I didn’t know it was a romantic evening, or I probably wouldn’t have eaten so much! I cleaned off two whole plates of rice and lentils and veg of various sorts. I even considered sneakily unbuttoning my jeans while Simon went to pay. As we were walking out, he turned the wrong way… away from home. I was confused, and asked him if he was going the wrong way. He said no, and asked me to join him for a walk.
Walks are not completely out of the ordinary for us either. I gladly walked with him, and soon realized we were heading back towards our old tree. It was the tree we had sat under on our first date. We had picked the tree the first time because it was the closest thing to a scenic spot we could find after walking almost an hour. We walked all the way back out there, and sat ourselves down.
Simon commented on how he remembered the spot being a little more romantic. I couldn’t see any major differences from what it had been, but it warmed my heart that he wanted to associate romance with it. We stayed there talking for hours. I found out later that Simon was buying time until things got more romantic. It wasn’t working…
A woman with grey hair and a bent back kept walking up and down a little path beside where the tree was. She was carrying a candle, and would look up at us every now and then. We suspected that she was going back and fourth from the toilet out behind her house. She may have had some bowel issue or something. She did a good enough job of entertaining us while Simon waited for romance. Eventually she did succeed in her venture… we could tell by the smell. I was a little bit happy for her, but Simon was banging on about how it wasn’t romantic. I wonder what she made of us sitting there.
We kept talking and meditating together about life, God, scripture, ideas for the next year, and how we would get better involved in Nepali church, how we have grown and changed since coming to Nepal again…
About two hours had passed and I was starting to get cold. Simon gave me an extra coat he had packed and a goofy-looking hat. It struck me as romantic that he had thought ahead to bring extra clothes! I was a rice-stuffed, down-padded puffball. I told him we had better head back towards our houses because we had meetings at school all day the next day. He said ok, but I had to wait a few more minutes.
He pulled out a ring and asked me if I would accept it. I was just about as blindsided as I was as the day he asked me out in the first place. I had not come up with a nice answer, and I honestly hadn’t fully decided for myself! I knew I loved him. Is that enough? I said a quick prayer… something like “Oh God help!” and what flew through my mind after that were the words of Psalm 139. “O Lord you have searched me and you know me” and “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”
I realized that maybe I will never know Simon as completely as I would like to believe is possible before getting married. I’ve known God for as many days as I can remember, and He has known me all the more. I have felt His hand leading me into this relationship, and giving me peace to pursue it even when it seemed risky and almost foolish. I saw in that moment under our tree that God wanted to show me His love through the man kneeling in front of me. Based on this maybe three seconds of thought, as shocked as I was, I felt confident enough to mutter out something like “I will.” I have never felt so blessed as the moments after that.
Simon proposed again in Nepali, just to show me he could. A lot of hugging followed that, and then some praying, then a one or two-mile giddy walk home. The ring turned out to be beautiful… A picture will follow whenever I can borrow a camera off someone.
If you would like to read Simon’s side of the story, click HERE!!
Love,
Wendy
