There’s been slight changes here and there, almost too subtle to be discovered, and yet, the collective result is apparent. We’re engaged! Though we went through what seems like a transformational few days, from proposal on Thursday night to being congratulated by family and friends on Good Friday and suddenly, we’re already at Easter Monday, and the days seem to have gone by in a blur. And yet, at the few unofficial family and friend gatherings and in our time alone, I have noticed subtle changes to which the only analogy that comes to mind is the oh so familiar feeling that I experienced throughout doing group projects in university. That subtle but significant shift from when you finish brainstorming and allocating roles, and shift into intentional project planning and execution. That sudden lack of uncertainty, and our united pursuit of marriage and life ever after. This shift, though subtle and brought about by a brief 30-minute proposal has been somewhat shocking for the both of us. Going from boyfriend-girlfriend to being engaged is such a big deal after all, and unlike our dating story, this only takes up 5 minutes for retelling, and yet the significance of it is life-changing in so many ways. Now on the last morning on my Easter weekend, I am still at daze about what had transpired at the beginning of it, that last Thursday when I got on my knees, seeing my girlfriend for the last time, asking these delicate little words: “Will you marry me?”
Or rather, I asked like a true romantic, “Veux-tu m’epouser?” To which she said, “What?” Then I asked again in English, and she screamed, laughed, cried, laughed, and continued with a mixture of these for what seemed like half an hour. It was quite funny for me to watch, all her different emotions and expressions, and new ones, as she was completely blown away by my surprise, and was in so much shock that I think I shocked her twice. Which was again, hilarious for me! But also a breath of fresh air and relief for me, because I had prepared for this for a long time. Truth be told, this goes back to our dating story, most of which I will have to tell you at another time, but the important thing is we were two peas in a pod, and we became quick friends, then best friends, then soulmates all in quick succession, in a short journey from meeting her on October 22, 2017 to asking her out on December 15, only 6 weeks later. And I had already known on December 15, that this was the girl that I want to spend the rest of my life with.
So after dating for a short 3 months, I started researching about the ring. A friend of mine jokingly told me that at a certain time in life, every man suddenly becomes a diamond expert, and that was very true, because shortly 4 months later, I had all the C’s and had examined everybody’s ring, but still could not confidently find the one ring that was meant to be. So I looked further, and with the reminder that one of my close friends got an unconventional rock, I started to look, and pray, for the one stone that God has set aside for my darling. And with that belief in my heart, I started into much uncharted territory, where I meticulously searched for and found 3 months later, a stone that my girl would love and marvel at every so often for the rest of her life, the centerpiece of the ring that would signify our growing and ever-changing love. A beautiful black-teal moissanite, about 0.8 carats, and shone with rainbow fire, more sparkly than any diamond due to its crystalline structure. It was a black gemstone that shone with violet, blue, light blue, green, orange and brown, depending on the angle that you hold it and the amount of light present. An ever-changing fire for her to wear and marvel at all the rest of her life. When she asked me about it, I gave her one hint that I quoted back to her these few days, that “it would represent the many facets of our love, and she will grow to love it more and more.” In fact, when I saw the stone samples myself, I had prayed hard for the jeweler to use the specific one that God had set aside for Carmen, and to bless the whole selection and making process, to bless the ring with beauty, protection and an infinite display of the love that God Himself had for her. Seeing her with the ring now, I am 300% over-satisfied, and what stuck out the most for me was that I had imagined her sitting marveling like a child with a crystal, and she did exactly that, several times over the last few days to my satisfaction. I have definitely given her the stone God set aside for us. This blessing was insurmountable! And I had also thought at the time, her favorite color was green, so I must have it set in such a way to bring that out. And with the help of the lovely business representative at Midwinter.co, I settled with the greenest stones I could find, the blue-green topaz, and set it on rose gold, which brought out the green further. Though incidentally it did not occur to me that green and rose gold were almost opposite colors, which I learnt later was a technique many artists use for bringing out contrast, because at the time, I was just concerned with durability, and the 14K copper-gold alloy was the strongest ring setting other than platinum, and platinum just didn’t feel right for the black stone. I was glad that it all did turn out so beautifully, as I had ordered this custom ring from looking at pictures, videos, and had squinted over, and measured meticulously to ensure that it was the ring that I wanted. Well, I can truly say in this that I had done my best, and God really did do the rest. Best looking ring in Hong Kong! Of course, I’m biased.
The ring came in November 2018, and I was psyched, but I still felt something was missing, and seeing that Carmen’s family was going through a time of mourning, with God’s prompting, I dedicated the following months to loving and getting to know each of her family members, as my Momma always said, marriage is a family matter, who you marry isn’t just the girl you love, but you also marry her family. So I grew to love each member of her family, getting more familiar, and being concerned with what they enjoyed, and started conversation and even made her quiet brother laugh, which I felt was quite an accomplishment. I enjoyed their company dearly.
Then, time came when we started discussing about wedding venues, and the pre-marriage course that we signed up was about to start, so I prayed again and asked God to see if it was the right time to propose, as previously I asked, and it felt like He said I should wait for Him to choose the right moment. And with repeated prayer, I felt this time the answer was, “Ready when you are, Son!” So I started to plan and strategize, and brainstorm for how to pop the question. Funny enough, Carmen is a hard one when it comes to surprises, there are specific types of surprises that she would love, and many types that would cause her to feel too shocked to enjoy, so over the course of our relationship, I tried to suss out which works and which doesn’t, and though I had gotten really good at surprising her, I had never proposed to her nor to anyone else before, so this took some careful planning and discreet questioning to make sure she doesn’t guess it in advance. She also seemed to expect that she would just laugh at me when I propose, but that kind of expectation also didn’t make it easy. How was I going to make her laugh? After a few headaches, I realized, I should just try my best again and just leave the outcome to God. So I started..
I thought the best way to make her laugh and surprise her was to catch her completely off guard, and so I thought, I should somehow hunt down or buy a magic show popup bouquet, because I do a lot of magic tricks with children and that magic generally make people laugh. But all the places I rang up told me that I had to order at least 100 or they won’t stock it. That’s a bummer. And so, I proceeded to do the only thing that I could do, and that was to make it myself. I spent a couple of hours studying videos on Youtube of magicians using this type of bouquet, and found one that wasn’t too skimpy and also one that I would be able to engineer if I experimented a bit and so lo and voila, long story short, I had a holiday weekend, and I spent 1 entire day making this paper bouquet. It was pretty awesome that it looked exactly like what I saw, except that it was made of paper, and paper is much thicker than the industrial plastics that the original show prop was made of, so you probably can imagine my displeasure, when I realized I could not just hide this popup bouquet in my shirt pocket where the magician could, and had to find another way to carry it. That’s where God came in, as I had just bought a foldable keyboard a week ago and I had a case for it, the case was perfect for carrying the bouquet AND the ring! I was set! My proposal-in-a-bag was ready for action. This was two weeks ago.
These two weeks had been a trial for my character, faith and patience, as I ended up carrying the pouch with me everywhere, and could have pulled the proposal any time I liked or felt impatient, but I waited and waited and waited so patiently for the time that I thought God had given me, which was Saturday morning on Easter weekend. As I had also been planning to go camping with Carmen, it was perfect, our annual camp and sunrise worship was going to be the perfect time for the proposal, thus I earnestly prayed for a beautiful sunrise for such an occasion, trusting that God would come through for sure, as proposing this weekend felt like a confirmation. Well, for those of you from Hong Kong, you must already know that this past weekend, there was a sudden storm that took care of both Friday and Saturday, and since the raining started on Thursday night, we decided not to proceed with camping. I remembered having dinner with her, but my brain was constantly praying to God asking, “Now what? Should I propose tonight? Would that be weird? How do I change my speech? Help me, Lord.” Though after a few prayers, I left it to the Lord to sort out as I know He already has a good plan for all of this, as He had promised in Jeremiah 29, and continued with dinner.
As it was raining and we haven’t been camping or hiking for a while, we were a bit restless so we settled with choosing a good movie and watching it. We paused the movie to chat, because it didn’t turn out to be half as good as advertised, but that was okay since we enjoyed each other’s company and enjoyed chatting. So I excused myself and went to the washroom to pray again. “Is now the best time?” I felt peace in my heart, so I thought, “Okay, it’s all on you, God, let’s see how this will go.” Then, I went to hide my pouch under my shirt and tucked into the back of my pants before going back, and in one smooth motion, slipped back next to her and hid the pouch out of sight. Game on! So I called her my best friend, because she was, but also to start easing into the proposal. Then I started an unplanned conversation about all the fun we’ve had over the last 18 months, as well as remembering all the surprises that I have given her, then I turned my head away to cough, but also to pull out the bouquet that I had prepared. She was so shocked! I told her that I had made this bouquet for her, and started my proposal speech, but apparently she was so shocked by the bouquet that she did not realize I was proposing, until I brought out the ring! That was hilarious, and all the while, she was still screaming. “Aaaaaah! Aaaah! Aaaaah! What’s happening? Aaaahhh!!!” After about 10 minutes of this, she stopped for a bit, thought, and realized she probably didn’t hear any of the things that I said, and told me to start again. At which point, I took out my phone, because I was also so nervous that I had forgotten what to say, so might as well that she didn’t hear most of it. So I read, with a few improvs to ease and digress, the proposal speech that I had planned, and we were sitting comfortably across from each other, cross legged like we always do, and I asked again, “Carmen Bethel Chow, will you marry me?” and she said, “Yes.” And though at that moment, I remembered having a fleeting thought, which was, “Oh my word, I forgot to rehearse how to put the ring on!” but I steeled my nerves, and remembered just about every romantic film I had ever seen, and let my unwavering fingers do the rest. And at that moment, all the adrenaline and shock took the both of us, as she cried and expressed her shock and the emotional significance of all this, and I was coming to terms with what had just happened, she suddenly had a bright grin and shouted, “We’re engaged!” And a wave of joy came over me too, and we celebrated a little. It was a bit late so we didn’t get to celebrate as much, and it wasn’t until after everyone’s passionate best wishes at the Good Friday evening service that we realized we hadn’t celebrated and that was why this celebratory mood that everyone else was in did not hit us! So we went out and celebrated in grand style, having a nice dinner, a bottle of wine, and bought the Nintendo Switch that we had wanted to get, because after all, we really did just “Switch” up our relationship!
So right now, I am still dazed, and still have no final thoughts on being engaged, it’s simply still too fresh, and I haven’t had quite enough time to process it yet. We’ve set a date to start planning the wedding and a deadline for submitting forms, but other than that, we will both take a couple of weeks to process what it means to be engaged, so that we can move forward to enjoy this new adventure that God has given us. I know that this part of our journey will always be special, and will provide much wisdom and insight for us as we continue to prepare ourselves for the rest of our lives together. So despite being in the middle of this transformation, and being quite seemingly open-ended, I have peace and will continue this journey with the best foot forward, just one step behind my Shepherd as He leads me.
“I know the plans that I have for you,” said the Lord. “They are plans for good, and not for evil, and will give you a hope and a future.” --- Jeremiah 29:11 (NIV)
