I'm Engaged.

I have recently come to see that there are many people who read this blog that I don't have the opportunity to talk with on a regular basis. Thanks!

To those of you who I have not yet found the opportunity to talk to, let me announce here my engagement to a wonderful little woman named Rachel McCowin. I really thought that after getting engaged, the love I have for this woman would begin to plateau, but I have experienced just the opposite. I find myself more in love with her now than I have been yet. I woke up this morning missing her more than I have missed her in our time of dating. This is the best feeling I think I have ever had, and I don't say that so that single people can feel left out. I say that because I know that God has called me to be with Rachel, and by submitting to that, but swallowing that frightening pill of a lifetime commitment to this broken woman, I am finding joy beyond what I thought was possible. In short, what I'm saying is that in one more place in my life, I am finding that submitting to the will of God is a very comfortable place to be.

A note: I am wearing an engagement ring... and I want people to understand why. I am wearing a ring because I think the current tradition is antiquated and speaks of a time when marriage was the beginning of a woman's life of submission to a man. I don't want that to be the case with Rachel and I. I am wearing an outward sign of my submission to my future wife, and she is wearing a sign of submission to me. My engagement ring is really just a way for me to tell the world the same thing Rachel is telling the world. "I'm spoken for."

That being said, I don't want anyone to hear something that I'm not saying. I don't want people to hear "Men who don't wear engagement rings are chauvenist pigs." I don't think that. If anything, men who don't wear engagement rings should probably be more respected for their submission to a tradition that goes back who knows how many hundreds of years. I, on the other hand, might be acting out of some all-too-modern desire to reform tradition. Some things in life don't need to be updated. Some do. After much thought, this was one thing in my life that I wanted to be on the reforming edge of. I wanted to be part of a movement that has men wearing engagement rings. That's all. It's just one small thing that symbolizes a big thing.