(This is the sixth in a series of posts detailing my testimony as I trace the faithfulness of God from my birth until the present day)
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” -1 Corinthians 13:4-7
“An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels. . . . Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” -Proverbs 31:10, 30
Smack in the middle of my first venture into serial dating, God hit me with the death blow (though I was soon to find out that this was the most welcome death blow imaginable). As I have said prior, my reputation as a skirt-chaser at this point had kept me from being able to actually date any of the girls from my church that I should be pursuing. Yet, as my second year of college came to a close, I found myself suddenly enamored with one of these girls anyways. She was a little older than me, very mature in her walk with the Lord, and yet completely down to earth. We had quickly become friends, even though my early attempts at conversation had been met with more trepidation than openness, and she was certainly someone I knew I could connect with on a deeper level than anyone else in the group.
I continued at the same pace as before, dating whoever I could find on a Friday night, though as time went on my affections for this girl grew and grew. I would stop by her workplace just to see her for a few minutes. We would hangout with everyone out to dinner, and then afterwards the two of us would linger on, talking and sharing more intimate aspects of our person with one another. Yet, through all of this, she appeared to show no particular feelings for me.
Finally, after months of waiting, and much searching through prayer, I made the decision that I should take the risk and let her know that I liked her. The next day I spoke with one of my friends and asked for him to pray for me in this venture as well. Then suddenly, opposition. I received a phone call from one of the girls I was close to outside of church. She sounded depressed and proceeded to inform me that her boyfriend of the past eight months had dumped her. Uh-oh. This was a girl I had had a crush on for years, and though she wasn’t a Christian, there was always a part of me that wanted to date her. So, against my better judgment, that night I went over to her house to console her.
The next 45 days were insane. I began to see my friend from school casually, going to movies and talking on the phone, while still inside I was burning with affection for the girl at church. Everyday felt like a tightrope, walking between the present reality of a girl I had always wanted but wasn’t the right one or the chance of a future reality with a girl who I had recently become enamored with and who was much more in line with God’s desires. Finally, one night, after going to the movies (with a guy for a change), I realized what I must do. Driving away from the theater I called my friend and told her that I couldn’t be with her anymore. I explained that I really liked her, had always liked her, but that I knew that it was God’s will for me to be with someone else. With that decision, for the first time denying myself an easy relationship in favor of the one God wanted, I set a collision course with destiny.
The next weekend I went to see the same movie at the same theater, only this time a larger group went with me; a group which contained the girl from church. We sat next to each other, though nothing really implied there, and after the movie we did our usual thing of lingering around at the cars long after everyone had left. Only this night I went for it. I told her how I felt about her, that I would like to date her, and asked her how she felt. Her response, however, was less than I had imagined. She said that she was not interested at this point, though she really enjoyed me as a friend, she was not looking to go any further right now. This hurt.
A little sad at being rejected, I headed home. However, something inside me told me not to give up. So, once I got home, I wrote her a letter telling her how I was willing to wait for her if that’s what it took and that I wanted to keep our friendship going, regardless of where we were at relationship-wise. I then put this note on her car window the next day while she was at work. Apparently it was worth it as the following morning at church she expressed to me how much hearing this meant and that she was glad that her rejection of me would not get in the way of our intimacy as friends.
For a month we continued in this way, growing closer and closer, spending more and more time together, until finally one night it boiled over. Sitting, then standing in her living room one evening after a movie night with the people from church, we shared our first kiss. A few days later this led to even more kisses as we snuggled close to each other, standing beside her car for 4 hours outside of a Wendy’s. We hadn’t decided to date yet, but we made plans to get together for a movie later that week to further see where we were at. But, two days later, she crushed me again, this time having me meet her at a McDonald’s on campus in order to tell me that she was still not ready to be in a relationship. Injured once more, I found the resolve in my spirit to stay the course, fully sold out to the fact that this was the direction God was taking me.
Another month went by and once again my impatience started to creep in. This time it was with another girl from church that I began spending time with, even though my heart still belonged solely to the first one. Nothing really ever developed here, but after about a week, something clicked in the original girl, and she called me one afternoon saying she wanted to get together to talk. That we did, and for the next couple of days we moved around in a sort of limbo, unsure what was going to happen.
Then it was Halloween. Following another evening of going out to eat with our friends, me, her, and another guy from church all headed back to my house to watch TV. This we did for a while and then we talked in the darkened living room, until finally, around 3am, people started dozing off. Sitting on the opposite end of the couch from me the girl fell asleep first, followed by the guy laying in the floor. About half an hour later though, the girl woke up and snuggled up next to me on the couch. We whispered to each other, hugged, and eventually started kissing. After a few minutes of this I looked her in the eyes and said what I knew God had shown me through all of this: “You’re going to marry me.” “Probably” was her response, and a few days later we finally began dating, knowing exactly where we would end up.
Posted by Todd Burus 
