The Romantic.com

My husband and I are truly a match made in heaven.  We love God first and each other second and that’s a wonderful recipe for fun!  While we were dating, I had been expecting a proposal and guessed it would come at Christmas that year — it didn’t.  Valentines’ Day was next, but it came and went and still no proposal.  Finally I decided to put it out of my mind and trust that it would happen when the time was right.

I have always enjoyed April Fool’s Day.  I like playing jokes on others and I like when they play jokes on me; but it’s hard to “fool an old fool”.  My children (grown now) used to try so hard to get me on April Fool’s Day that they’d have to wake me up first thing in the morning to get me before I was coherent!  Then they’d try to get me all day, but I’d be on my toes — I’d believe NOTHING on April Fool’s Day!  So…

It was Tuesday, April Fool’s Day 2003–just an ordinary day in the middle of the week, (NOT when a girl would expect a proposal).  Tuesday nights my sweetheart’s daughter had drama practice at our church, so he’d dropped her off and come over to my house–just like usual.  We’d been sitting on the sofa watching TV when I got up to do some laundry.  I was carrying a load from the dryer to the bedroom when he turned off the TV and said, “Can you come sit down… we need to talk.”

I knew it was something serious because men don’t turn off the TV for just anything; so I put down the clothes and sat down on the edge of the sofa facing him.  I was thinking that it might be a problem with his daughter or the church or something that he wanted to talk over with me.  He put his hand on my leg and got very serious when he said to me, “I said I’d never do anything to hurt you and I don’t want to hurt you, but we need to break up.”

Ha!  I immediately knew that was an April Fool’s joke, so I laughed and said, “Yeah right!  April Fool’s!”.  We get along great, so this was such a lame joke to me!  The more serious he tried to be, and the more he tried to tell me that it just wasn’t working out and we needed to break up, the more I laughed at his attempts until I was almost rolling in the floor!

Then out of nowhere, he takes my hand and slips the ring on my finger.

I thought it was the next joke!  I thought that since the break-up joke didn’t work, he’s going to try the proposal joke.   I thought it must be a ring from a um ball machine–until I looked at it.  STOP EVERYTHING!

I said “Oh my gosh!  This is REAL!” (probably about three times). He said, “Yes, this is real.”  My heart fluttered and my tummy flipped and we looked at each other.  Then he got down on one knee in my living room floor and said, “Linda, will you marry me?”

For added fun, we got married on February 29, Leap Day, 2004.  We’ve lived in heavenly bliss everafter!