Part Eight: Love, Love, Love (May 2010 to November 2010)

So there I was facing 3 1/2 months of summer without Philip. The first month was extremely hard for me because I had such a bad attitude about the situation. I was mad that Philip had to leave and I was stuck back in Littleton working and doing school. I wanted to be able to talk with him more than once a week for 20 minutes. I was feeling sorry for myself instead of being happy that Philip was getting to serve high school kids and show them the love of Christ. About halfway through the summer I had a bit of an attitude change thanks to Philip's gentle rebuke.

In July I got to spend a week with he and his family during his one-week vacation from Wilderness. We stayed in a cabin in southern Colorado near Durango. It was so good to get to see him and get to know his family better. They were so wonderful and I quickly fell in love with them as well. Here are some pictures from that week.

After that point the rest of the summer seemed to pass quickly and Philip was back in the middle of August. We had about a week to enjoy the reunion until the fall semester started. Even though by that point we had been together for almost 5 months, it felt like we had a lot of catching up to do since he had been gone for most of that time. We spent a lot of time together and learned new things about each other every day. Even though we knew a lot about each other as friends, we discovered there was still a lot we did not know about each other, especially in the context of a romantic relationship.

We had already talked a little about marriage before he left for the summer, but we started talking about it a lot more when he came back. We knew we wanted to marry each other and that God had brought us together. We started praying about when we should get married. With us both being in school we knew we didn't have a lot of options to choose from as the "when" was concerned. We were heavily leaning towards Christmastime of next year.

About a month ago out of the blue Philip asked why can't we just get married next summer. At first I freaked out and said that is too soon and I can't plan a wedding that quickly, especially since we wanted to get married in Texas but live in Denver. After a few days though the idea of getting married in the summer really grew on me. We decided to shoot for next summer. After that it was just a waiting game as far as the engagement went. Philip was saving money for a ring. I showed him examples of the kinds of rings I like online. I told him it would be nice to be engaged before Christmas so we could use that time while we are home to start wedding planning.

After a while I decided to try and stop hinting about when I wanted to get engaged. I wanted it to be a surprise and I knew the more I thought about it, the more likely I was to figure everything out. I told him that it was going to be very hard to surprise me because I am very good at figuring things out. Well, I'm not as smart as I thought I was...