10 Years Later

While I'm on the topic of college dating, I thought I'd share another story, a shot in the arm of sorts, before the Lord brought the real deal into my life... Mr. Wike.

In my final semester of undergrad, I felt like the Lord spoke to my heart and said, "I'm going to bring someone into your life this summer, but I want you to do a couple of things to prepare yourself." My initial thought was, "Really? Was that really You, Lord? Cause if it is, I'm down... but..." Anyways, I decided to do the two assignments just in case.

The first was to read the book, "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus." Great book, that I would definitely recommend. I had that one completed fairly quickly, and felt far more educated on the topic of the uniquenesses of men and women.

The second was inspired by something I'd read in the book, "Celebration of Discipline." It was written by a Pastor named Richard Foster. One of the chapters was on Confession, and Pastor Foster wrote of how in his early days as a pastor, he felt that he lacked power in his ministry. As he began to study historical spiritual leaders, he realized that the practice of confession to another human being was a discipline that has largely been lost in the Protestant Church. As a result, he chose to sit down and write out detailed lists of his sins from childhood, young adulthood and adulthood. He then confessed them all to a trusted friend. This became my second task.

One of my closest friends flew through California on her way to China for the summer, and we had the oppotunity to take a short trip to Catalina Island. Ten years earlier, I had prayed to receive Christ on this Island, and hadn't been back since, so it was a significant trip for me. She and I returned to the little man-made beach in Avalon where I gave my heart to the Lord, and there I confessed my sins to her. When we were done, I prayed, "Alright, Lord. If that was You, my parts done!"

That night my friend and I visited the young adults ministry at my church for the first time since I'd been back in California, and I met Daniel. It wasn't till the next week that I realized he was interested in me. I had spent the majority of that first evening telling him all about the screenplay I was writing. He apparently was intrigued.

We spent the majority of the summer hanging out, and a few weeks into it he asked, "So did you think you were going to meet someone this summer?" Through a smile, I said yes, and told him my story. He laughed and said, "Do you want to hear my story?"

About 5 months earlier, Daniel had been praying with one of our prophetic pastors about his future spouse. He was in his late 20's, and definitely had marriage on the mind. As they prayed, the pastor said, "Do you know anyone named Laura, Laurie, Laur... I'm just getting that name for you." Daniel did not, so they moved on. Then, about a week before we met, they were praying again, and the pastor said, "I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I think the Lord's going to bring someone into your life pretty soon." And what do you know.

Normally I'm not really fond of of prophetic words that speak to romantic relationships, but in this case things seemed to line up. We both thought immediately that this type of meeting automatically meant that we were destined to be married. But that is not what the Lord had said. We drew our own little conclusions. ;) By the end of that summer we had figured out that destiny was not winding our paths together, and we parted on good terms.

So what was this all about? I definitely asked myself that question. No doubt it was a blessing to feel encouraged in the fact that I was desirable and someone could feel this way about me after a long season of not much dating at good old Wheaton. I also think there's value in just getting to know people even if something serious doesn't come of it. That leads me back to my philosophy on dating, which is significantly influenced by Henry Cloud's book, "How to Find a Date Worth Keeping." Maybe I'll touch on that at some point. We'll see. ;)