My first love, or at least from my definition of love at the ripe old age of 17, was Heather Requard. Unfortunately this was an unrequited love as she already had a boyfriend. For some reason I was always interested in girls that were unavailable to me or that were just friends. The friend aspect at least makes a little bit of sense because you already have some common ground and a comfort with one another. Altogether unavailable is just plain dumb.
Being a hopeless romantic, or as my glass is ¾ full attitude on life leads me, a hopeful romantic when I fall for someone it’s usually head over heels. I’m a passionate man and that definitely plays into my personal relationships and more importantly my relationship with my wife. I have a passion for her love that is only surpassed in depth by my passion for Christ.
Love is one of those complicated areas of my life that took a great deal of time for me to come to an understanding of what it really means, and a great deal of faith & patience to really experience. Heather may have been more of being in lust, or at least how I would define love/lust now, but when I was in high school I was completely convinced that she was the one that I would love forever. This only made the fact that we were only friends and her boyfriend didn’t really like me so much harder to bear on my heart.
There were countless hours spent hoping she would call and tell me that they broke up but that never happened. There were countless hours spent hoping she would tell me she felt the same way as I did. The last day of high school, after our senior assembly, as I walked to my car to leave I looked up and saw Heather getting into her boyfriend’s car and I was crushed. I couldn’t breathe the rest of the day and I felt a very heavy burden.
She faded out of my life after high school, occasionally popping up here and there. They seemed to always be rather nervous times for her and me, as we would confess to one another. The very last time I saw her was during a rain delay at an Oriole game, but I didn’t approach her. She still had a twinkle in her eye and a beautiful smile and as much as I wanted to go up and say hi, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.
Love takes on a very different meaning for me now than it did 10 years ago. The Lord has done a great work in my life over that time and brought me to a place where I could experience a true, deep, ever-lasting love. I have found a woman that surpassed my wildest dreams of what I thought were possible to experience in love. It was not an easy road to travel down, but it was a journey that was well worth the wait.
May you recognize love when you see it, admit it to one another when you feel it, enjoy it together when you experience it, be patient and have faith when you can’t see it and always put Christ in the center of it.
Posted by price at February 2, 2005 09:57 AMJeff, that means A LOT to me! Thanks for being there to listen
Posted by: justin at February 2, 2005 02:28 PM