A Proposal Story

I was thinking last night about mine and Chris's beginning. Sometimes, to remember important things in life, you have to go back to the beginning. Not like living in the past, just recalling the things that first gave you joy and sprung up in your heart like a summer rainfall. (Something I miss, living here in California).
Our engagement didn't begin with flowers, a fancy restaurant, a moonlit walk, or anything well-planned and concocted in Chris's mind. It didn't even begin with a ring.
When he proposed to me, spontaneously in my room with the faded rose wallpaper at my father's house one evening, he sat with me on the edge of my bed, just talking as friends and totally in love, his arm protectively around me. He had his old, worn leather Bible in his other hand, and he opened it to the Psalms. He started to read to me from Psalm 37. When he got to the part that reads, "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart." He stopped and said that that was what we had found in each other. We had been doing just that: simply delighting in God. Being totally fixed on worshiping God in our lives.
You see, we both had led very messy lives previously. He had gotten a girl pregnant and married her at the age of fifteen, and I was partying hard and living chaotically, in a hellish relationship. We both seemed to be damaged goods, so to speak, until we found Jesus. Our lives transformed drastically when we began to walk that out in our separate lives. I had a child at age nineteen, which changed the course of my life, and he went off to rehab in San Diego.
When we met, things were not perfect. We both had a lot of baggage. Many said we would not last.
But we knew what we had found in each other. A friend, and more than that, surprisingly, a soul mate. It sounds gushy to say that, but it's true.
We just got each other, entirely. We still do.
Right after he read that verse to me, he dropped down to his knee on the wooden floor, and, looking me in the eye, my hands in his, he asked me if I would be his wife. I said yes. There was no ring, he said, we could pick it out together. It was not an important thing to either of us in that moment. When we were talking about that last night, we realized that the object of a ring becomes such a central thing in the beginning of engagement, whether it's due to tradition or symbolism. It becomes the centerpiece sometimes. But we talked about how our love was the centerpiece. It was the thing we glorified and danced around, celebrating, showing off to our friends and family. I had no ring, it was of no matter, until we got one, of course. Don't get me wrong, I was tremendously elated when we did get the ring, and I wore it proudly, and still do. But I am glad that our story is so simple in the beginning that it didn't need any frills or anything added to the simplicity that we were head over heels for each other and that was all we needed, and all we still need.