“Can two walk together, unless they are agreed”? Amos 3:3 NKJV
One swelteringly hot evening 30 years ago, I took my father’s arm and walked down an aisle towards the man who would become my future. In a gown covered in antique lace, my long hair swung in a loose knot and decorated only with baby’s breath, the evening seemed surreal. Weeks before I had been sleeping in a cot in an Indian orphanage, days filled with children and friends, feet shod in flip flops. Now my feet were in satin heels dyed to match the exact shade of my gown. There was a diamond on my left hand. Pinch me, someone, I think I must be dreaming….
Leaving behind me years of airplanes and mud huts and preaching and teaching and singing and praying; before me were years of airplanes and mud huts, and apartments, tiled roofed homes, and a son, and a dog, and preaching and teaching and singing and praying. And laughter.
As I joined Dan at that altar, the joy in the room and the joy between us was palpable. Then, Dan leaned in and whispered something so funny, I caught the giggles.
What he said to me, right in the middle of the ceremony, was, ‘Will you marry me?” In the only 5 or so weeks that we had been engaged, he had asked me every single day: “Will you marry me?” And my answer, which I gave him every single day, never ceased to cause him great delight and wonderment. “Yes. Oh, yes!”
Now, standing before a large and loving crowd, and as Pastor Mark Geppert was talking about the significance of the rings, Dan and I stood facing each other. Suddenly he grinned, leaned forward to me just slightly and whispered my name: “Debbie?”
I was startled and whispered back, “What??”
“Will you marry me?”
Well, this just struck me as so funny, us standing in front of nearly 600 people, Mark raring up to begin the vows, and…what on earth did he think?? I could feel the muscles in my face begin to spasm into a laugh, and I choked out a whispered: “Yes!!” And then. The giggles. Recorded for posterity, me laughing through the entire ceremony. My husband who has always had the ability to make me collapse in laughter, started things off in that very manner. The daily proposal is one of the sweetest things that has ever happened to me. It bed rocked into me the knowledge of what it is to be truly desired. To be the object of that much love and hope.
“Will you marry me?”
And, these 30 years later, if he were to ask me again, “Debbie, will you marry me?”
Yes! Oh, yes, my love.
~ Debbie Ecker
