//The Courtship//

Well since I have kept you waiting long enough friends, here is the next part.
(For Disclaimer see Here, Part 1 Click Here, Part 2 Click Here) 
I highly recommend reading the previous parts first! 


What a journey. 


I felt like Abraham arriving at this moment asked to surrender his son. About to kill his dream completely, surrendering His will & trusting the Lord completely. Only to find the Lord was just testing me.
Just purifying my love for Him above any other relationship in my life.
Making sure this guy was no longer an idol. 


I received that email about A prayerfully considering starting a relationship with me & started praying about what I should do. 
I was now able to see clearly and wanted to make sure this was a guy I wanted pursuing me. Did I really think he was someone I could marry someday?
After much time with the Lord (it was probably several weeks or months of surface level talking through emails and occasional Skype call) I felt the light was green.


So I proceeded with caution.


I say that because there was still a significant amount of time before marriage was a possibility. So we both felt it was important to do this wisely, with a time frame in mind rather than heading full-on towards marriage within in a short period of time (which is totally appropriate in some situations). 
So we carefully started to get to know each other again as friends first. 
Because I lot had happened in those transitions, a lot of growth and we wanted to know if we still thought of each other as highly as we had. 

We restricted our conversations for quite some time, several topics were off limits completely. There was no talking about the future initially (for instance no dreaming together about what our babies would look like, what our wedding should be like). 
Even though we were trying to figure out if marriage was for us, A did a great job of guarding our conversations to keep my heart from completely going full force ahead and planning our wedding in those initial days lol! 
We also didn't talk every day to slow that emotional intimacy. 


Don't hear me say we were perfect, because that is far from the truth. 
There are still things I would have done differently looking back. But we were at least trying to be wise, trying to decipher if the Lord was leading us to marriage but also not hinder where for the time being He had placed us, me in England and A here in the Midwest. 
(For instance, it may have been helpful for us not to have talked late at night, when we were tired it was easier to let our guard down about the emotional intimacy. However we did have a 5hr time change to consider and with both of us in school, it was sometimes impossible to avoid. But it would have been helpful to have known this weakness. So perhaps in hindsight, if I were considering courting/dating I would instead avoid those late night conversations entirely.)


But there is grace. 


After about 7 months of getting to know each other again, we finally decided it was time to spent time together in person. A invited me to spend New Years with his family back in the place we had originally met and grown up together. 
It was familiar, but new all at the same time. 
It was a sweet time of getting to know A's family more. 


Following that there was another trip to the States the summer that followed and then Christmas with my family the following year. 


It was a slow process. Sometimes I wish it could have been faster as I found myself falling in love with this man, but it was still restricted by distance and college.
Which allowed us to trust the Lord for His timing and not ours. 

(Please let me know if I am leaving things out you would like to know more about friends! Either comment below or email me: allgloriouswithinblog@gmail.com)

P.S. Disclaimer - I used the word courtship in the title because I felt that it had more meaning about the purpose behind the relationship. I am by no means apposed to 'dating' I feel those two words are just words. I just wanted to make it clear there was a purpose to the dating. Plus it sounds like something from Jane Austin haha! 

This post is part of my 31 day series for the month of October, 
fighting through the fears and sharing the confusing passions I have. 
Hoping to figure out the bigger picture of all these interests.