Typically, it was a chore to decide where to eat when Adam and I went out on dates.
Not this night.
This night, Adam was on a mission.
He took me to Johnny Carino's, a new-ish Italian restaurant that I'd been telling him for weeks I wanted to try. Adam's not a huge fan of Italian, so I should've known something was up at that point. I figured I wouldn't push my luck and I'd enjoy the food.
After we were finished eating, Adam seemed to want to linger in the restaurant. He just wanted to relax and talk for awhile. Strange, but whatever.
We finally paid and left, and then began driving around Wichita. We drove and drove, and we were trying to come up with something to do with the rest of our night. Adam even called his mom at one point to ask if she had any ideas of stuff for us to do. She didn't.
Adam asked if I'd heard about the skate park thing our friend Tim was building near our church.
I hadn't.
Well, he'd show me then.
We drove over to our church (we'd already been attending NewSpring - which was then Messiah Baptist) for several months and loved it.
There was no skate park.
The outside lights and a couple inside lights were on at the church. Adam pulled up next to the front door (limo driver style) and shut the car off. He turned to me.
"I know that things have been hard for us lately. It sucks having to live so far from each other. But I know that it will be worth it. I just wanted to do something special for you to show how much I love you and to try to make things better."
Okay...what could this possibly be?
We exit the car and go into the unlocked church, through the foyer, into the giant sanctuary.
It's all dark.
Except...there's a photo of us projected on each of the giant IMAX screens on stage.
We walk up to the front row and sit down. There's a Kleenex box beside me.
Suddenly, a slideshow starts playing. It's photos of us clear back from the beginning of "us" up until now. Believe me, we had a lot of photos. Here and there, Adam had inserted funny captions to make the slideshow undoubtedly "Adam." Dave Barnes songs (our favorite) were playing in the background. It was quite the show...I think we went through about two whole songs worth of photos.
The photos stopped.
A new, slower song -
On A Night Like This - began playing. (You should definitely go listen to it. It makes me cry almost every time. Maybe because I later walked down the aisle to this song. But back to our story...)
Adam had written a bunch of really sweet stuff up on the screen. It's all a blur now, but I think I was finally realizing what was happening.
I do remember the most important part.
The part where the screen said
"Will you marry me?"
I looked over at him and he wasn't sitting beside me anymore.
He was down on one knee. Holding a little box.
I practically tackled him in a hug and wouldn't let go. We kissed, I cried, I freaked out. I forgot the two most important things: to look at the ring, and to say YES!
As soon as I realized this, I quickly said "Yes!! YES!" And he slipped the ring on my finger. It was the most beautiful ring.
The sanctuary lights came on.
We weren't alone.
Our parents, siblings, and a few friends were up in the balcony, and they all got to their feet and cheered.
Then they raced downstairs to celebrate with us.
We all headed over to Jimmy's Diner to celebrate. The rest of that evening...who knows what happened...I only remember thinking that I was an engaged woman, that I was getting married. To ADAM DREHER. Holy cow. I must be dreaming.
To be continued...
