Our story is far from traditional, but we’ve seen the Lord’s creativity and timing play out in every detail. In July I moved to New Mexico to live with my parents and commute to Birmingham on weekends for weddings. Eric’s next assignment in the Air Force, following South Korea was, again, going to be Italy, starting November of 2020. We’d known this, but what we didn’t know was that we wouldn’t be seeing each other again until our wedding weekend. No, Eric did NOT propose over FaceTime. But we did begin praying and discussing the possibility of getting married the next time we saw each other. Italy wasn’t allowing tourists due to COVID-19, and we weren’t going to wait around for the Italian government to open back up, because, who knew how long that would be. So we decided to get married in whatever window of opportunity we had, always trusting the Lord for His timing. About 2 weeks before the wedding, Eric received official clearance from the Air Force to take one month off between assignments to be stateside.
So I began confirming all the details for our tiny Las Cruces wedding ceremony in a picturesque canyon I frequently ran with friends in college.
Eric arrived on October 1st – praise the Lord! (215 days since we last held each other). The next day we ran some errands, picked up a marriage license, dropped off a suit at the tailor, drove to another city to pick up a “mysterious package” from a friend he used to fly with, and then drove up into our canyon so that I could show him my ideas for the ceremony. Although he was jet-lagged, we hiked to the prettiest, tucked away corner of Soledad Canyon and he got down on one knee and handed me the little red box we had gone to pick up a few hours prior. Knowing that this moment had to come sometime before our October 5th vows didn’t rob me of any joy over the proposal. He asked.
