The Proposal

As many of you know, Luke Anderson and I have been courting for 8 weeks as of last Tuesday. We decided we needed to have a REAL date night on that day, one where we were actually alone for dinner and not interrupted by a ton of people (so far, this hasn’t happened yet!) Luke took it upon himself to plan the special dinner for us! I was just excited at the prospect of having my man plan a romantic night! Yay for wonderful boyfriends, right? So we decided to go to a movie first, and then head to this special dinner afterwards. We ended up having a few car issues that delayed us from making the movie we wanted to see, so we decided to take a drive down memory lane, looking at all the places Luke lived growing up in Ames. After this, we went to Target to look at Christmas gifts for various people. We had a fun time joking about the various “good” gift ideas, which weren’t really good at all. After laughing for a long time, we decided to head to dinner. On the way out the door, we stopped to use the restroom (I promise this has significance to the story!) I went into the first stall. When I tried to leave the stall, however, the door was stuck! It was one of those locks that turn the bolt, but the knob to turn it was stuck! The space under the door was too small to crawl under without putting my face on the floor (I was NOT considering that as an option at this point!) All I could do was stand there, pulling on the door, trying to twist the knob! I was stuck. There was nobody in the bathroom, so I did what anyone would do in this situation, I prayed! I was surprisingly not worried or freaking out. It was actually quite humorous to me, especially once I started imagining Luke standing outside wondering what happened to me! After about five minutes (literally!), the knob just turned as if nothing was wrong with it! I washed my hands and walked out shaking my head. Luke was patiently waiting for me, and upon seeing me, gave me a look of, “Are you okay?” So I recounted the entire tale on the way out to the car, and we laughed pretty hard! “That’s my girlfriend!” he proudly remarked. It was pretty funny, but I guess you had to be there! We decided that God wanted to delay us for some reason. So Luke drove us over to Elwood Drive (now University Ave), and turned south. The pavement soon turned into gravel, and I started to wonder where we were going! “I’ve never been down this way before,” I said. “I know,” he replied. “How did you know that?” I asked curiously. “Because there is nothing down here,” he said coolly. “Babe, there HAS to be SOMETHING down here if we are going to dinner and you’re driving this way!” I said searchingly. He just smiled and drove on. I was starting to get curious and excited for this surprise dinner! We drove until we were just outside of town and the houses were really spread out. We turned into an old homestead driveway and drove up near a nice looking farmhouse. I was too curious NOT to ask. “Where are we? Are we eating dinner at this farmhouse?” I asked. “You’ll see.” He replied with a smile. He grabbed a backpack he had put in the backseat of the car, and we started to a trek, through the snow and wind, past the farmhouse and down a ways to a one-room log cabin. Upon entering the dimly lit room, my nostrils were intoxicated with the smell of wood burning in the fireplace, pine decorating the perimeter of the room, and something delicious cooking in a crock-pot across the room. There was a little table in the center with candles and a place setting for two. There was also wine on a nearby table and two glasses. At this point, I was FREAKING OUT with excitement! I LOVE log cabins and rustic scenes, and this was over-the-top! I gave Luke a big hug and thanked him at least a dozen times! He gave me blanket from his backpack and wrapped it around me (it was fairly chilly in the cabin, which made it even BETTER!) Then he poured us some beef stew (from the crock-pot), gave us hunks of Irish Soda Bread (it was YUMMY), and poured us some wine. It was an amazing dinner! It turns out that he had rented the cabin, and the lady whom owned it made us this homemade meal! She was TOTALLY excited to rent it out for a date, and offered to make us anything we wanted. Well, Luke knows I LOVE beef stew, and he loves Irish Soda Bread (I do too), so that is what he asked for. She went above and beyond, and even made us dessert, which she discretely brought in after we had finished dinner. It was an incredible time! After dinner, we went over by the fire and Luke said he wanted to read me a passage from the Bible. Now, let me just say that this (in and of itself) is not an odd thing for us, as staffers especially! We like to share what God has shown us through His Word. But then he turned to Proverbs 31 (the second half), and I KNEW something was up. He was also kneeling on the ground, trying to read the passage by fireside, but it was still too curious to pass off as a coincidence. After the passage was finished, he said something like, “You are all these things in my life… an amazing woman of God. Would you marry me?” That is when he pulled out the ring, and I, of course, said YES! I threw my arms around his neck and gave him a huge hug… for like 2 minutes… thanking him for the wonderful night and proposal. You can imagine he was happy with this response, but soon he said, “Can I put the ring on your finger now? It’s kind of an important part of the proposal!” Hahaha! I was so excited that I had totally forgotten about the ring he was holding! It was BEAUTIFUL and just what I wanted! That is when I started crying, and continued to cry for about 5 minutes! I was just so happy and thanked God for the great work He had done in both of our lives! God has brought us both a long way, and though we did nothing to deserve it, He gave us more than we both could have ever dreamed of… each other! So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that Luke and I are engaged! Yay! Oh, and one final note. Luke told me later that as we were pulling up to the farmhouse, the woman was walking out of the cabin. I did not notice this, thankfully, so I had no idea. If we had arrived even a minute earlier, we would have walked in on her setting up the cabin for our date. So praise God for His stall-tactics! The moral of the story? Don’t get mad when you get locked in a bathroom stall, because it could save your whole evening! Just trust God will use it for His glory!