Boy Meets Girl - Say Hello to Courtship

Say Hello to Courtship

How many times was Adam asked to retell the story? How many of his grandchildren (particularly his granddaughters) begged him to recount every detail of his first glimpse of Eve?

Can we blame them? Wouldn't you love to hear the story from his lips? Surely Adam's single descendents couldn't resist pestering him for information. How could they help it? Who would be more qualified to answer their questions about love than a participant in the
original
"boy meets girl"?

This is how I imagine one such conversation unfolding....

"When you saw her, what did you say?"

The old man's eyes danced.

"I didn't say anything, not at first," he answered. "I think I tripped on a root, and she laughed at me. She loved to laugh at me."

The girl tugged gently on his arm. Her name was Elanna. She was a favorite out of his countless great-great-grandchildren. But now she was a young woman full of life and questions.

"But eventually you spoke to her," Elanna said, determined to coax the story from him.

"I was flustered," he answered, shaking his head. "My mind was on fire with curiosity and a new kind of happiness. Here stood a creature after my own kind. Her every feature comforted my senses and invited me nearer. Her eyes looked back into mine with soul depth."

The old man paused his narrative. Elanna was wide-eyed.

"You'll understand that moment better when you have it yourself," he continued. "When you meet your soul's match, what words are adequate? Sometimes joy can almost choke you. When we first met, I wanted to whisper and shout and laugh and dance all in one moment."

"But instead you gave a speech," Elanna said playfully Her grandfather, or "First One" as people respectfully called him, was known for his speeches.

"Well, yes, you could call it a speech. I suppose it was. My first words in her presence must have sounded out of place. But the occasion demanded formality. It was momentous. The animals were gathering, and the Maker was waiting for my response."

Elanna slid her arm into her grandfather's as they walked into a clearing, a natural cathedral in the forest that siphoned the sunlight and painted speckles on the moss-covered ground. "Well, when you describe it that way, your first words are understandable," she said. "It was an inauguration."

Then he stopped walking and stood straighter. His voice deepened as he recited the words spoken on that day so long ago:

This is
now bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh;

she shall be called "woman"

for she was taken out of man.

When he finished, neither the old man nor the girl spoke for what seemed a long time. The woodland sounds filled the silence.

"That's beautiful," she finally said in an awed whisper.

"Elanna..."

"Yes, Grandfather?"

"You ask these questions because you yourself long to meet your souls match. Don't pretend I don't know you, child. You have your First Mothers eyes. They looked just like yours do now when she was longing for the Garden. But you miss someone you've never met. You want to run through time and glimpse that first meeting. You want to know how you'll know him. But you need not fret."

"But it doesn't seem fair to me," Elanna said, the words born of frustration tumbling out. "It was so easy for you. The Maker brought Grandmother to you. She was the only woman for you. She was the only woman!"

"Child..."

He reached out and with both hands lifted her head so her eyes looked into his. "My dear child, what you must try to see is that nothing has changed. When the Maker brings you your husband, you'll be aware that it was He who made you for each other and He who planned your meeting. And in that moment, just as we did, you'll want to sing a song of praise to Him."

15

What I've Learned Since I Kissed Dating Goodbye

The clock read 5:05 P.M. Shannon's workday was over. She enjoyed her job at the church, but she was ready to go home and unwind.

She began her familiar end-of-the-day routine: tidied her desk, shut down her computer, straightened a picture on her bookshelf, got her coat from the closet, and said her goodbyes. "Bye, Nicole," she said to the girl in the office beside her. "See you tomorrow, Helen," she called to the receptionist.

She walked through the quiet lobby and pushed open one of the heavy glass doors. The winter wind tugged at her as she made her way across the nearly empty parking lot. She climbed into her worn, navy blue Honda Accord and shut out the cold.

She lifted her keys to the ignition, and then paused. There, alone in the silence, the emotions she had kept at bay during the day came rushing in. Tears welled up in her eyes. She leaned her forehead against the steering wheel and began to cry.

is

I used to watch from my window as Shannon walked to her car at the end of each day. My office looked out over the parking lot.
What is she thinking about?
I wondered. 1 longed to know more about her-to go beyond our polite conversations as casual friends and coworkers and really get to know her.

But was it the right time? My heart had been wrong so many times before. Could 1 trust my feelings? Would she return my interest?

From my vantage point, Shannon Hendrickson seemed happy, confident, and oblivious of me. I was sure she liked another guy. As I watched her drive away, I whispered my own prayer.
What is
Your will
God? Is she the one? Help me to be patient. Show me when to act. Help me trust You.

How could I know that the girl in the navy blue Honda was crying as she drove away, or that I was the cause of her tears?

Three months later...

I was twenty-three years old, but my hands were acting like

they'd never dialed a phone number. I gripped my cordless

phone as if it were a wild animal trying to escape and tried

again.

You can do this,
I assured myself.

The phone rang three times before an answering machine picked up. She wasn't home. I gritted my teeth.
Should I leave a message?
The machine beeped, and I took the plunge.

"Hey, Shannon, this is Josh.. .uh, Harris."

For sixty-four agonizing minutes I analyzed whether or not the message I had left sounded cool and collected. Then the phone rang. I took a deep breath and answered.

It was Shannon.

"Hey, thanks for calling me back. How's it going?"

We chatted for a few minutes about her day and did our best to have a natural conversation, even though we both knew that my calling her was the most unnatural thing in the world. I finally got to the point and asked if she could meet me the next day after work at Einstein's, a local bagel shop. She said she could.

Before we hung up, I offered an ambiguous explanation for the rendezvous. "I need to talk...about a guy I know who's interested in you."

Good Questions

My phone call to Shannon might not seem like a big deal to most people, but for me it was monumental.

Why? Because five years earlier I had quit dating. I know that sounds strange, so let me explain. I had come to believe that the lifestyle of short-term relationships was a detour from serving God as a single. So while I kept my social life, my female friends, and my desire to get married someday, I stopped dating.

This new perspective was anything but characteristic of me.

My change of perspective began after I broke up with a girl I'd been going out with for two years. Our relationship was an area of my life that I had refused to submit to God. When it ended, He began to show me just how selfish I was. I'd used her to satisfy my own sinful desires. Even though we never went all the way, I'd led her into a sinful physical relationship. I had hurt her. I had broken a lot of promises.

For the first time, I really began to question how my faith as a Christian affected my love life. There had to be more to it than "don't have sex" and "only date Christians." What did it mean to truly love a girl? What did it feel like to really be pure-in my body
and
my heart? And how did God want me to spend my single years? Was it merely a time to try out different girls romantically?

Slowly and in spite of my resistance, God peeled away layer after layer of wrong thinking, wrong values, and wrong desires. He changed my heart. And as my heart changed, I saw that my lifestyle had to change too.

When I was twenty-one, I wrote about my experience in I
Kissed Dating Goodbye.
I wanted to challenge other singles to reconsider the way they pursued a romance in. light of God's Word. "If we aren't really ready for commitment, what's the point of getting into intimate and romantic relationships?" I asked. "Why not enjoy friendship with the opposite sex but use our energy as singles to serve God?"

To my astonishment God provided a publisher willing to print my oddly titled book. To everyone's astonishment the book actually sold. It turned out that many people besides me were rethinking romance. I have received thousands of e-mails, postcards, and letters from singles of all ages from all over the world

As the letters poured in, I realized that while God had graciously used my book to help some people, it had also raised a lot of questions.

For example, if you don't date, how exactly do you end up married? One girl wrote: "I want to avoid the pitfalls of our cultures approach to romance, but how do I get close enough to a guy to decide whether I want to marry him? What comes between friendship and marriage?"

The main point of
I Kissed Dating Goodbye
was: "If you're not ready for marriage,
wait
on romance." But now my fellow singles were asking, "How can you know when you
are
ready for marriage? And once you're ready, what should you do?"

To be honest, I hadn't figured that out yet. I never meant to become an expert on relationships. The questions my readers were asking were the same ones weighing on my heart.

This is why my phone call to Shannon was such a big deal. I'd reached a point where I felt ready to pursue marriage, and I was deeply attracted to her. What now? For five years I'd experienced God's faithfulness as I
waited
on romance; now I was stepping into the unknown believing that He would continue to be faithful as I
pursued
romance.

The guy who had "kissed dating goodbye" was about to "say hello to courtship."

Corner Table

The next evening I arrived early for my meeting with Shannon. Einstein Bagels is a favorite lunch spot in Gaithersburg, but at night it's all but empty. I chose a lonely table in the far left corner of the restaurant. It was slightly dirty, so I asked the server to wipe it off. Everything needed to be just right. I went to the