After a few more long weeks at sea, I am finally heading home. I can’t wait to see Natalie. This is the longest we have been apart, and it seems like I have been gone forever. When I finally make it home and have her in my arms, it’s the most incredible feeling. As I look at her, all I can think about is that night I feared I might crash and how much I would regret not marrying her.

The next day, while she’s at work, I buy an engagement ring. Luckily, she has told me her ring size and the exact type of ring she wants at least 100 times.

My next mission is planning the proposal. In a few weeks, we have a vacation planned to Puerto Rico, and the timing is perfect, so I get to work. At HITRON, we are taught a lot about operational security, or OPSEC, and handle lots of sensitive equipment and information. The OPSEC required at HITRON pales in comparison to the secrecy required to keep this proposal a surprise. I handle all communications through my work email address and specifically instruct people not to contact me by phone about the proposal. I only tell people with a “need to know” if they are instrumental in the planning or playing a critical role. I tell nobody in my family because, as much as I love them, they are incapable of OPSEC. Having this secret is exhausting, but I want Natalie to be completely caught off guard.

The trip out to Puerto Rico is tense because I know I need to keep the ring in my carry-on, and I am paranoid about her seeing it or somehow losing it. I have an unreasonable fear of security pulling it out of my bag for no reason and blowing everything.

Eventually, we make it to Puerto Rico with the ring still secure. I have a spot picked out on the beach in Isabela at a beautiful resort where I have arranged for us to stay the night. I also tell her that because we are in town, a bunch of our friends from the Air Station are having a potluck at the beach. This is true, but created as a decoy, and most of my friends don’t know it’s a proposal. The day before, I call her mom and brother, who are in Puerto Rico, and invite them to the event. I figure they can hold a secret for less than 24 hours. I also make sure to ask her brother and father for permission. Everything is going as planned.

On the day of the proposal, I am nervous. Not because I am worried about what she will say. She has been demanding that I propose for years now, but because I want it to be perfect. After everything we have been through, the crashes, the pain, the suffering, and the long deployment, I want to give her something back, a moment she will cherish forever.

I tell Natalie I am going to hang out with one of my best friends, Jack, and that we are going to set up for the potluck. This is all true, and it works out perfectly because Jack is dating one of Natalie’s best friends, Nydia. Nydia is in on the plan and keeps Natalie busy all day. Luckily, Natalie is so focused on cooking up a masterpiece for the potluck that she doesn’t catch on to anything.

I arrive at the beach, and it is an absolutely gorgeous evening. There is a small covered pavilion right on the beach, and I set up a table with flowers. Some of my best friends from the Air Station are there, and Natalie’s mom, brother, and abuelos all show up. I’m starting to think I may have actually pulled off the surprise as we all anxiously await Natalie’s arrival.

We all watch Natalie pull up with her bestie, Nydia. She gets out of the car, totally unsuspecting, and Jack begins filming her. Once she gets closer, she finally sees her family there and all of our friends, and she is totally confused. She comes into the pavilion with me. I go down on one knee and say the words I’ve been rehearsing over and over for weeks.

“You are my best friend and the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Will you marry me?”

She says yes and cries a whole lot. We make a toast with some sparkling cider and celebrate with our friends and family. She is totally surprised.

Mission accomplished.

After we take some photos on the beach, we head into my friend’s house, who lives at the resort, and enjoy a potluck together. It feels incredible to be celebrating this moment with people who mean so much to me.

As soon as we get back from our Puerto Rico trip, we talk about getting married right away and having the big ceremony the next year. I only have a couple of months before I will be deployed again, and I can’t stop worrying about Natalie being taken care of if something happens to me. She would also immediately get all the military spouse benefits, and it’s important to me that she is looked after. We decide that we are going to do a small family wedding. In the months prior, I was terrified of marriage, and I saw it as something that only caused pain. Now I am only scared of deploying again without her as my wife.

I tell my sister about the plan, and we decide her husband, Kyle, should be the officiant. We plan a beach wedding between Jacksonville and Savannah. On June 6, on a beach in Florida, I stand next to Kyle with my feet in the sand. My sister has fashioned an aisle with a long piece of white cloth, bordered by shells and torches. As Kyle and I stand there, a giant thunderstorm rapidly develops, and the sky turns dark. The whole universe is saying, “You’ve made Natalie wait long enough. Get this thing over with already.”

My nieces act as flower girls and sling a bunch of rose petals down the aisle. Then Natalie walks toward me, holding a bouquet of sunflowers and looking as beautiful as ever in a white dress, with her curly hair blowing in the wind. Kyle gives an amazing speech over the sound of waves lapping against the shore and pronounces us husband and wife in front of my family.

We sign some papers, eat a small cake, and celebrate our love. There is not a doubt in my mind that she is the person I am supposed to spend my life with, and I will always feel like the luckiest man in the world. 

For the first time in a long time, I am not thinking about crashes, loss, or pain. For a precious moment, I am free from the next deployment, the next mission, or the next fight.

Standing there with Natalie, I only feel love.