The Great Back Hair Debate of 2007

Throughout history there have been various major significant events that go on to shape the future of the world. War is often a part of these defining moments. The Great Depression. The Holocaust. The Great Potato Shortage in Ireland. These events created an atmosphere of strife and of determination in those who lived through them. Those people became resilient, hopefully, confidant and wise. Through great strife arose a spirit of appreciation, thankfulness, and steadfastness. In the world of Daren and Sarah we have just experienced one such major event "The Great Back Hair Debate".

We began our weekend as we often do, with a workout class on Saturday morning. This particular morning we chose Spinning class at our local gym. This class was ridiculously hard and caused us both to go into a state of low blood sugar which may or may not have attributed to the following sequence of events.

There was already an air of tension filling the room that should have been recognized before the next sentence was ever muttered from this bride-to-be's mouth. " Hey, we should wax your back" Now please understand that the hair I was offering to wax is about 3-5 stray strands of hair. No sweaters here! The offer was much more for my own enjoyment than anything else. The answer, of course, was an immediate "No." I, not always taking the no means no philosophy to heart, kept at it and asked a good four more times in various ways and offering up different hair removal options. This time the answer was a much more adamant "No" Following by a fervent "I don't want to change anything about you!" ......Oooops.

The battle then lasted us a full three days and grew in size to cover a remarkable number of topics ranging from plastic surgery opinions to money matters to the need to recycle and even on to how I could call a child Olive but that I don't actually like to eat olives. In the end we both agreed that there is a certain amount of pressure that comes along with being engaged and planning to spend your lives together for the rest of your life that makes such trivial matters feel of utmost importance.

I love being engaged and I love the man I am engaged to. This weekend of conflict was full of frustration, tears, raised voices...sure. But it was also full of deep, passionate communication that allowed us to walk away with a deeper understanding of each other and of where we want to take our future marriage. I think that people spend way too much time keeping their real feelings about life experiences quite. Getting married is very exciting but it is also a lot of change and that causes stress, anxiety and even fear and no one really talks about that. In no way does admitting to these feelings mean that I do not want to marry Daren, nor does it mean that we won't have a happy marriage.

Being engaged is an incredibly exciting season of life. But remember that each seasons climate causes harsh spots. The Great Back Hair Debate of 2007 will go down in our history books as a big battle that helped us move closer to each other, revealed even more of our authentic selves and will give us plenty of fodder to laugh about over the years.