I Met A Girl

I met a girl. She's awesome. And what's more, she thinks I'm awesome. We are very awesome. You might say that I'm in love. I've told her that I love her at least a hundred times now. It feels good to say "I love you" when you mean it. I couldn't really say that to a girl until now. Now it's not hard to say it at all, in fact, it just feels like a sin not to say it. We've also kissed. I've heard some Christians say that you shouldn't kiss before you're married. Maybe they're right. Kissing is dangerously fun. Why is it so fun? I don't know, but it's not as fun if you don't love the person. But I love this girl, and so it's fun to kiss her. Ever since we started dating, I've felt like I was dreaming. I know that sounds corny and it's probably because of some chemical imbalance, but that's how I've felt. I keep thinking that it's too good to be true. If I don't see her for a day then I think that I imagined it all. Maybe it's because somewhere along the line I'd become a cynic about true love. I was beginning to wonder if it really existed. It seems that when life pranks us over and over again, we become skeptical about anything that resembles hope. Or love.

 To tell you the truth, falling in love was terrific and terrifying at the same time. I found myself asking scary questions like "What if she doesn't love me as much as I love her?" or "Does this mean that I have to start tucking in my shirt?" And then I began to wonder if God was going to get mad at me for loving her so much. I didn't want Him to get jealous that I was giving her so much attention. I didn't want to get into trouble, I didn't want to mess it up. I'm not going to lie, there have been some bumps in the road. We've had a few minor arguments, but in hindsight I realize that even those arguments were really because of love, love finding some kind of traction through trust. We were both feeling like we were miles off the ground, and if this thing didn't work out then it was going to hurt. Someone told me to guard my heart and I told him that I'd heard that before but now I wasn't sure what that meant. In the past, guarding my heart meant keeping people at a distance. But I didn't want to keep this girl at a distance. I wanted to let her in. I wanted to risk a little in order to reach for something a little impossible.

It's fun to tell people about the person you love. When I told my parents, my mom said "I've never heard you talk like that before about a girl." I probably look and sound a little crazy when I tell people about her, then they naturally want to meet her, probably just to make sure that I'm not crazy. I think that's how it should be when we tell people about Jesus too. We should be so intense and giddy as we talk about Jesus that people should want to meet him. He really is a very nifty person. He created a whole world full of galaxies and oceans and music and the girl I love. If that doesn't spark interest in people then they are uninteresting people.

 I see why it's a bad idea to love someone more than God. When something good tries to pose as God then it actually becomes a lie, because it can never be God, God is God. It's always a bad idea to let a lie rule your life. Through all of this, I keep telling God that He is my supreme love. He is God. But I'm not really reminding Him, I'm reminding myself. This girl is a gift from God, one more expression of God's love to me. It's scary how our eyes can get so fixated on a gift more than the person giving it. The dangerous thing about God's generosity is that we can become very selfish and spoiled children. We can even forget to love him back. And yet there's also a curious dimension to this in that I can love God to a certain degree by loving this girl. By romancing her, I can't help but see God smiling from ear to ear. He's blessed when she's blessed. He probably even chuckles when he sees us together, we can be very silly. Sometimes one of us will pretend we are going in for a kiss and then lick the other's nose. She started it. We've shared some nutty experiences. Like the other day, we were standing in the extremely long line at Voodoo Donuts in Portland. Suddenly, hundreds of people started screaming and pointing and running down the street. Most of the people jumped out of line which was fine with me. A surprise appearance by Godzilla himself would not prevent me from partaking in the rare delicacy of an Oreo/Marshmallow donut. So what was everyone freaking out about? Well, apparently once a year Portland hosts a parade where thousands of people ride bikes through downtown. And they are naked. I've never seen so many naked people, I'm probably scarred and need lots of prayer and healing now. Anyway, we got our donuts and ate them while surrounded by the delightfully romantic ambiance of thousands of streakers on wheels. Yes, thank you Portland for that indelible memory, you really are weird, but I still love you. Anyway, dating is lots of fun. To be continued...