9 years ago

9 years ago I woke up from my last night of singleness.

In my journal I wrote:

"It is here!  Today I will be a bride - and I will walk down the aisle and share vows with Paul.  I am so excited and my heart is bursting as I write this.  Praise Jesus for the joy in my heart right now.  I can't even comprehend the enormity of this great covenant - yet my hope and trust are in the Lord who has brought me this far" 

My freshman year of college I gave up dating for lent.  Yes...I was a bit boy crazy and it was a perfectly legitimate sacrifice.  :)  One that ended up changing my life in a significant way.  As I offered that sacrifice to the Lord, I felt Him urging me to make a 3 year commitment to Him.  To give up dating for 3 years.  That same week, in my secular college bookstore, I stumbled upon this newly released book and about had a heart attack.  It was God's gift to me.

The next man I fell in love with was my husband, 5 years later. 

Those 5 years were my gift to God and to my future husband.  In the same way, my husband committed his heart to me years before we met.  God did write our love story.  What a glorious day!

I will save more wedding day reflections for anniversary #10.  At the prompting of Betty Beguiles I am going to share a bit about our honeymoon.

We choose Banff, Canada.  We had Canada in mind and one our my bridesmaids had chosen that as their location, two months before us.  We followed their recommendation.  It was gorgeous!   Hiking, horseback riding, views, glaciers.

And apart from the silly stories for our private memoirs....here are a few moments we will never forget:
- Our first night I wanted to start a fire in our fireplace at the hotel while my hubby was downstairs picking up a pizza. He came up and in the room as smoke was billowing out and our smoke detector was going off. I had forgotten to open the flue. Thank goodness our hotel was not evacuated.
-  Drinking hot chocolate spiked with peppermint schnapps and playing scrabble in front of the lobby fireplace
- Watching The Ring in the theater and then immediately dragging Paul (who was terribly hungry) back in the theater to watch My Big Fat Greek Wedding, again...to get the horror movie off my mind....we also had to switch hotels as a result of this move as we were in a cabin-like place at the time.
- Eating at the Grizzly House, our favorite by far. 
- Loving the hot springs, and then learning later that my husband made that ultimate sacrifice for me (he does not do hot)
- Dreaming about our future and our family...which couldn't come soon enough.  9 years later we are so truly blessed beyond our wildest dreams.