To be engaged, is to be engaged, in every sense of the word. You're past the "This is Fun For Now" phase. Dealt with the "Could Be Something Real" stage. To be engaged is to be fully present. Wholly real, flawed, open, vulnerable. This is never easy. We all have secrets from our past that we'd rather not bring up. The horrible, guilt-ridden, dirty ones that we'd rather take to our grave. "It" happened in the past, and "we" are happening in the present and future. There is no use tainting the latter with the knowledge of the former. We're best friends! We're in love! The present and future will take care of itself!
Or so one would think. My biggest lesson about love and marriage so far, is that being engaged doesn't just begin and end with the engagement period that precedes a wedding. It begins and ends every morning when you wake up, and ends when you curl up in bed each night. Every night. A truly engaged couple doesn't just do the bare minimum that it takes to get along. They work hard. Checking in periodically, saying what needs to be said - even when it hurts, being humble and setting your own ego aside, celebrating and mourning alongside your beloved - all this takes work. It is only by doing so that you are truly engaged. Not because you have a ring on your finger, and a fabulous wedding to plan. But because at the end of the day, you still feel lucky to be his. No matter how hard it gets, you would still gladly choose each other. Engaging your heart, your mind, and your spirit, and enmeshing it with his - that's what it means to be engaged.
So, while I'm busy perusing favor bags and monogrammed stickers, and debating the virtues of silk organza versus damask, my mind is clear. All this is ephemeral. We're not working toward some lofty ideal of what "true love" means, the kind that is featured by Vanity Fair, in their power couples section. We already have something that many people search all their lives for. Someone who loves you, only you, no matter what. This is why, even after the band stops playing, the caterers clear the food away, and the flowers wilt, we will not only be married. We will still, and always be engaged. Forever.
This is one of the best pieces that you have ever written. Every couple thinking of forever should read this.
Oh my gosh, every day I become happier and happier for the two of you...
I promise I won't exhaust your blog with blog-comment to each of your pieces. Though up to this point it seams that I will certainly feel the urge to do so -- You write fluidly and there is this bright lightness to your words, it simply erects a response within you that wants to surface and hungers to be typed up in a comment window.
You speak of love for what it should be and it is truth, as You say, that for some it takes a lifelong search to come across such genuine feeling; I believe I have met some, who never found it at all.. I read and hear this pledge from your heart to his; a promise to love honestly throughout path laid ahead for two of You. I read, and am flooded with kind joy and wish your heart will always love as you write here.