A Year in Review (Already!)
Exactly 1 year and a day ago, I arrived home from my two month trip to India.
A day later, I proposed to my then girlfriend, on the glass floor of Portsmouth's Spinnaker Tower.
We'd already booked the church and reception venue, and she'd bought her dress, so I was pretty sure that she would accept my proposal. I was very happy that she did.
Then for the next week, I went back to Holmsted Manor to complete the final week of my YWAM DTS course.
I'd loved being on the course, and you can read my past blog entries which talk more about what I did day by day - however, by then I was really feeling ready to move on to the next stage of my life.
I graduated from the course, had a short stay back with my parents, and moved back to Portsmouth, uncertain about what job I would find, and how I would find life as an engaged man.
Fortunately housing wasn't an issue, as some very kind friends let me rent a room in their house. Applying for jobs wasn't too hard either (finding one that I was accepted for was harder though). After a few interviews, eventually a job pretty much fell in to my lap, when I was asked to start working to see if I would be any good at the job, and they saw that I was.
With my job now sorted, the majority of my time was used being with my fiancé. When I started this blog before the DTS course, we weren't even together: she asked me out on the day that I left Portsmouth (actually in the car driving back home!). I'd liked her for quite a few years, but she always said she didn't see us getting together. Then when she understood that I was leaving Portsmouth for good, she had a change of heart, and realised that actually, she liked me too. And boy, did she leave it late to tell me!
Being away for the first 5 months, and being out of the country for 2 of those months was not how anyone would probably choose to start a relationship, but that's what happened, and I'm sure it was all in God's timing. Me getting back to Portsmouth was a bit of an odd time for both of us though, and we both had to adapt again to the new life we were living together.
It was somewhere around here that I found it hard to carry on blogging, with the time taken up with other activities, such as wedding planning. I'm sure I did some planning somewhere, really - I must have done some of it , right?
Well, my Bride-to-be and her Mum did most of the hard work, but I did my share.
And so from coming back to England and getting engaged, the other major event of the year was my wedding, and subsequent honeymoon in Paris, in October.
I enjoyed the day a lot. It was a great relief to get out of the Engaged stage of life, in which we'd both found struggles that we had not anticipated, and on to the Married stage, which has already had struggles, but ones that we create ourselves, rather than being forced on to us. Being October, we were glad it didn't rain, but the cold was quite harsh (I'm told - both my wife and I didn't really notice it). I was pretty sure I'd picked the right honeymoon destination, and my Wife's reaction to the news that we would be spending a week in Paris confirmed my suspicion: she was very pleased, and we had a fun time: three course meals in the Eiffel Tower, and on a river tour on the Seine, as well as a Segway tour of Paris and a day trip to Disneyland Paris were particular highlights.
Then we got in to the hard work of starting to live together! And then November and December flew past, and we got to Christmas, New Year, a bout of snow covering the whole country in January, and that brings me up to where I re-started this blog. 2009 was a pretty unusual year, dominated by a couple of key events: finishing off the YWAM DTS course, and getting married. Hopefully things can settle down for a bit, but we are getting ready for the ride of our lives: together.
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