Diamond in the Rough

             This past weekend was an eventful one. After two and a half years of dating a wonderful man, he proposed to me and we are now engaged! In the world of small towns and Facebook, this is probably not much of a secret to anyone who knows either of us. I have had to literally disable Facebook notifications from my iPhone because it has been a constant stream of comments, likes, posts, and tags. In today’s information world, not much is kept secret. I’m guessing you’d like to know how he proposed to me. And if you know me personally, you’d know anything that happens to me is an interesting and partially comical story.

                We began the day with a picnic at the interstate park in Taylor’s Falls. After our little picnic, he went to the car to grab something. He began with a clue and a letter that explained he wanted to do something nice for me every week leading up to our actual engagement to throw me off. Of course I bought the story without any hesitation. Since we began dating, he wrote me a letter every single month for two and a half years, and in each clue he had snippets of those letters guiding me through different stops along the hiking trail. Each stop meant a new clue and letter.

                Well by the time we started hiking, the sun came out and it was beginning to grow fairly warm. Luckily I had worn plenty of layers and I was stripping them off gradually, but Michael was still wearing his fleece zip-up. “Why don’t you take that off, it’s getting so hot out!” I said, since I could see beads of sweat forming on his forehead. “No, I’m fine. I’ll just leave it on.” Because little did I know, in the pocket of that jacket was the ring. I kept persisting that he should take it off, but he refused every time.

                As the walk progressed, he kept getting more and more sweaty. Finally, the last stop on the map was upon us. A year ago, we had carved our names in a tree at this park, but it wasn’t in a very obvious spot. In fact, it was in the middle of the woods and the last time we were there we didn’t bother to mark where it was. After not finding it for quite some time, I noticed Michael’s forehead was now dripping. I suggested we split up to find our tree.

                Later Michael told me he was praying like crazy that we would find it; otherwise he didn’t know what he was going to do. After searching alone, I found it, “Michael! Over here!” I yelled. He quickly ran over to me. We were standing there admiring our handiwork from a year ago when he said, “Look a deer!” I turned around. “Where?” I didn’t see a deer, and was disappointed, but when I turned around Michael was down on one knee with a ring box in his hand.

                You would think my first reaction was to cry or clasp my hand over my mouth. Instead, it was, “What are you doing!?” I was in so much shock I actually thought it was a joke. “Is this a joke!? What’s happening? What are you doing? Oh my Gosh! Are you joking?” Poor Michael was trying to say his planned speech, but I kept stammering like an idiot. “I’m trying to propose to you Abby! This is not a joke.” Then the tears came, but I still kept stammering. In between sobbing I said, “You – you grabbed the wrong hand! It’s this one!” I honestly can’t remember what he said. All I heard was that I was beautiful and amazing and “Abigail Luray Ingalls, will you marry me?”

                If anyone were to see this event take place, they would think I was a hysterical, crazy woman. Shortly after, I was sobbing and laughing at the same time. Also immediately after the crying and the kissing and the hugging waned, he quickly ripped off his fleece jacket, relieved to finally have some fresh air.

                As we walked hand in hand back to our original picnic spot, I admired the way the ring sparkled in the sun, still stunned and shocked that I am now an engaged woman with a fiancé instead of a boyfriend. 

But as I looked up at him, I knew in my heart he was the one I had been waiting for, and the only one I want to spend the rest of my days with. I can't wait to marry the love of my life and my best friend and I am so thankful and blessed that God brought him into my life. I love you Michael Roeller. 

The Pursuit

After traveling to several countries and having the honor to live in New Zealand for a year, I feel that I have been presented a gift; a relic along the seashore. This gift is the gift of perspective. To see and experience how other cultures live, how they live along side each other as citizens, humans, neighbors. My Americanized version of life has been taken a part and then reassembled with new eyes because of these different perspectives. 

You do realize there is an entire world out there right? Besides the one where you, reader, now comfortably sit in your easy chair with a pantry stocked full of food. The more you experience more of life, the world and other cultures - the more you realize you know nothing at all. The more you realize there's more to life than a comfortable house, job, chair etc. Life wasn't meant to be comfortable. 

However, being an American entails some sense of responsibility; to your country, to yourself as an individual, and to other Americans. Whether you know it or not, compared to many parts of the world, you are privileged to be an American. In the Declaration of Independence, there is a phrase that strikes me; "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

As an American, as a human being, you have the right to pursue Happiness. 

Pursue. Do you know what that word means? It means to follow, to strive, to gain, to chase, seek to attain or accomplish. But, many Americans chase or pursue that happiness in areas that always fail. Money, sex, power, success (by American standards), clothes, drugs, body image.... 

Let me tell you, I have looked into the eyes of beggars in Italy, poverty-stricken children in Mexico, the simplistic lives of school children in Thailand, laid back New Zealanders with small lives and little drive in life - and I have seen happiness. 

Some of the happiest people I have met do not have much. 

I met a Canadian in Thailand. He was on the back of an Elephant and so was I, and my family and I talked to him as the magnificent beast slowly walked around the most beautiful garden I had ever seen. He quit his comfortable job and was traveling the world.

I met a middle-aged woman who was kicked out of her home in her early teens, just because her parents didn't like her. She had the reading level of a first grader, couldn't drive, never had a career - but she worked with so much zeal, had an extremely compassionate heart and read the Bible every morning; slowly, articulately, word by word. Her face perpetually glowed with joy. 

I met a three-year-old girl on a busy Minneapolis street. With dirt smeared on her face and a messy hairdo she seemed like any other toddler; but her and her family were homeless. She lived and slept in a stroller in her little pink T-shirt. But when my sister and I brought her food in a couple of grocery bags, she ran to us screaming, laughing and smiling - overflowing with happiness and joy. 

I also met a CEO who gave up his dreams to become an artist and focused on business and marketing instead. He lived in an office, interacted little with his employees, and scolded his interns twice for not having the overhead light on over our desks. He had it all, in the worldly sense.

Our pursuit of happiness should never be to get to the highest level of success or to obtain materialistic things. In the end, those things matter little. Find what makes you happy, not content or comfortable, but rather fulfilled and joyful - and do it. Live always in the pursuit of something greater than yourself. 

Down the Rabbit Hole

“So she sat on with closed eyes, and half believed herself in Wonderland, though she knew she had but to open them again, and all would change to dull reality.” 

― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass 




A professor once told me about a student he had in class only a few years ago. The student suddenly looked up over the top of his laptop and said, "You know? I believe our culture and generation today has lost their ability to wonder." And I believe that to be true. 

I have a bit of a confession to make: I am borderline obsessed with Alice in Wonderland. I bought an antique Alice in Wonderland book for $20 at an antique store and I am in love with everything about it. If you take the protective sleeve off, the cover is this rich green with beautifully etched designs on the front and the spine of the hardcover. The pages smell like a spice cupboard mixed with wood chips, and are filled with beautiful original illustrations. 

I bought the complete collection of Lewis Carroll at Barnes & Noble for only $7 and it sits on my nightstand next to my Alice in Wonderland mug. The old paperback book I have of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass has pages falling out and the cover ripping off. 

But what I love most about Alice and her absurd adventures is her ability to wonder, imagine, and to be curious. 

I feel so lost in a world where people go through their day and life without stopping to look, or ask, or wonder in awe about something. With all this amazing, profound technology surrounding us we use it and never stop to think - how did this happen? How did we get to a place where we can talk to our phones and this thing called Siri talks back to us!?

We are becoming like the man in the story and short film, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. It takes place during the Civil War and he is about to be hanged. It isn't until he stands at the edge of the bridge about to have his life ended, that he suddenly notices the little things. The beautiful day, the sun rising, the birds chirping, the leaves, the sand, the way the water moved in the river below, the way the trees danced in the breeze. It isn't until something threatening happens to us, or something is about to be taken away from us, when we stand in wonder at the beauty around us. 

Alice began her big adventure by following something completely out of the ordinary: A talking white rabbit wearing a waist coat and a pocket watch. What would have happened if Alice saw that and thought to herself, "Hm, that's strange!" but then went on with her studies and didn't follow her sense of curiosity. Or what would have happened if Alice was too busy texting and and scrolling through her Facebook news feed to even notice this marvelous, extraordinary sight? She would have never gone to Wonderland, there never would have been this big adventure, and the rest of the book would have been about her boring book with no pictures and her mute cat Dinah. 


Take my nieces, or kids in general. They ask questions. Lots of them. You answer one question and you think, "Great, that's done with!" but no, they have to ask, "But, why?" One time my niece asked after driving by a cemetery what all those stones were out there. "They're graves, it's where people's bodies get buried after they die," her mother said.

"But why do we bury people after they die?"

"Well, we've been doing that for a very long time and we need to get rid of the body after they die somehow."

"But... why?"

And the conversation went on like this for quite sometime. I'm not sure if it got anywhere, but she asks some very great questions. Kids also are not afraid to dream and imagine great, big, absurd, silly things. My niece believes that when she gets to heaven her skin will be indigo, because that's her favorite color. Who knows, maybe she's right. She also thinks the other side of the lake is a whole other country with people who dress differently and speak a different language than us.

We have lost our ability to wonder. We have become desensitized and numbed to every day miracles happening all around us.

Have you ever wondered, I mean truly wondered about why we get hiccups? Or why we have to close our eyes when we sneeze? Or how the birds just know when to come back or go away during the change of seasons and where to go? Or why we started in the first place to color our cheese orange, because it sure as heck isn't naturally that way!

I believe we need to step out of our go-go-go reality for a little bit each day, and step into Wonderland. Because if we lose our ability to wonder... that will truly be a terrifying and awful reality.