Hello World.  I'm back. 

170 days until I get married.  You know what? I never thought the day would come- It's like:

When I was 12, I never imagined driving a real car. When I was 14, I never imagined what it would be like to have a girlfriend.  When I was 16, I couldn't fathomed what it would be like as a college student.  When I was 17, though I was already drinking underage, I couldn't imagine myself purchasing alcohol legitimately!  10 years later and a graduate degree, now I'm 28, staring down my wedding day- I'm scratching my head, and with a deep sigh -  I see that now this day will finally come.  God has been faithful.   

I feel a mix of emotions.  Mostly good ones, some scary ones, and one or two that I'm not comfortable sharing.  Overall, I feel more certain that God's hand is upon my life and he has once again done the impossible by bringing together two very different people, in unlikely situations, to this strange union called marriage.  As I look to the past over major and minor events of my life- there is one explicit trait.  God is faithful. 

I wanted to dedicate this blog to my inner thoughts as an engaged man- They might be amusing, but they're certainly things that I have not realized since being engaged.   

Why propose now?   

The traditional answer to this question is "if you know you know."  In some ways that statement is true, but it is somewhat incomplete because "sometimes you know, but you're just not ready." I believe that marriage isn't merely about knowing, but it's really about readiness.  You can probably know someone insideout, but if you're not ready for marriage, you're not going to propose.  I proposed to Jina because not only did I "know" her (friends for 6+ years), but I was at a point in my life where I was ready for marriage.  When I say "ready" I do not just mean financially or chronologically ready, but rather my love was ready.  ???  Read more.  

Love is strange thing, right fellas?  It's unnatural because when you love someone, you want to bind yourself to them.  Love has a funny way of getting under in your chest and giving you desires to "I want to be there with you during the tough times, I want to commit my life to you, etc- all that mush."  It's strange to us men because our natural desire is to be free and unhindered.  The ropes of love cause us to want to be bound and subjected to that special someone it causes us to give more than we do have. 

I want to marry Jina because I really, really, really love her-  It wasn't just a feeling of giddiness, nor of lust -but, I really want the best for her life.  In short, I have the Corinthians 13 love for her.  It's interesting because my love for her isn't to possess her for myself, but is to lead her into a deeper relationship with God.  I want to make her happy, not for a response- but because it pleased me to see her so.  My heart desires to give to her and to not hold anything back.  Though there are selfish desires mixed the sea of emotions, the foundational desire that I have for her remains the same.  My love became ready because I knew that I could commit and give her my life.  When I was sure of that- that's when I knew I was ready. 

Was the decision process as expected?

The unexpected thing about deciding to get married was that logic played a tremendous role.  I used to think that a man proposed to a woman when he was full of joy, love, and zealous passion, and the only thing to relieve himself was to ask the woman to marry him.  I guess this could be true in some cases, it wasn't for me.  I wanted to marry Jina because it made sense.  I'm totally killing a lot of the romance here, but I think it's very important to understand this principal.  When the romance and emotions fades (and it will one day), logic will still stand.  Any woman would appreciate that she was not only an emotional choice but a logical one.   What I did was look at our characteristics, our skills, life calling, strengths and weakness, and saw that together we would form a great partnership.  A friend told me that you should be able to just do nothing with your spouse because during your years of marriage you'll be doing a lot of nothing!  Ditto on that because Jina and I have a great time doing nothing- and we do a lot of nothing all the time.  

More to come...

I'll elaborate on the prior cryptic post later,
but for now, you can find out more by
clicking HERE.