Pretty Blonde - Part 1

Last summer, I went to a fund raising event held at a church.  The organizers were raising money for battered women support services and the event was to consist of a live band playing swing dancing music.  At this point, I should mention that I'm a big fan of swing dancing and have been dancing for about two years.  Well, after many awkward dances with beginners on the crowded dance floor, I took a seat to take a break.  A pretty blonde girl walked up to me and asked me to dance and I said yes.  We chatted a bit during the dance:

Me:  Thanks for asking me.  Do you dance often?
PrettyBlonde:  You don't remember, do you?  We've danced before.
Me:  (stares blankly as I perform a swing out)  Uh....Wait!  Yes, I remember you.  We met last year at another dance venue.
PrettyBlonde:  Yes, that's right!
Me:  Well, I've danced with so many pretty girls, I couldn't possibly remember them all!
PrettyBlonde:  (produces what sounds like a genuine laugh to me)

Now, an even better pseudonym for PrettyBonde would be PrettyAndSmartBlonde.  That's not to say that blondes can't be smart, but the girl here is quite educated as well as beautiful.  She had gone to university to study electrical engineering and, upon graduation, worked as a high school teacher.  After a few years, she realized that her true passion was for music, specifically, choral conducting.  That led to her moving over to my part of the country to pursue a music degree at the local bible college.  The main reason I (eventually) remembered her was because she had told me that she was the youngest child and had four older brothers, to which I replied, I feel sorry for the guys you bring home!

Fast forward back to the charity dancing event.  After our dance, we chatted about work, school, and faith.  I'm a total sucker for a pretty smile, and this girl has one that is absolutely stunning.  I sensed a genuine desire on her part to continue the conversation with me.  In fact, after a friend of hers interrupted our conversation and PrettyBlonde shifted the conversation towards her, I took this as a sign that she was not interested in me in that way, so I excused myself, and went back to the dance floor.  However, later on, she found me again and said "Now where were we?" and we continued chatting.

Towards the end of the night, I decided to take a risk and ask for her contact info.  Normally, I like to ask for a girl's digits after seeing each other a few more times at social gatherings.  That way, she'll have had some time to see that I've scored sufficiently low enough on the Creepy-Weirdo-Stalker Index for her to feel safe to give me her contact info.  However, I reasoned that since we have already gone more than a year without bumping into each other again, I decided to take a risk...sort of:

Me:  So...are you on Facebook?  Can I add you?
PrettyBlonde:  Sure.
Me:  Don't worry, I'm not a stalker.
PrettyBlonde:  (100 MW smile) I wouldn't be giving you my info if I thought you were.

She writes her full name on a blue napkin and hands it to me.  Success!  Score one for the good guys.

When I got home that night, I got onto Facebook immediately and punched in her name.  Hmm...185 people on Facebook with the same name as PrettyBlonde's.  I frantically scrolled through every one and NONE of them looked like her.  In fact, none of them were even in the same area as me.  Some random thoughts that went screaming through my head:

1. She gave me a fake name because I had something hanging from my nose the whole night.
2. Or...maybe she had set her privacy settings so that I couldn't search for her...and just forgot to tell me?
3. All of the above.
   

What a horrible way to come down from a euphoric high, eh?  Now, there was a time in my life in which I would have just slouched off and just assumed that she wasn't into me.

But no more.

This past year, I've really sensed that I need to start realizing my value.  And that goes for all of you reading this, if any.  Jesus was willing to die for me.  FOR ME.  FOR YOU.  That gives me value.  My self-worth does not come from the size of my pay cheque or the car I drive, or, in this case, what some pretty girl thinks of me, but rather what Christ did for all of us on the cross.  What do I have to fear?  Is PrettyBlonde somehow in less need of grace and forgiveness than I am?  This recent realization has led me to live a more fearless life for God.  Take some chances, right?

Screw this!  I'm not going to back down so easily!  Let's pull a John Eldridge and pursue the beauty.  I want to ask her out.  She had mentioned that she played on the worship team of this church that I know of.  Even though the church is out of my way, I decided to pay a visit the following Sunday...

Sexless and the City

It is written that patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.  That may be so, but why wait for fruit to grow when I can just buy all that I need at the grocery store?  They even have these self-check out lines now, so I can be eating my store bought fruit in no time!

That pretty much sums up my views on being patient.  I'm the guy who hates it when people are in the left lane but drive painfully slow.  I always run up or down the stairs in a building rather than wait for the elevator and I absolutely detest people in the cashier line who don't have their payment, preferably in cash because debit cards always seem to require at least three swipes to work, in hand when they reach the cashier.

While impatience in certain areas of life are probably beneficial, it is extremely hard being a patient, single Christian guy.  Lately, I've been feeling extremely impatient abut when the Good Lord is going to bring a lovely Christian girl into my life.  I can't even begin to estimate how many, many, MANY of my prayer entries involve my single stage.  It's not that I'm unhappy being single.  I am a firm believer in glorifying God in all that I do:

"Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people."  Colossians 3:23 (NLT).

So, no matter what's going on in my current stage of life, I will try to make the best of it.  For example, being single without any children affords me more free time, so I've been volunteering at my local art gallery helping little kids make play dough snow men and cutting out construction paper shapes for them.  Recently, a cute-as-a-button three year old boy told me that he liked me after I helped him make a play dough dragon/mouse hybrid monster :-)

However, despite all this, I am still impatient for a romantic relationship that will, eventually, lead to marriage.  For some odd reason, I'm ashamed of this desire because I know that a large part of it is due to my sex drive.  I mean, come on!  I'm a healthy, red-blooded 28 year old man.  I believe that this sex drive is biological and from God, so I guess there really is no reason to be embarrassed about it.  That said, I am not going to indulge in it in a hedonistic manner.  What separates me from an animal is that I can consciously go against my biological urges for a greater purpose.  Furthermore, it's not like I'll be spending the vast majority of my marriage doing nothing but the horizontal mambo.  Marriage life is probably going to be the toughest challenge I'll ever tackle, but alas, at the moment, I am mostly thinking about the wedding night.

What to do about this crazy sex drive of mine?  Well, I suppose the easiest thing to do would be to just go from nightclub to nightclub and buy countless drinks for random girls and eventually one of them will go back to my place for wild, anonymous sex.  Actually, you know what?  We're in a recession right now and times are tough.  A typical club in my hometown will charge about $20 as a cover.  Drinks go for $6 to $8, including tip.  Multiple drinks at multiple clubs?!  That can really add up!  Therefore, an even cheaper solution to relieving my sex drive would be to lock myself in my bedroom and log onto certain websites.  I mean, a jar of Vaseline runs for only about $5.  You don't need to be an economist to see that's quite a bit in savings!

However, I am a follower of one Jesus Christ.  I believe in reserving sex for marriage and I don't believe in taking matters into my own hands, figuratively and literally speaking.  Where does this leave me?  Pffft....I don't know.  I really don't know.

What I do know, however, is that I'm not going to compromise my beliefs.  Faith in the Good Lord and His plans for us is a large part of this thing of ours.  Ultimately, what I want is an emotionally and physically intimate relationship in the context of marriage.  Mindless sex and/or masturbation just won't cut it for me, you know?

All I can really tell myself is that I need to make good use of this current gift of singleness and try not to focus too much on myself.  In the book of James, we have this passage:

"Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy.  For you know when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow.  So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing."  James 1:2-4 (NLT).

The only thing I can do at the moment is to endure through this crazy sex drive and let this trial further strengthen my faith in God.  A tangible first step would be to not rush through life, so maybe I'll drive in the slow lane more often.  On a final note, the topic of pornography and masturbation was mentioned briefly in this post, but I think that this topic certainly deserves to be its own post in the very near future.

Hello World!

What are your mental images associated with the word 'prayer'? Well, regardless of your faith, or lack thereof, I would be willing wager one mental image would consist of some Joe/Josephine Blow trying to communicate with some higher being. As a follower of Jesus Christ born and raised in North America, my experience with prayer consists of the standard bowing of one's head, lacing up of one's fingers, and having a conversation with God.

However, early in my Christian walk, I discovered that my mind would wonder during prayer. I might be praying for a friend and then suddenly start thinking about whether anyone has commented on my latest and greatest Facebook status update. Over time, I quickly learned that I enjoyed writing my prayers out in the form of letters to God because this forced me to sit down and concentrate on stringing words together into coherent sentences like pretty beads on a necklace. My tools of the trade? A standard 80 page spiral notebook and Bic pens of all shapes and colours. Since my becoming a Christian eight years ago, I have compiled about 50 of such prayer books, each starting off with the date, time, and location I started writing. Recording my prayers is a good habit for me, because it allows me to review what I've prayed about over the years and see how God has answered (or not answered) those prayers. Furthermore, I get quite a kick seeing how my values and beliefs have changed over time!

This will no doubt hurt my chances of winning a Nobel Peace Prize in my later years, but I must admit that a somewhat large portion of my prayers do not involve ending world hunger or the negotiation of a truly successful peace treaty between Israel and Palestine, but rather which pretty Christian girls I happen to be attracted to at the time of writing. Furthermore, because I've been fortunate enough to successfully convince a not insignificant number of said girls to go hang out with me, I've also used my prayer books to record my pre- and post-date analyses. Over the years, I've collected an array of such stories and listed what went right, what went wrong, and what went horrendously wrong, and how these experiences have molded my relationship with Jesus Christ.

The purpose of this blog isn't to bad mouth the girls I have gone out with, but rather to share some humorous, frightening, or just plain weird events that have happened to me in my navigation of the choppy waters of romantic relationships as a Christian guy. It is my hope that this blog will enlighten readers, if any, and help them realize that the crazy crap that happens in their lives is not unique to them...or at the very least, provide some cheap laughs before they go back to deciding which YouTube video to watch next. Please come and enjoy this trip down memory lane with me!