(Warning: This may be a LONG read. Get a coffee and sit back and relax.)
So... When Amanda told me to write our story out I realized I had a choice I needed to make. First or Third person? Funny as that might sound this is a huge choice. First person means I'm really writing out a very biased one-sided perspective view of our story. Basically it's me telling our story from my perspective, only sometimes able to pull in elements of Amanda's perspective. Third person would allow me to tell the story from a relatively neutral un-biased point of view. Supposedly. Really, however, that would only work if the two of us sat down together and wrote the story, agreeing on every thing said.
That said, as I sit down to write you'll discover that I've settled on First person. To alleviate the one-sided nature of this story-to-come, if you see any inserts like this: "blah, blah, blah (Amanda: I've got a different view of what he said here...) blah blah blah" then it's where Amanda has decided to insert her own opinion and feelings in to spice things up. With that, I'll stop rambling and get to the reason why you're viewing this... "Our Story."
Amanda and I officially met in Republic, Washington. That sounds like a bit out of the way for a casual encounter, but it makes sense when you understand that we were both helping on a mission trip that our church’s Jr. High Youth Group was making there. I was actually there as the official documentarian, filming as much of the week as possible. She was there to help out wherever she could, especially with the Jr. High girls.
We’ve held some pretty interesting discussions on the topic of when we first noticed one another. Amanda can pinpoint the moment pretty well; she was coming into the building as they returned from a trip to the lake. I actually arrived in Republic a few days after everyone else and I don’t even know if she knew I was coming and I doubt she really had a face to the name if she’d heard it mentioned. She came up the stairs and saw me there. I can’t truly pinpoint the moment I first noticed, but I do know that before long I was consciously having to keep myself from being noticed staring (I call the skill to stare without being noticed ‘casual staring’) and avoiding filming her too much. (This I succeeded at a little too well and upon examination of the hours and hours of footage almost none of her really exists.)
Through my “tremendous” skill at engaging women in conversation and wooing them I endeavored to exchange a few words with her and managed to do so at a couple different moments. Though these words were few and mostly inconsequential and trivial it still established a basis. At least we had spoken. The last words we exchanged on that trip (at least directly) were along the lines of: “I don’t like you, you ruined that shot.” Yes, my sarcasm reared its ugly head and she actually wondered if I was serious about disliking her. Sad, but oddly it turned out to be a good thing in a way, at least when viewed in hindsight.
To clarify the situation I’ll explain. We were on the ferry on the way home and I was shooting this great shot of the wake of the ferry and then I tilted up and panned across the lake shores eventually turning so I was shooting back down the length of the ferry. Amanda just ‘happened’ to be standing there (I believe she’d stood there hoping I’d talk to her) and as the camera panned across her she glanced over at it and then looked away, acknowledging the camera’s presence. I finished the shot and then turned my camera off while I proceeded to sarcastically yell at her for looking away and ‘ruining’ the shot. (If you watch the documentary I made of the trip you can watch this shot, it’s the opening title sequence.*) Well, right after I turned my camera off you’ll never guess what happened… a butterfly came up alongside the ferry and paced it for a little while, fluttering there mere feet from us. I hurried to get my camera turned back on and running, but by the time it was running the butterfly and moved on. And because I was preoccupied with yelling at Amanda because of her turning away from the camera I missed what could’ve been the best shot I’d ever gotten. More yelling. By the end of that she wasn’t sure if I was sarcastic at all or not and was rather confused.
Fast-forward. Now we get to the rather horrible, Facebook related part. What people must realize is that during this section I was still living in Ellensburg and Amanda was in Enumclaw. So this really was the only way to communicate. Anyway… From hearing Amanda tell it I guess after we’d gotten back home and everything had settled back into routine she looked at my profile on Facebook and considered adding me as a friend, but decided not to based on the ‘dislike you now’ comments I’d made on the ferry. After deciding not too she went off to do some stuff and literally minutes later came back and checked her email to see a message from Facebook saying I’d added her as a friend.
Well, Amanda being the way she is she decided that as long as I’d added her as a friend on Facebook she’d see if I’d really meant the whole ‘dislike’ comments and stuff. So she fired up the good old Facebook messaging service and sent me a message.
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At this point I’d like to point out that I don’t believe she has EVER called me Chris after asking that question. Every time she mentions me by name it’s as Christopher. This is but one of the many reasons why I love her so so so much. Anyway, between this message and the last one of this conversation on July the 11th we exchanged 67 messages, resolved the disliking situation, and learned a whole heck of a lot about one another. These weren’t short messages either, the longest of them clocks in at 1813 words and converted to Times New Roman in 12 point font takes up 3 ½ pages. (To put this in even more perspective, if you’ve read all of this so far up to the end of the last sentence you’d read only 1,059 words.)
During this period of time as I started picking up on vague hints and clues I was faced with the serious question of whether or not to pursue something with Amanda. I was unsure of what to do since for the first time in a serious while I was fairly happy with where I was at and the thought of getting shot down by another girl wasn’t too appealing. But on the 6th of July I happened to see Amanda at church when I was back for the weekend. We spoke a little bit and after that I’d come clearly to a decision. I was gonna go for it, no doubt about it.
The following week the conversation continued and during this time I think I dropped a couple hints and ended up arranging to go to coffee with her after I interviewed her the following Saturday. (The interview was for the Republic documentary I was making.) Well, we finished up the interview, grabbed a coffee and headed out to take a look at Kong. (A cliff nearby on the Green River that’s a 100 foot jump to the river below.) This failed and we ended up heading to the nearby Kanaskat Palmer State Park. We found a relatively quiet and secluded spot on the banks of the Green River and talked. By this point we’d already finished our drinks, but spent a good long time talking. There were a couple topics we’d not discussed on Facebook, feeling they were more easily discussed in person than through messaging.
After a good long conversation and a huge breath on my part I chucked a stick into the river, said “Heck with it” and looked at Amanda. I ended up telling her that part of the reason I’d noticed her in Republic was because she was really pretty and that I was interested in her. She was quiet and then said that she would be lying if she didn’t feel the same way about me. I gave her a big hug, we prayed, she cried. I told her I needed to ask her dad’s permission to pursue the relationship. She said that was a good idea, we finally left the river, walking back to my truck. On the way our hands found one another and I realized just how perfect and natural it felt.
Neither of us can deny that we feel God brought us together in a way we couldn’t have avoided if we’d wanted to. And neither of us came close to wanting to.
Fast forward. Past the first kiss. Past the first fight, disagreement, argument, whatever you want to call it. Past the summer, past her going back to college, past our first Holidays together, Thanksgiving, Christmas, on towards New Year.
We’d been discussing marriage for a while at this point, both of us feeling from the start of our relationship that that was undoubtedly the long-term goal. The way we were brought together, the connection we felt – almost from before the start, the love that grew so fast and yet so strong, we knew we were headed for marriage. The only question was when would the engagement happen. I’d found the ring that I wanted to give her, simple but elegant. I found a diamond for it that I wanted, badly. Then I was blessed and given a chance to purchase this ring. I originally thought about proposing on Christmas Day, but wasn’t given the opportunity. (I ordered the ring online – I know, crazy man trusting to online stuff for such an important item. It was the Shaneco and their policies were great for returning it if need-be, so I wasn’t worried.) The ring didn’t arrive on time, so unfortunately the proposal was put off.
New Years Eve.
We went on a drive. I picked the wrong direction. The weather was mediocre and the landscapes we beheld were less than spectacular. In-all, it was disheartening. I was hoping to come across the ‘perfect’ spot to get out, walk around a bit, go down on one knee and pop the question. Instead we got hungry and decided to head for dinner. The Olive Garden being a favorite spot for us we made for the Federal Way location. I didn’t really want to propose over dinner, but it was still an option. On our way Amanda made a comment about needing to get out and stretch her legs.
As we passed through the less than nice, rather ghetto, portion of Tacoma I noticed a sign and whipped quickly into a park, hoping it would be nice enough to stretch our legs at. As it turned out the spot was less than spectacular. It wasn’t bad, but wasn’t nice enough to warrant getting out of the car into the rain to walk around. So we sat there and talked for a little while. As we were talking I pressed play on my IPod and let it play in the background. I’d set the album to Taylor Swift’s newest one, a gift I gave to Amanda on Christmas and before long “Our Song” (I put it in quotes because we both kind of refuse to think of it as our song, but it has sorta turned into it) started playing; “Love Story”. Anyway, for those who don’t know there’s a point in the song where there’s a proposal of marriage. A running joke with us was for me to sort of pretend to propose at that point. As usual I did the same thing. For pretend.
Afterwards I asked her what she would’ve said if I’d actually proposed at that point. Of course she said she’d have said yes. I then proceeded to say things like, “Yeah, but you’d have later thought: ‘Why didn’t he propose somewhere nicer? Someplace more unique?’ “ and other such things. She said that she was feeling pretty emotional at that point and it would have been unexpected and would have been perfect. So I rewound the song a bit and let it play towards that point. Singing along and looking at her in the eyes she still thought I was just being a goof and playing with her. Then at the last second I turned briefly away and grabbed the ring box from my coat pocket. Turning back to her in time with the music I opened the box and asked her to marry me at the exact moment the same words were uttered in the song.
It took a while for Amanda to find words. We hugged and I swear that the hug lasted a few minutes without her saying anything, just crying into my shoulder. When she recovered herself, officially said yes and put the ring on she was happier than I’d ever seen her and we both felt like we were floating on air. The day wrapped with us getting dinner and then spending the evening at my house, where she was staying for the holiday. Her parents were in Silverdale with friends for a few days, so the next day we headed out and stopped in at their house for a few hours, letting them see the ring and congratulate us…
So, that was the proposal. For details sake we got engaged on December 31st, 2008 at approximately 1:30 in the afternoon.
Now with the recent decision to move the wedding to August 16th, 2009 we’ve ramped up into the planning mode and are both looking crazy forward to the wedding, the Honeymoon in Hawaii afterwards, and the life we get to spend together after that. God has blessed us tremendously in our lives and our relationship, bringing us together in a way where we haven’t had been cursed with doubts or questions about whether our relationship was His will for us. I can honestly say that almost 23 years of waiting for Amanda was worth every heartbreak, lonely moment, and tear shed. She’s the most amazing woman I’ve ever met and am thrilled I get to spend my life with her!
So here’s to the future! If you’ve made it this far in this story I’d like to thank you for enduring all 2450+ words of this.
Christopher McNeely – August 2nd, 2009
* http://www.evands.com/portfolio.html
