Oh, dear. The other night did not go as planned.
The first thing that began to change my plans was a call to my mom. Let me tell you a little about my mom. I couldn’t stand her when I was younger. (I think this is common among young girls.) Any advice she ever gave me was like a green light for me to do the exact opposite. I thought she was crazy and it frightened me to think that someday I might be anything like her. Well. I grow more like her by the day and I couldn’t be more proud. She is literally one of my best friends and I tell her everything. And my terrible tendency to automatically doubt whatever she says has been gradually overridden by the realization that she always, always turns out to be right. So, I called my mom. And she said: NO DON’T DO THAT. And I said, why? And she said that guys just don’t do well with declarations of emotion. I know this. You know this. We all know this. It’s just true. Guys are not as friendly with emotions as girls are. So Plan A was out.
Mom proposed a Plan B. Her idea was to invite him to do something with me—something semi-non-date-ish, in case he’s (as I suspect he is) fairly traditional and wants to be the one to actually ask me out. But that would clue him into the fact that I’d like to spend time with him and just him. (Her other idea was to bake him cookies. I love baking cookies and sharing them with people, but baking them just for him seemed a little too domestic/stalker. So I silently eschewed that idea.) This had been an original plan from my friends, which totally freaked me out. But the last thing I want is to freak him out, so I decided it could work.
The other significant thing that happened was before this, on Sunday. I’m in a large Christian student group on campus—this is how I met The Boy. This is the same group that our summer Bible study is unofficially part of, for the students who stayed on campus for the summer. Anyway, during the school year we all drive together to church on Sundays. Now that it’s the summer, the smaller group of us that is here walk together instead. For the most part it’s just been me, him, and another girl from the group. The point of all that introduction is this: he joined us this Sunday and greeted us in a voice an octave lower than normal. He has a cold. So we laughed at him because he sounded like a stalker but then ooooh-ed sympathetically, as we girls always do. And I had a premonitory twinge that this was going to play some role in upcoming events.
I’ve been praying since I started liking this guy that the relationship/situation in general would follow God’s will. I’ve been praying since the middle of last week that God would show me whether or not to proceed with asking him out—specifically that if it was not meant to happen, God would prevent it from happening. I don’t do well with still-small-voice-type hinting. I need unquestionable signs. Surprisingly often, God pulls through.
So.
I’m walking to Bible study, frantically running through options in my head of things I could ask the guy to do. Coffee? No, he hates coffee. Ice cream? No, too much like a date. Shopping for presents for a mutual friend’s birthday part this weekend? YES. No, wait, no time before the party. And then, right on cue, I get this text:
“Hey. I’m going to skip out on Bible study tonight to try to heal whatever it is I have. Tell [group leader] I’m sorry I’m missing it.”
My friends think I’m crazy for seeing that as a sign, but I do. I have a good feeling about this relationship as a whole, so I’m certainly not giving up and moving on or anything, but I do feel like that was God saying, nope, not tonight. I mean, obviously something like that—it very effectively did not happen last night. There was nothing I could have done about it.
