Robert drove 5 hours to visit my family every weekend that month (well, OK, he came to visit me, but my family is part of me).  All of our friends knew we were planning a wedding, but one thing had them thoroughly confused. My left hand was lacking an important accessory. I knew there was a ring, but I had no idea when, where, or how it was going to find its way to my finger. Robert informed me that he had a special plan all figured out, a proposal I would love and never forget. I informed him it had better be on one knee, to which he responded that I would love the proposal so much that it wouldn't matter whether he was on one knee or not!

     With everyone's obvious confusion, we decided it would be best for him to go ahead and put the ring on my finger. Robert promised he'd bring it with him the next weekend. I waited all week in anticipation, dying to know what the ring looked like.

     He arrived at normal time but said nothing about our previous discussion. I was just so happy to see him again (because a week is a long time, you know!) that it didn't matter that he hadn't walked through the door and immediately dropped to one knee! When he didn't propose Friday evening, I assumed he must be planning something for Saturday, or he'd decided to wait until a weekend when I wasn't expecting it.  Saturday came and went with no proposal.  But Robert and I were happily shopping for tuxes and wedding photographers, so I didn't think about it much.

    Sunday morning, February 23rd, 2003, dawned cold, with a hint of snow in the air.  I didn't pay a whole lot of attention to that either.  I simply wondered why Robert was spending so much time shut up in his room. . .  I interrupted him twice to get something from the room.  Each time, he was lying on his stomach on the bed, busily taking notes from his Bible.  Or so I thought. . .  Finally, he emerged, and we headed to church.

    I was still oblivious, never suspecting a thing.  Except that, every so often, I wondered why Robert had secretly pulled my dad aside for a few minutes on Saturday.

    Everything proceeded normally at church.  My eleven-person family filed into the Sunday school classroom, filling half of the large room.  Jokes flew back and forth between Robert and Bob, the father who was teaching that week (I still need to ask Robert what was so funny. . .), and all the ladies carefully examined my hand from a distance, searching for a ring and wondering why on earth we had set a wedding date when Robert hadn't even proposed yet!

    The lesson began, and I forgot about the fact that I didn't have a ring on my finger. . . that is, until the lesson ended 15 minutes early.  Just for the record, that was a BROKEN record!  We were usually lucky if we let out "only" 15 minutes late!  Maybe Bob just felt like getting done early that day. . .

    Robert stood up, walked across the room, and took his place behind the small podium.  Right away, my heart began pounding against my ribcage.  What was he doing?!  I turned to my mom, asking, "What's he doing?!" 

     She just shook her head in wonder, "I don't know."

    While I sat there in a shocked and nervous daze, Robert told his version of meeting me, and how he had come to the decision to marry me, and then waited for my dad's permission to win my heart.

    My stomach was a tangled mess of butterfly wings, and my hands were shaking as Robert went on to answer three questions that everyone had been asking us for the last few weeks:

    Question # 1--"How can you have a wedding date without a proposal and a ring?"

    Robert explained that, with my dad's permission to win my heart, both of us were committed to marriage. The proposal was simply a formality.

    My lungs had decided to stop working by this point, and I thought I was going to fall out of my chair.

    Robert got to question # 2--"How could you make such a quick decision to marry Crystal?"

    He had a list ready: his "notes" that I'd seen him taking just a couple of hours earlier.  I'm a big advocate of lists, but never have I heard a list quite like the one he extracted from the pages of his Bible and proceeded to read to all 25 people in the room.  "Ten simple things about Crystal that have forever endeared her to my heart." By the time he made it to the tenth item on his list, my mother was crying, one of the other ladies in the room was crying, and I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry!  All I knew was what had to be coming next. . .

    Robert finished his list, looked around, and said in all seriousness, "And the last question you all want to know is WHEN AM I GOING TO PROPOSE!"  He grinned, smacked the podium, and announced, "RIGHT NOW!"

    He walked confidently across the room, knelt in front of me on one knee and held out his hand.  It didn't matter how many pairs of eyes were watching us at that moment; the only people we noticed were each other.  I gave him my hand for the first time, and heard the most precious words I've ever heard and ever will hear.

    "Crystal, I've never said this to any other woman before. . .  I love you. . .  will you be my wife?"

   Still shaking, but this time for joy, I whispered a barely-audible, "Yes."   

    "Close your eyes."

    I closed my eyes and waited while Robert slipped a ring onto my finger.     Every person in the room was smiling and crying and eager to give hugs and congratulations.  I was still in a state of shock and kept looking at my ring, then back at Robert.  It had really happened!  He had chosen to propose in a way that, while uncomfortable for him, he knew would be the most meaningful to me.  How right he was!  He was right; I will never forget the day he proposed!