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FixerUpperMarriage.org/vanilla Plain Vanilla Ice Cream I just want plain vanilla ice cream. I am in our church fellowship hall, it’s a large multipurpose building with a dining area, kitchen, and serving area. I am walking up to the table to place my order of ice cream. I really don’t care for ice cream, but occasionally I will just randomly crave it. I usually don’t even finish it. But my pastor had bought a commercial-style ice cream machine for our church and was obsessing over it. It even somehow found his way into sermons and he was constantly tinkering with it. So I guess all that talk made me want to try some.  Now I am at the table where my close friend is serving. I say to her, “I just want plain vanilla ice cream.” Of course, she tries to talk me into extra toppings. Because want kind of person just wants plain vanilla ice cream? “No, I just want plain vanilla ice cream”, so she rushes to the machine, but hands the bowl off to a stranger. This stranger walks up to the table and gives me the ice cream. She is beautiful. She has long auburn colored hair and green eyes. But when she smiles, it’s like the world stops spinning. I’ve liked some girls before but never had a person captivate me like this. So I give her my awkward introverted smile back but I am speechless. I want to ask, “who are you?”, but I just can’t get the words to come out of my mouth. I didn’t know it at the time, but one year later at the same place, we would be formally introduced by my pastor, eventually fall madly in love, get married and raise a family together. It’s a journey that started with plain vanilla ice cream. A moment that is frozen in time. The moment when I saw her for the first time. Our journey together is not over, but hanging over me is this dark cloud of dread and fear. It’s the unknown. The moment when I will see her for the last time. I don’t know when it will be, who will go first, or whether it will be unexpected or not. But I am hoping that I will look into her green eyes, hold her hand, and see her smile one last time. Because, after all, I just wanted plain vanilla ice cream, but she has given me so much more.  “To love is to be afraid. You are frightened, deathly terrified, that something will happen to those you love. [...] And love enslaves us all,