Blessing from an idol?
I was talking to my friend Wade earlier today and the topic of my recent engagement came up, which is kind of par for the course right now, and he said something that made me think and made me very thankful. Something to the effect of, "Brent, you are living proof that the Lord uses our idols to bless us." What Wade and many of those close to me know is that I idolized the idea of marriage for a long time in my life. I thought that being married would make me sooooooo happy, and that it would solve most of my immediate problems and assuage my fears. And sadly, I still think this at times, I still look to Sarah to provide for me only that which the Lord can give. And yet He still gives. He still is allowing me to marry Sarah, he is giving me that which was an idol in my life for so long. In essence, God is working in typical upside-down kingdom fashion and using something that I substituted and worshipped instead of him, to now be the greatest blessing in my life. Blessing where cursing is deserved? Typical, so very typical.
The Sunday routine...
I just woke up from a 2 hour nap. On most Sundays I always wake up from a 2 hour nap at some point. That what Sundays are for. I got up as usual for church this morning after a rare(but wonderful) 8 hours of sleep the night before. It is so nice to sit in church and not yawn the whole time. I usually watch golf, or sometimes, very rarely, I will watch an NFL game in the fall, but usually golf. It is almost as if the Lord designed Sundays to rest....
So what do you guys think about the 4th commandment? You know, the one about remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy? There is also language about resting. So how much work is too much work? How do we honor the Lord in our rest, and what does that look like? This idea seems quite foreign in our time, but I began to see the beauty in it a few years ago, and it has surely changed my outlook on Sundays...
The big night....part III
After returning home to Nashville, I had set up a time to go to Baton Rouge and talk with her parents about the possibility of marrying Sarah. I flew down there and took them out to dinner, and after much talking.....they gave me the OK. I then flew to Dallas to meet my older brother Sean and his wife Keri so we could go ring shopping. I had the store send the ring to Oklahoma instead of Nashville....one of the best decisions of my life.
I decided that I wanted to ask Sarah to marry me at a park here in Nashville that is BEAUTIFUL. It has this huge entrance with about 100 stone steps leading up to this ampitheather area. It has a distinct Civil War time feel, and is just really cool. I had been coordinating with Katie Malone, the girls RUF intern here at Vanderbilt about setting up alot of candles in the ampitheater of the park. Alot of candles. We arrived back in Nashville after a weekend in Oklahoma with my parents and I drove her out to the park and lied about why we were going there. But it was all part of the plan. She had her eyes closed, thinking it was because I wanted her to wait and see this park from a certain spot. I carried her down into the middle of the candles, and when she opened her eyes, there I was, shaking like a wet dog.
I asked.
She said yes.
The ring fits, she loves it.
We are going to get married on May 27.
Thanks for reading.
Meet Sarah.....my fiance......part II
About a week after I had received word from the other girl that she didn't want to go out, I got in the car and drove about 600 miles to Baton Rouge, LA. I must confess, this trip wasn't entirely to see Sarah, it was also to see my buddy Matt who was teaching at the LSU RUF meeting that night. But at any rate, Sarah was in town, and I saw her, and I told her what went down with the other girl, etc. In true Sarah fashion, she looked at me and asked if she could have a few days to think about it, and that she would let me know when she came back up to Nashville in a few days. I accepted her proposal.
-LONGEST TWO DAYS EVER-
When she arrived back in Nashville, I went over to her apartment, and after a little bit of small talk, I asked her what she had decided. She told me to 'ask her some questions.' So my first question was,"will you go out on a date with me on Thursday?" to which she answered "YES." Did yall catch that? She said YYYYEEEEESSSS! I immediately stood up and threw my hands in the air. Then I asked her what had changed to make her like me. She said, "I'll tell you someday" which I both hated and loved to hear. Hated, because I was curious, but loved because it meant that she was thinking about being with me in the future. So that was June 8, and we began dating.
I was Sarah's first real boyfriend. She has had crushes on different guys before, but had never called anyone her boyfriend, and for that reason, I wanted to take things slow and at her pace so that we could enjoy dating each other, and to not freak her out by moving too fast(which i am/was entirely capable of).
I left to go to Ethiopia on July 28 for 2 weeks, and the night before I left, Sarah said to me something to the effect of, "I don't want to do this(date) much longer." Instead of blurting out, "well then, lets get married" something inside of me mustered up the words to say "lets pray about it and think about it these next few weeks while I am gone and see where we are when i get back." So we did. And while I was gone in Ethiopia, I decided that Sarah was the girl for me and I started making the necessary arrangements to talk to her parents, etc. I also decided that I didn't want to talk a whole lot about marriage with her until I had actually asked her to marry me. After I returned home, the two weeks leading up to the point when I asked her to marry me were a really confirming time that the Lord had brought our hearts together and that we were created for each other, but I still was a little scared that she might say no.
Almost there......part III upcoming......how it all went down
-for those bored with the details, i love the show 24, and it is full of details. And I figure if I can't star in the show, I might as well try to write my own drama, and to try to entice you to the next episode like Keifer does week after week
Meet Sarah.....my fiance
As you may or may not have read in the last post, I am engaged. And due to the fact that I no longer live near many of the people who I grew up with or went to college with, many of you do not know Sarah....so I will introduce yall to each other, and what better place to do this than in my blog.
Sarah Rathbone was born and raised in Clinton, Louisiana, a bustling country town of 2,000 about 30 miles north of Baton Rouge. After graduating from Silliman Institute in Clinton in 1999, she went to Baylor University in Waco, TX. She spent 5 years at Baylor studying psychology and involving herself in various activities including RUF. After she graduated from Baylor in 2004, she began the Doctor of Physical Therapy program at Belmont University in Nashville.
We met last October on a Wednesday night after one of the Vanderbilt RUF meetings, and shortly after that, we began to spend alot of time together in groups, and then more and more often with just each other. I didn't ask her out until we returned from Christmas break in January, but given the amount of time that we had spent together and seeing how much we enjoyed each other, I was pretty confident that she would go out with me. I was wrong.
I asked her out for the first time in mid-January, she said that her feelings had changed, and I was left crushed. I couldn't take no for an answer. So I didn't, and I asked her out about two weeks later. Same story, NO. I was pretty crushed at that point, seeing as how I had just been told No by a girl for the 1st and 2nd time in my life. Pride was dwindling.
For the rest of the Spring, I took a few girls out on dates, but each time afterwards, something wasn't right, I wanted them to be like Sarah. I fondly remember sitting in Brian Habig's (our campus minister at the time) office and telling him that I just wanted Sarah Rathbone to like me, and being so frustrated that she didn't. Meanwhile, during the spring, I was still around Sarah a few times per week, usually at church or hanging out with friends from church and we maintained a friendship, albeit a little difficult because I wanted her to like me. Then at the end of April, it was time. It was time to ask her out again. She had been warming up to me nicely for the previous few weeks, and I knew that the soup was right. NO. Not just no, but "Brent, I just don't have romantic feelings for you." Ouch, that was kind of like a chip going down my throat sideways, it hurt. So I was done. No more asking her out, nothing. I didn't want to keep bugging her.
I left about 1 week later to go to the RUF summer conferences in Panama City, FL. It was nice to be down there, and lo and behold, one of the RUF girl interns and I starting talking a little bit, and we went out with a few other interns on a group date in between summer conference weeks. We talked about keeping in touch and trying to maybe go out again in the summer and that's about where the status stood when Sarah came rolling into Florida for the 2nd week of conference.
Long story somewhat shortened. Sarah came to me and said that her feelings had changed. I was floored, didn't know what to do, but told her that it was bad timing because I had told this other girl that we would try to go out again in the summer. The girl called me and told me that she didn't want to go out or see each other again, and if there was ever more providential timing in my life, it has gone unnoticed.
Stay tuned for installment #2....................
How would you say.....Marriage?
What is the correct terminology if one wants to express the fact that they entered into an agreement to be married. Is it, I got engaged?(you're not actually getting anything) Or I am engaged?(a strong contender, imho) Or I have entered into engagement?(too long) I think for now, I will go with this....
I am engaged!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
That's right, I'm getting hitched. The ole better half, tieing the knot, doing the deed, picking a broad. Whatever you want to call it, I am doing it. I asked Sarah Rathbone to marry me last night amidst a flurry of jumbled words. All I remember is that she said yes. She was so very surprised, it was wonderful. Details will be forthcoming in another post.....
What does it take?
I am not sure what it takes to get 80 people to read your blog and comment about how great it is, and then try to sell you Chinese vases or other similar luxuries, but I have done it (see comments on the last post). If anyone know how to block those let me know.
I can't quit thinking about the people who have been devastated by the hurricane. I am scared about New Orleans. I think the city is finished. I think it is going to cease to be a city. I may be too overly pessimistic, but I think this event is going to create a huge string of events that eventually lead to a major stock market crash, largely fueled by $4 gasoline. I don't think America can handle that on a macro scale. What do you guys think? Am I crazy?
