is just Gods way of showing me his divine love for me and I take comfort. God wants this for me. He wants me to bask in the love of Him and my husband and he wants me to be fulfilled by that and nothing else. I am truly blessed. God has used Paul to change my life and provide me with a family that is safe in every way, stable and dependable. A gift that I can never being to repay him for. I am so blessed.