Part 2. {read Part 1 Here}
It was my 19th birthday, a few short weeks into the fall of my freshman year. The crispness of fall was hinting on early mornings, classes were getting settled into and the stress and excitement of a new life was feeling a bit more normal. A group of people from the on campus ministry I was involved with got together and took me out for smoothies right about when that trend was starting. We sat, laughing and I felt at home and at ease. … almost.
You see, He wasn’t there.
I felt that disappointment, when you smile and you are trying to have a great time while completely distracted thinking about someone, somewhere else. It’s a polarizing feeling- being both happy in the moment you are living in but wholly with your mind another place too.
I couldn’t get him out of my head.
That first time I talked to him there was that twist, the click, stars aligning. I knew I could marry him. I’d fumbled through our first conversation, bumbling, blushing and stammering. I was no good at this- this conversation with the opposite sex. …Well, the ones who were hot.
and it scared the crap out of me. I was young. I hadn’t planned on meeting someone so soon. or maybe ever. I didn’t know, I don’t know, I just knew that I liked him a lot. He was different than any boy I had every talked with, he had a maturity and authority about him that so many others lacked. He was, actually, not a boy, but a man. An old soul. He made every other boy around me seem silly and childish. We both had overcome growing up in ministry homes and still loved our parents and Jesus. No small feat.
That was part of what scared me. It wasn’t just a crush, the silliness of it all, it felt so real. I didn’t have to pretend around him like I had to do with so many others and it was refreshing. A breath of fresh air after years of staleness.
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He found me the following week after the worship meeting.
I was palms sweaty and butterfly filled, both tongue tied and couldn’t stop talking.
He smiled. I liked his green eyes.
Fresh from almost a year in Denver, he was everything I found attractive at the time. He loved to ski, had a red off-roading jeep, wore plaid shirts and North Face vests, had a close walk with Jesus, a good relationship with his family as well as direction and life goals. He wasn’t going to let life just happen to him. He asked me questions about myself and my life. He cared. He laughed when I joked around and thought I was funny in a good way.
I found myself relaxing around him, able to have a conversation like with someone I had known a long time. He was like a friend but with a pulsing electricity buzzing around him.
We spoke and 30 minutes passed like a second.
The next week the same thing happened.
The following week he slipped a note in my hand as I walked in.
I opened it as the worship music started, a pre-Heypenny lead singer sang songs as girl sat at the front changing the clear plastic song lyrics from an overhead projector. I vividly remember wishing that someday I could do that job as her larger than life hands moved as shadows on the wall.
Ben had asked me out in a note. I was flummoxed. The first time I was ever asked out was in an almost identical note in 4th grade, a boy chasing me to my car, pushing a carefully folded note through a chain link fence. Had I been so wrong to think Ben was mature? I smiled awkwardly at him across the way when our eyes met. I felt confused- part of me was elated that for the first time a boy I liked so very much asked me out but the fashion in which he did so was simply not what my Disney princess romantic heart had hoped for. Nope… not at all but my heart kept pounding, considering it.
In conjunction with these mixed feelings of the heart was the fact my fear motivated brain was slamming on the brakes as well. It was a protective mechanism from 4th grade, unhealed rejection from that girl who had been my friend then suddenly, unexpectedly wasn’t. Don’t let anyone close or they will hurt you. Every time a boy had asked me out in my life, starting with that sweet little boy with the note a few months after that girl hurt me, I had said no. NO. I might like someone but letting them in would be a bad idea.
No. I stared at the small “no” box on his note and felt my adrenaline running wild.
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