I will never forget the magic in the air the first time she sang for me. The pleasantness of her voice. The sparkle in her eyes. The feeling was electrifying, with the voltage therein leaving me clueless as to what to do with myself. Nor will I forget the intensity of my sudden awareness at being touched the first time she held my hand. She barely remembers these moments as they were both fleeting and perfectly within her sweet nature, but I was spellbound beyond the ability to forget.
The paragraph above is completely true and it is about Bev. And I will forever cherish those moments. It sounds like something out of a movie or a book, moments everyone longs to have with their love. However, the contents of the paragraph above are completely insufficient to begin a dating or courtship relationship with anyone.
For purposes of this post, I am going to exclude from the "dating" category those who "date" in order to end up with their pants off or their legs open. That's not dating, that's mating.
First off, let me start by delineating a little bit of the difference between dating and courting. Dating and courting are at times imperceptibly similar and at other times vastly different. In my humble opinion, the two biggest differences are mindset and structure. The courtship mindset allows for a more timely, less emotionally charged evaluation of your potential love interest and how fit you are for each other (more on this later). Courtship is also more structured than dating (more on this later too). People need structure. Without structure there is confusion. Without walls, a building lacks stability. Without lane boundaries and road signs, a road sees more accidents. And that is exactly what dating often tends to be. A structure with little stability and a road without signs (or a road with unproven, homemade signs). It's like moving into a house with only a floor and a ceiling and trying to build the walls later. Anybody who spent this week looking for dating advice on the internet knows what I am talking about.
Dating on any level is deeply emotional. It is emotional because, however well guarded and hidden they are, you take your life's hopes and dreams with you on every first date and on every date after that. Or you practice casual dating because of your dislike or fear of being alone mixed with your distrust of the other gender or your reluctance to put in the emotional work. Any way you slice it, it's deeply emotional.
Dating is also confusing and counterintuitive (the way most people do it). It is confusing and counterintuitive because often, you are tricking your heart into reaching a deeper level of intimacy (that you barely share with your best friend who you've known for years) with an almost complete stranger. Or even if you've known Jason from accounting for a little while or Sharon has been hanging out in your extended circle of friends for a while, you are essentially extending a deeply emotional line of credit to a person who has barely passed through even basic underwriting (sorry, I'm a banker, but you get the point). Most times dating couples start acting more like they're married than the strangers or acquaintances that they really are.
Furthermore, oftentimes people choose the most ephemeral, passing, intangible things as their entire basis for dating someone. Just like it is a bad investment to buy stock in a company you know nothing about, it is also a bad investment to search for or attempt a deep connection with a virtual stranger. It's essentially playing the lottery with your heart and hoping you hit the jackpot when the odds are a million to one (make that 7 billion to one) that you won't be the loser.
You say, "Oh Rob, how do you know? You don't even know what you are talking about." And you're entitled to your opinion. But I can tell you that I have made that investment of my blood, sweat, tears, and time equity into virtual strangers. In the very face of better wisdom, I have still bought the emotional scratch offs and played the love power ball, and I did not win even one time. It almost destroyed me emotionally, spiritually, financially, and even did some physical damage.
Because of my outlook on dating and my bad choices, I have had relationships that were emotionally and psychologically abusive. One girl got me to the point where she was able to feed me damaging and untrue things to say out loud about my own self, and I would say them and believe them. That relationship bordered on physical abuse as well, and would have gone there if I had not ended it. Another one spun a web of lies around me so deep that I came out of the other side with a diagnosis and prescription for anxiety medication (which I haven't needed since I left that bad situation). Because of decisions I made for her out of trust in her web of lies, I almost ended up saddled with $10,000 of debt, which would have also destroyed or at least greatly hindered my career.
Why am I telling you things that make me look like I was a moron? Because I was a moron. And I don't want you to be a moron. I want you to be a smart. I like to think that I am now a smart, and I would like for you to be a smart as well. Proverbs 21:11 says, "When a scoffer is punished, the simple is made wise; but when the wise is instructed, he receives knowledge." I remember the first time I read that, because the Lord told me that that verse was talking about me.
“I don’t want you to be a moron. I want you to be a smart.”
Let me break the verse down a little for you.
Scoffer = moron. When a scoffer is punished = when a moron learns the hard way. In other words, A moron only becomes wise by learning the hard way, but a wise person only has to hear wisdom in order to know the right choices to make. Am I implying that Jesus called me a moron? Yes. Because I was a moron. Two-edged sword, people. God's love doesn't always feel good (but that's for another post and another day). I learned many of my lessons the hard way when there was wisdom freely available to me.
Wow, this post is getting a little long. Sounds like it's going to be a two (or more but hopefully not) parter. Let me just leave you with this.
Most people start an entire relationship with the smoke and mirrors magic of what I started this post with. And there is nothing wrong with magic. I think every person in a courtship and marriage relationship should be striving to provide their partner with some magic on a regular basis. But what the beginning of this post lacked was substance. So let me end this post with a better beginning.
I will never forget the magic in the air the first time she sang for me. The pleasantness of her voice. The sparkle in her eyes. The feeling was electrifying, with the voltage therein leaving me clueless as to what to do with myself. Nor will I forget the intensity of my sudden awareness at being touched the first time she held my hand. She barely remembers these moments as they were both fleeting and perfectly within her sweet nature, but I was spellbound beyond the ability to forget.
But sparkles and touches don't compare with the day that she changed her plans in order to support me while I unexpectedly handled something of which I was very afraid. Magic and static electricity have nothing on the day she used her laptop to create my monthly schedule with me when she saw I so badly needed it.
It was during our extended time of being nothing more than friends that I saw these things so telling of her character. She wasn't even considering me as a prospect. But Bev's choices gave me glimpses into who she really is. And I discovered that I really liked who Bev really is.
Stay tuned for part 2.