Us

"I want you to be the last person I see every night, and the first person I see every morning."

With that he gets off the bench and on one knee in front of me and fishes something sparkly out of his pocket.  It's getting dark, but my eyes are so watery I can't see it clearly anyway.

"I know you wanted me to wait, but I can't wait any longer.  Will you marry me?"

The tears are running down my face now.  "Yes!"

                                 

He had only gotten back the day before from a month long work trip, but the day he got back we went straight to a wedding.  During one of our phone calls a few weeks before, he mentioned he wanted to go back to a Vietnamese restaurant we'd been to, so we planned it for that first free night he'd be back.

The restaurant was one of our favorites, not so much the restaurant itself, but because it was the "where" when everything clicked.  It's where we had our "second first date," the one after a tumultuous five years of friendship, dating, long distance, and breaking up.  Jason worked so hard to humbly win me back.  I finally agreed to a date.  Every time I think back I want to shake myself for even considering that it was an option to say no.  I wanted to schedule our date the next week once my graduate exams were over, but he couldn't wait, so that weekend I ended up at that Vietnamese restaurant sitting across from a man who I knew so well and who was completely different than any version of him I'd known before: so patient, humble, loving and forgiving.  Like ships in the night before this, we were never exactly in sync, always with underlying tension.  God finally brought us to the same place, where we both wanted what God wanted.  And it was so fun.
                                 

We're on our way back to that little restaurant in Capitol Hill.  The weather is perfect.  I am wearing a summery dress although I think I care more than Jason does about it.  We get to the restaurant that had been such a wonderful turning point for us a few months back only to realize that they are closed on Mondays.  Just something else that didn't turn out as planned.  Probably the only time he's ever been more disappointed about food than me.

A seafood place with front windows that open to the sidewalk has enough ambiance to entice us to take a table, where we sit side by side overlooking the passersby.  I can't remember what we ate or what we talked about, just that it was once again wonderful to be together.

Jason wants to go for a walk after dinner.  We go by the Library of Congress just like we did after the date at the Vietnamese place.  We keep walking until Jason decides on a view that was good enough.  We sit down to watch the sun set over the Capitol dome.  Yeah, the view is good enough.

He starts telling me reasons he is grateful I'm in his life.  All the suspicions I've been trying to quell all night start to rise.  We'd gotten in a fight the night before and I'd told him not to ask me any big questions for a few days.  Then comes that last/first line and down on one knee.  I'm so glad he didn't wait.
                                 

We had a jogger take our picture.  Jason finally responded to the texts my dad had been sending all night in anticipation.  We decided to hold off on too many phone calls and just soak it all in.  That was two years ago this week.  The past two years have been better than I could have ever imagined.

"I do" are the two most famous last words
The beginning of the end
But to lose your life for another I've heard
Is a good place to begin

'Cause the only way to find your life
Is to lay your own life down
And I believe it's an easy price
For the life that we have found

-Andrew Peterson