mercoledì, maggio 14, 2008

Friendship: A Beautiful Beginning

I'm pretty sure I have absolutely no readers anymore, but I'm posting anyway :-)

As I'm sure everyone knows, I became engaged to Cole Rutherford on Valentine's Day of this year. I've decided to post a couple of entries that I wrote for our wedding website here. Enjoy!



The first picture we ever had of just the two of us, a few days before our courtship began.

"There is still a bit of dispute as to when our first meeting was. He says that when we first played our harp and flute duet at Parkway Baptist Church, he introduced himself. It’s probably true, but you can’t prove it by me.

I knew of Cole long before I ever met him. He practically lived with our pastor’s family, the Walkers, and they were always talking about Cole, Cole, Cole. Cole did this, Cole blew up that. The stories seemed to be never ending. One of the first times I went to the Walker’s, Lainie took me back to her room and proceeded to show me what seemed like 50 million pictures from their recent trip to Ecuador. “Here’s Cole and Henry!” She laughed. I looked over to see a picture of a giant white man in a skirt, with black stripes painted on his face and bare chest. He had some weird red stuff in his hair and what looked like an arrangement of cotton balls on his head. He was standing next to a comparatively very small Tsachila man. “Odd.” I thought. “Very odd.”

I remember the first time I noticed him. I was sitting with my family in the back of the church, trying to concentrate, but I was distracted by a figure on the second row. I thought he may be the Cole of all of the stories I’d heard, but I wasn’t quite sure. Whoever he was, something was different about him. He radiated passion for God. I knew that what I sought above all else in my future husband was a consuming passion for the Gospel. When I saw him I thought to myself “I want a guy like that. Whoever gets him is going to be an incredibly lucky girl.”

On September 23rd, 2006, we went to an ice cream social for the College and Career group. Cole came over to where Merisha and I were sitting and talked to us the entire evening. He was pretty much the only person who said more than five words to us for several weeks, so, of course, we became friends. Over the months to come, we saw each other every day. He was over several days a week for dinner, and the three of us went everywhere together. Bonfires, to the mall, out to eat, you name it. We didn’t have a car, so he drove us around to all of the church functions too. The more we got to know each other as friends, the more I was shocked to find out how unified we were in our beliefs and views. I struggled to remain platonic, but the more I knew of him, the more I was impressed and saw in him qualities and views I wanted in my husband. I knew for several reasons that he was out of reach and “Teardrops on my Guitar” became my favorite song. I told myself everyday that if all I ever had with him was friendship, I’d be satisfied.

Around Christmas, our friendship grew deeper, and by Spring, though we were both very verbal about not being in a relationship, we were viewed by everyone as a couple. We denied it, even to ourselves, but we were both - almost against our own wills - falling in love."

3 commenti:

Unknown ha detto...

YAY! I check yours about once a week as I make the rounds to see if you would ever update and finally an update!

Robin ha detto...

Yay! At least one person is still reading! Hopefully between now and the wedding I'll find the time to update more :-)

www.clairestrebeck.com ha detto...

I check it about once a week, too, though, if you'd post more, i'd check it more :)