But it's a whole lot better me thinks. The rest of this post is from Tim for y'all, 'njoy!
P.S. I'll get the engagement story soon I swear!
Falling in Love with
Rylee Grace
Friends. You all know and love our
dearest Rylee. As such you may have noticed a recent flood of activity on
Facebook from our recent engagement photos or even might have caught sight of
her oh so clever (please affirm her that they are clever) engagement related
posts on Instagram. Well, this post is pretty late compared to when we
announced the news, but better late than ever right? But here it is folks, I
asked Rylee what will probably be the 1st or 2nd most
important question to ever escape my lips (not sure if it will rank above or
below “Is it a girl or a boy?”). Now, in anticipation for that weekend, I knew
I could not plan for everything. First of all, I knew I didn’t have that
capacity. Rylee is the good planner and she was inherently incapable of helping
me prepare for this one so I was on my own and knew some details would
inevitably be left out. Shout out to my friend Meredith, without whom November
1st would not have gone down so smoothly. Second, I knew there would
be something(s) that I simply could not anticipate, regardless of how long I
tried to plan. One such thing was the story telling that went into that
weekend. Rylee and I were amazed at how many times we told the story of how I
proposed and what all happened. It makes perfect sense that people were
interested, but I never would have thought that we would map out our weekend by
which of us had to tell the story this
time.
Now at the end of that weekend,
Rylee posted on the blog a few pictures and hinted that more was to come,
possibly even a post from me. I immediately shut the idea down, at that point
totally over having to repeat the story one more time. I knew I would
eventually write something, but at the moment I refused. I have since recovered
my tolerance for the story of how I asked the woman of my dreams to marry me,
but I am not backing down on my previous stance. Stubbornness is a staple of
Rylee and I’s relationship and rule #1 is never give in, and if you do give in
make it look like you did not just give in. So, I will not be telling how I
proposed (in this post. That one comes later, making it look like I did not
give in). You see, when Rylee started this blog, she said it was because she
wanted it to show who she was. Now she doesn’t brag on herself all that often,
but I think “Who she is” is a pretty amazing person and so I’ll take it as my
own responsibility to convey that a little today. So instead of telling you
“How I Proposed to Rylee Grace” (which she will still guilt me into writing) I
give you “How I Came to Propose to Rylee Grace.”
Rylee and I have been dating for 5
years, starting all the way back at age 17 in our junior year of high school. However,
I still remember the very first time I ever saw her. Freshman year, first day
of school, 3rd period, Mr. McCarthy’s room, World History Honors. (We
also had Geometry together (10th period) and possibly English?) But
anyway, I get pretty shy around new people and the first day of classes I felt
like everybody knew everybody, except me who knew nobody. I walked into class
and instantly saw Rylee, 3rd row, 4 people back, smiling and
laughing up a storm with her Corpus girls. I on the other hand went straight to
my seat and sat there silently for the next 4 months. Allegedly, Rylee had a
crush on me from Day 1. Well that was Day 1 and I’m pretty sure she had no clue
I existed. She will never believe me (because it took 2 years for something to
happen), but I had a crush on Rylee from Day 1. I will never forget that day. Time
passed, Rylee and I became friends, and at the beginning of our junior year we
were both asked to help with (and both missed the mandatory meeting for) a new
program from the diocese called “First Comes Love.” It was designed to be a day
long retreat for 8th graders preparing to enter high school about
the importance of Chastity. Rylee and I were there because for the last hour of
the day they had current high school students come in and give personal
testimony to what it was like being chaste in high school.
After the couple leading the
program explained it to us, I suggested that Rylee and I should just prepare
something together. Rather than attributing this to a romantic notion, I have
to confess I was just being practical: writing half of a talk and not know who
we were going to be paired with ahead of time sounded like a lot more work. We
set aside a Saturday afternoon to write the talk and spent the entire day
talking, never once getting anywhere near writing that talk. But we learned a
lot about each other in that preparation and the months to come talking to 8th
graders. We were open and honest about what we wanted in relationships, how we
wanted to make God present with our significant others, and shared our faith
and commitment to remaining chaste until marriage. From the moment I suggested
we write the talk together, the thought popped into my head that I might end up
dating this girl. But for the next 4 months I pushed myself to resist and wait,
not wanting to just throw myself into another relationship that would end in heartache.
But after months of getting to know Rylee better and better, I was sure I had
to give it a shot. She was too special, too one of a kind, to just let her slip
through my fingers or have to watch some jerk scoop her up. So on December 30,
2008, after much delay and significant ado, right as I was about to ask her to
be my girlfriend, she cut to the chase and asked me first. Who’s surprised?
It sounds strange to say, but I
knew I could marry Rylee from the start. That is, from the time we started dating,
I never thought “I could only see us dating for a while.” To borrow a phrase
from How I Met Your Mother (irony), I never felt like our relationship had an
expiration date. It was always an attitude of indefinite love, even before it
was “love” and only “like.” I always had an attitude of “of course this will
last,” something absolutely aggravating to our favorite self-proclaimed realist
(she often bemoans my optimism, while I see myself as the realist and dismiss
her as the pessimist). She always preferred hard proof, legitimate reasons why
this should still continue to work. But it seemed pretty simple to me. The more
time passed, the better I knew this girl and the more unequivocally she held my
heart. Freshman year of college, as we settled into our lives 1,000-2,000 miles
apart (depending on the time of year), seeing each other for week stretches (if
that) every few months, I told myself, “If we can make it through this year,
she’s the one.” And at the end of freshman year I told my friends the same thing.
I was sure at that point, barring some unforeseen disaster in the coming years
of college, that I was going to marry that girl.
When we went to Rome, everything
(and by everything, I mean nothing (and by nothing, I mean everything))
changed. We had grown up over 2 years into remarkably different people than the
18 year olds sent off to college in August 2010. And things could not have been
better. Rylee and I had, in some ways, to relearn each other. We had different
priorities, mannerisms, and concerns in life than our younger selves. It was a
little different being able to see her every day. Being able to say, “Good
night, I’ll see you tomorrow.” Being able to cook, clean, study, travel, walk,
eat, shop, cry, laugh, love, and live every day with the person that makes my
heart sing. But nothing has ever felt so natural in my entire life. Whatever
was hard was worth it because of Rylee. I was excited to be in this amazingly
beautiful place with millennia of history and the center of the Church 10
minutes from my apartment because of Rylee. Cooking dinner became one of my
favorite activities and could be followed up perfectly by listening to my
roommates rant about God knows what because of Rylee.
In our preparation to go to Rome,
Rylee discovered that the halfway point between our apartments was St. Peter’s
Square. We had used it a few times as a convenient meeting place, but normally
one of us just went to see the other at their apartment. One night,
mid-October, we were fighting about something that I honestly can’t remember.
But somehow I convinced a reluctant Rylee to meet me at the Vatican because I
refused to let her go to bed angry that night. She arrived even more steamed
than when I had left her on the phone because I’d made her walk over there at
11pm by herself (bad move on my part). But whatever was the matter that night,
we talked it out soon enough. I remember standing there, outside the colonnade,
2nd or 3rd column in on the right, and I just looked her
in the eyes for close to 5 minutes. She of course had no idea what was going
through my mind, but at that moment I knew I wanted to ask this girl to be my
wife. From that moment forward I was positive I was going to propose, and for
the rest of that evening while we stood outside I was trying to convince myself
to get down on one knee right then and there. I asked her what she would say if
I did not have a ring when I asked and she told me it would be important to
her, not to have for herself, but as a sign to everyone else that we were
serious and not just a couple of kids. I went home that night and started
looking for rings online. It was hard leaving Rome because I knew I was leaving
living that close to Rylee for at least another 18 months. But I was certain
now that it would not be a permanent separation. We would be together in the
end, there was no doubt in my heart or mind.
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