Seeking Him First: Once upon a time...

...there was a young lady who was waiting for God to bring along her prince charming. And, though she waited, he never did seem to appear.
One day, though, she decided to take a class at the suggestion of one of her teachers. It was a small class and required much work. The big project of the semester would take countless hours of research and organization. There were two topic options for this project, and the one she chose was also chosen by one other person in this class. This person was someone who she did not really get along with very well (in fact her opinion of him was not exactly complementary...). Yet, as the semester drew on and the deadlines for the project began to loom, she was driven by sheer desperation to join forces with this other person so they could help each other get the project done.
The first big deadline came, and she was ready to print it off...but as everyone knows, printers NEVER work the day a project is due, and it certainly was not working for her that day! In panic, she rushed out to see if anyone could help her. The only person she could find was this young man Caleb, the same person she had worked on the project with. After several attempts to help, he finally put her whole project on his computer and got it printed off for her, and they headed down to class together...and were 5 minutes late...but at least it was done!! The young lady was very impressed by Caleb's kind willingness to go to such lengths to help her, and she began to realize how wrong her opinions of this young man had been.
From this time on, these two were good friends, and continued to encourage and help each other through the rest of the hard semester. What the young lady did not know was that it was starting to be more than friendship, and that by Thanksgiving Caleb had asked her father's permission to begin a more serious relationship and told him he had been praying about her. As the holidays came, however, she started to realize just how much she really did care about this young man, and began to pray about him. After the New Year, the young lady's father gave his permission, and the couple had as their first "date" the college volleyball marathon. Months went by, the two began to become closer and closer friends, and began to truly love each other. The young lady was sure that her prince charming had finally come.
A few days ago, this same young lady was sitting in choir, early in the afternoon. Caleb poked his head in the door, smiling, and said "Casey, come on!! Get your stuff!" She grabbed her school bag and headed out the door with him, asking him what was up. There was a couple in the church they both knew and who were moving, but had been saying they wanted to do something with them before leaving. Caleb said that it was going to work out for that afternoon, and he knew that she liked surprises. She did of course, and was excited to get to spend the afternoon with him, especially since Caleb said that before they went to dinner they were going for a hike in the dunes park, which was something she LOVED to do. At the dunes they hiked one of the longer trails, but she did not mind because it was fun to just be able to take a quiet afternoon in the midst of the busyness of school. At the end of the trail, they overlooked the lake, and then went down to the waterfront. Once they got to the shore, Caleb started to walk very fast, insisting they had to hurry or they would be late for their reservation at the restaurant. (little did she know he had to be at a certain spot at a pre-arranged time!) After walking down the beach quite a distance, he stopped, saying they had a minute to rest, and wait for the others to catch up. He bent down and wrote "I love you" in the sand.

Thinking it sweet, the young lady bent down and drew a heart around the words.

And then, she got the biggest surprise she ever had...

As she stood up, the young man knelt down on his knee, held up the most beautiful of rings, and asked this young lady to do him the honor of being his wife!

And, of course, she said yes!!!

One more surprise was still waiting, though. In his thoughtfulness, he had arranged for a photographer to be hiding at a certain, prearranged spot on the beach, to take pictures of the whole thing...

Then he asked her to turn around and look...and was she EVER surprised...He had planned this whole thing so well!

He told the young lady that he wanted to take her back to this spot because he knew she loved it there, and this was the same place he had first told her he loved her :)