As quickly as you’d like

This is the next installment in a rather long series about how Daniel and I met–and have become engaged. Click on the “Our Story” tag for context.

We were sitting around my mom’s patio table sometime in the spring (possibly over Memorial Day?). It was Dad, myself, and at least one of my siblings.

We must have been talking about some couple we knew who’d been dating for a long while, wondering, perhaps, when they might become engaged. I might have commented that it’s better for them to deliberate, make sure they knew for sure before getting married, because Dad’s response was:

“Now, Rebekah, you can get married as quickly as you’d like.”

I was a little shocked, a little uncertain what to think.

Was this another “I want grandbabies” comment? But Dad didn’t usually make those comments to me. He made those comments to the people who could do something about it–my married brothers.

Dad must have seen the confusion on my face, because he clarified, “I think that when you’re a little older, more mature, you know yourself and what you want better. So you can make up your mind more quickly. You don’t have to wait around once you know.”

Dad’s earlier comment, made when I had no romantic interests whatsoever on the horizon, came back to me now and became rather an obsession.

What did he mean by that? Did he mean that? Now that things were no longer abstract… Now that I was dating a man who I rather already knew I wanted to marry… Now that I was dating a man who’d already told me that he wanted to marry me…

Did Dad’s earlier comment about timing still stand?

I texted Dad to set up a time to talk. We agreed to Skype on Thursday night, after Mom was done with worship practice so that she could be in on the conversation as well.

We opened our Skype conversation with a brief bit of small talk before I plunged into the question at hand:

“Remember when you said I could get married as quickly as I wanted to? Did you mean that?”

Mom and Dad looked at each other and looked back at me. They opened their mouths and closed them again. They looked at one another again. Finally, Dad spoke. “Do you have an offer on the table?”

I hadn’t realized what my question might mean to them. “No, I don’t. Sorry to have scared you there.”

Dad’s response was measured. “I don’t know. I think there’s definitely value in being deliberative, in making sure you’re sure. But then again, I’m a deliberative sort of guy.”

I laughed, teased a bit. “So you’re saying that if Daniel’s like you, he’ll finally decide to ask me to marry him three years from now?” (Mom and Dad dated for rather a long time before they became engaged.)

Dad’s response was more sober: “How do you know Daniel’s not like me?”

I’d jumped the gun on relationships before, had been thinking marriage when that wasn’t where the guy was at. I wondered if Dad was thinking of that.

But I had a response for Dad. “I know because he’s already told me that he’d like to marry me someday.”

I already knew where Daniel was taking us, knew that I wanted to go where he was taking us. I just needed to know if Dad meant what he’d said about it being okay to travel that route quickly.