affections

For the five years I spent in junior high and high school, I had an enduring but very quiet crush on one of my friends. He was clever, a runner, a sci-fi reader, an all-round artsy, athletic sort of guy who had a curious penchant for riding a unicycle everywhere. He was a free spirit, a non-conformist and quirky, and that’s almost certainly why I liked him so much. And he had lovely legs, too.

We played basketball, talked about and listened to Gershwin, had long, lingering conversations outside the gym after our respective practices all through those 5 years. At the end of summer and the beginning of each school year, I expected all that hoping and waiting would pay off. Eventually he would, “wake up” and realise that there could be more to this relationship than just playing 21 together at the rec centre.

When the day that his slumber ended arrived, it surprised me that I was not the one who had roused him from sleep. Alas, another girl. And all during our senior year, he dated that other girl. I optimistically figured it would end after high school, but strangely, they kept on dating through the summer, then college, and finally, he married her.

In life, I have held out for lots of The Significants --things I have wanted, I mean really wanted. I have waited years in the dripping of hour upon hour, have allowed expectation and hope to fill my heart about men, mission, calling, friends, destiny, family, studies, travel. Provocative events that have shaped me and transformed how I think about life, and the Lord God, His creation and His creatures have all happened along the way. And in that happening...in all that change and transformation...the nostalgia I had for things once longed for has been replaced with presence and now-ness with God and gratitude that things did not come out as I would have planned them.

Lately I have been tempted to grasp the sinking concrete of wistful regret as I paddle around in these open waters looking to find my way, and God reminds me of Today. This day. His presence. His intolerable love, as CS Lewis puts it, that won’t give me the fleeting crushes of this life, but will lift my chin to look out past the horizon to see into the Unseen, to see a Feast, a Marriage, a Banquet set for you, for me. He will tell me it’s worth trusting Him to see it to its fulfillment, as He sees fit.

It’s been 20 years this spring that I graduated from high school, and sometimes when I visit my hometown, I will see this boy of my high school affection, now a man, a teacher and coach at our very own junior high, out running. I can still recognise his gait at a distance, that loping, gliding stride that won him so many races, and I smile and remember how much wishing went into that one boy.

But another smile follows the first, one filled with gladness that life has not gone according to plan...in so many ways.

Thanks be to God.

The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.