A Rolled-up Engagement

Here’s a letter to our Marriage Prep Professor explaining why we wouldn’t be in class on the Monday following a long weekend:

I am informing you that, unfortunately, Aaron and I will be unable to attend class on Monday due to extenuating circumstances. We were hoping to get extra credit for the hilarious engagement story that I am about to share with you.

We were headed to Wyoming for a funeral when a little accident happened...While rocking out to Crosby Stills and Nash, I momentarily blacked out - unfortunately, I was the one driving - I came to when Aaron yelled my name and realized that I was driving in the grass on the side of the road. I pulled hard to get back onto the freeway (oops) and over-corrected. I then over-corrected my over-correction (oops) and found that we were driving backwards staring down the lights of a semi! Luckily, the car spun around again and we were thrown off the road onto the muddy plains of Wyoming. The mud slowed us, but rolled us which, I'm sorry to report, means I totaled my then soon-to-be fiance's car (right before meeting the parents by the way).

When we came to a stop, and he knew I was okay, Aaron started laughing and didn't really stop laughing. Apparently it was exhilarating. I was terrified. The lovely, indigenous population of Wyoming were so good as to help us out and we were soon ticketed (for failure to maintain a single lane...) and driving to the nearby town of Rawlins.

It was there, amongst some of the lovely truckers of the nation, that Aaron "popped the question" - he says he lost the truck but he got the girl...It was a good trade :) The waiter was amazed at our choice of venue in which he proposed and told his manager, who in turn took our lovely (and actually quite horrendous) picture to put in his nation-wide TA Truck Stop Magazine.

Needless to say, we will not be attending class on Monday. It will take us longer to walk back. But we will be studying eternal marriage at home with my semi-terrified future in-laws. They have now realized what their son has gotten them into. :)

Thanks for your class!
Love,
Aubrey and Aaron

The Birds and the Worms

They were naked and bruised, and I grimaced when I saw them. Their long, gooey bodies hurled for the dirt that they had just popped out of, yet they couldn't squeeze back into their already vanished holes. At first, I worked around them so that I wouldn't kill these worms. After a while, though, it was too difficult and I just didn't think about where I dug my shovel into. A child's playful scream brought me back from my thoughts and back to my worms, however - specifically to the one that was just about to be cut in two by me. Suddenly a thought came to me and I smiled: I would save this worm's life.

For a moment, I felt powerful to some degree. I held life, no matter how small, in the palm of my hand; and whether it continued in this ugly but incredible manifestation was completely up to me. I held it in triumph.

Yes, I'll save it. And I threw it over my head toward a pile of cushy dirt. But the worm landed, instead, in the beak of a swooping bird.

I think I felt the Creator smiling in the breeze.