//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. 

Dating Once Married.

'The Lord God said, 'It is not good for the man to be alone. 

I will make a helper suitable for him'...

Genesis 2:18

One of the fun things A&I have done since being married, is continue to date.

We didn't go on many while we were dating as we both lived in different countries.

So most of our trips to see each other were when both of us were 'home' from college and therefore we hung out with both our families a lot.

That was a fun season as we both got to know each other's families really well during that time.

We went on our first 'official' date the Summer of 2008 when I came to the States during my summer vacation to visit A.

We went to Chilis.

I'm sure we were quite overdressed but that's kinda how we roll.

If we do a 'date night' usually we like to dress up.

It's great how that can make an evening seem really special.

Not all date nights are to restaurants. 

We recently went to a basketball game....totally a well-spent $27 as we ended up in 7th row VIP seats. 

That's a fun story.

 

Other dates we have done are just walks around some pretty estates there are near our home.

But I love how dating while married continues to encourage intimacy.

Its our time away from the house, to spend time together.

My love language is totally quality time, so I adore these evenings.

They make me feel so connected to A.

Its a wonderful time to share your heart with each other, although lately we've been working on leaving topics like moving home, financial situation, difficulty with intimacy, job searching which are stressful for another time.

If you guys have any creative date ideas, I would love to hear them.

Also, what's your Love language.....I would love to hear that, you can take a short quiz here. So helpful for figuring out how other people feel loved.

Much Love,

L

P.S. You've probably heard this before but.....Marry your best friend - you'll never be bored!

{On My Heart} Mondays. [Saving that First Kiss]

I know I keep saying this and I really hope none of you are too mad with waiting, I do plan on writing our love story for you one of these days. It may be in several installments but I have a feeling that will be ok for some of you too.

While I was lying in bed last night, I was thinking about what the Lord had been nudging me about this week. As every week there are a lot of things He has been working into my heart. I still have a strong desire to adopt, a desire for Africa, of learning how to love others regardless of responses.
I may write about some of these more in the future.

How does all this tie together?

Well...part of our love story is a personal conviction that the Lord worked into my heart in my teenage years which I wanted to share with you guys.

When I was fifteen, I still had not been kissed.

I desperately wanted to. I knew A by this point and this was something which we disagreed on.

 (I had a crush on him when we first met, but it did fade for a while around this age)

I thought he was crazy for not wanting to kiss anyone except his future wife. 

I wanted that Cinderella, foot-popping kiss experience now! 

I didn't want to be old-fashioned, I wanted to be normal.

All my other friends were kissing guys and it seemed like a natural thing to do at this age.

This guy in my youth group  pursued me at this age also. He was not the kind of guy I would have wanted to marry or date.

He asked me to date him, I told him I didn't feel right about it (my heart just wasn't at peace) and I swiftly put an end to that notion. 

Praise God in all my silliness, even this guy never attempted to kiss me ever despite my weakness at this time.

I thought that really weird at the time that he never tried to kiss me.

I seriously thought there was something wrong with me.

When I was seventeen, I realised my heart had changed.

I can't pinpoint an exact day this occured, sorry no magical moment.

One day I realised that I no longer had a desire to be kissed.

I was seventeen and had never kissed anyone, and I liked it that way.

I had been reading a lot of books on relationships and courtships.
I was far more content in my walk with the Lord at seventeen compared to when I was fifteen. 

I felt He had amazing plans for my life. 

 'For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, 
‘plans for well-being and not for trouble, to give you a future and a hope. 
Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me, 
and I will listen to you. 
You will look for Me and find Me, 
when you look for Me with all your heart.'
{Jeremiah 29:11-13}

One of the convictions he had been working into my heart was waiting to kiss until my wedding day.

It didn't sound crazy anymore.

I felt like this first kiss was super special now. 

I had held onto it for eighteen years, I didn't just want to give it to anybody.

I felt the Lord asking me to wait and give it as a gift to my husband.

This sounded like the ultimate Cinderella story in the making.

She was a young girl who waited for her prince to pursue her,
she didn't kiss a bunch of frogs to get to her prince.
We aren't told a lot of information about Cinderella but her character to me displays a girl who waited patiently until she met her prince.

'But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people.'
{Ephesians 5:3}



'And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ..'
{Philippians 1:9-10} 

The Lord was so wonderful in working this into my heart.

This was a conviction I felt He wanted me to pursue,
to keep myself pure for my husband by saving myself in this way.

Enter A upon the scene once again after a few years of distant friendship.

Suddenly the convictions of this young man were attractive to me.

We became fast friends.

Which turned into more....but that my friends is a whole other story.

 Trusting the Lord with this desire to be kissed was one of the best things I ever did.

A helped me keep that personal conviction too.

Even once engaged, we could have persuaded ourselves it was fine to now kiss.

If we had been without this conviction, I am sure it would have been.

I still wanted to wait until the altar.

So that day on July 23rd, 2010....

at 23 years old.

I got my first kiss.

It may have been slightly awkward & I may have giggled so much A had to ask me to stop so he could actually kiss me.

But it was magical.

Now kissing seems special every time.

There are so many pictures from the first months of marriage of us kissing each other.

I can't even describe how amazing it was to wait and then enjoy our physical attraction for each other on our honeymoon without worrying about kissing leading too far.

I would encourage young girls to consider the same.

I don't feel I missed out on anything by not kissing anyone in high school.

I may have been different from other girls at my school.

I was different anyway.

I loved the Lord.

I felt content to be different in this way, I may not have broadcasted that I didn't kiss anyone.

But to those whom I spoke with individually, I loved sharing my conviction.

No-one critized me for wanting to wait.

I had the opposite response from girls around me most of the time,
I'm sure some thought I was absolutely crazy and would never be kissed.

The Lord had other plans for me.

He changed my heart and moulded me (with my permission)
to fit the person I would one day marry. 

Don't misunderstand me, our love story was not totally perfect.
I am not claiming to be or saying everyone should be like us.
We are both sinners and we still made mistakes while dating.
I just wanted to share with you guys how gracious the Lord was to us in this area.
How our small act of saving ourselves in this way was used by Him to bring Him glory.
He is totally responsible for any beauty in our story.
Praise Him!

What do you feel the Lord has personally convicted you of,
either now or something from a while ago?

I would love to hear about it.
Much Love,
L