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22. A Little Loving
Girls had escaped me. Ever since seventh grade, I had a series of “crushes” on attractive young ladies who did not return my affections. I had become an expert in unrequited love. I could look back over my life and see a long string of rejection where the young ladies were concerned. Ruth. Sarah. Janet. Lunch-line girl. Not Beth, of course. She and I were like siblings. But I am certain if I had pursued Beth romantically, she would have rebuffed me like all the others. In fact, I think that is probably the main reason I chose not to pursue her.
At times like this a young man begins to ponder what it is exactly that is wrong with him. Should he change his brand of deodorant? He had; it made no difference. Should he brush his teeth twice a day? He did; it made no difference. Should he try to get a closer shave? He tried. It made no difference.
If it wasn’t his hygiene, perhaps it was his personality. What was missing in his personality? He could talk to girls. He could make girls laugh. He always treated them with respect and courtesy. He was not crude or vulgar in his speech or in his ways around girls. What did they want from him?
He was a Christian. He loved the Lord. He wanted to serve the Lord with his life. He had made mistakes, certainly, but he was willing to learn and he was learning. So why did girls love him as a friend, but not want him as a boyfriend? Why could he and nearly any girl strike up a conversation, but never a romance? What was the problem? To be honest, I really do not know what the problem was, not even today so many years after the fact. I am certain the Lord was teaching me important lessons, and some of those lessons will find their way into this narrative. But what exactly it was that turned so many young ladies away, I may never know. I only know that in 1967, that all changed.
Perhaps it was Joe’s death, or perhaps just my desperation, but something drove me closer to the Lord that spring. I had prayed for years that the Lord would give me a young lady to be my wife. “Lord, please give me Sarah.” “Lord, please give me Janet.” “Lord, please give me Lunch-Line Girl.” But that spring I began to change the way I prayed.
It was really a quite subtle change that took place. I am not sure I can describe it here adequately with all the nuances of change intact. But I began to pray differently. “Lord, don’t give me a wife if that is not your will for me.”
That is much more profound than it appears at first glance. From “Lord, give me ----” and I would fill in the blank depending on whom I had a crush at the time, I began to pray, “Lord, don’t give me anyone if that is your will.” After all, that could be God’s will. Most people married; I was well aware of that. Most of the seminarians were married men; some were even fathers. But not all. Some people do not marry. It is God’s will for most of His people to marry, but not for all of his people to marry.
But, of course, he meant it in a proper way. He was not telling me to do something I would regret. He was simply telling me to get to work on this matter of finding a girl. Perhaps he thought my approach was too platonic, too little romance and too much logic. He may have been right. She was attractive. Not breath-takingly beautiful, but attractive. Her name was Angie, and she lived in the apartment across the stairwell from me on campus.
Summer had come and most of the college students had gone home for the summer. The married seminarians all had homes in the area, but they were with their families and ministering in various churches where the Lord had placed them. I was working at the bank, full-time, for the summer months. I went to work at 8:30 and got off at 5:00 with a half-hour for lunch and two ten-minute breaks a day, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon. This was the summer Union Bank completed construction on its new building. Employees would be working overtime preparing files to be moved, and then relocating those files in the new facilities. As an hourly paid employee, this overtime would really fatten my paycheck. I didn’t mind that.
One warm summer Sunday night after I got home from church, I saw Angie sitting on the stairs. I asked her how the services went at her church. She indicated she had not gone to church because she did not have a car and there was no one left on campus to take her.
We talked for a few moments on the stairs, and then I asked her if she would like to go and get some ice cream. Her eyes lit up, literally. It was like someone had turned on a light bulb behind each eye. It was obvious I had asked the right question.
NEXT CHAPTER
We went in my car for the ice cream, enjoyed it, talked a little, and then I took her back to her apartment, and I returned to mine. No “little loving” went on that night. I’m sorry, Goldie! It just wasn’t time yet. The following Friday, a friend of mine from the college was getting married in Holland, about forty-five minutes from Grand Rapids. I asked Angie if she would like to go with me. She would. She did.
After the wedding we drove to Holland State Park along Lake Michigan. It was after hours; the guard, a young college-age person himself, was not supposed to let anyone in who was not camping there overnight. But I told him my girl and I just wanted to walk on the beach for a few minutes. He said okay and let us in.
If you have never had the pleasant experience of strolling along a beach with someone you may be getting interested in, at night with the waves suddenly appearing in the lights shining along the edges of the beach, and crashing at your feet, the dark sky above you filled with twinkles of light, and the horizon where dark water and dark air meet impossible to discern, well, you won’t understand how we felt that night.
It was great. How can I describe it? Where are the lyrics to a Rodgers and Hammerstein love song when you need them?
At first, we walked along the sand, our feet making deep sliding impressions in the looseness of the grains. Then somehow our hands touched, and instantly we were holding hands. I had held hands before but I had never kissed a girl before. Never. Not even Janet with whom I went steady for six months. Maybe that had something to do with why she dumped me, I don’t know!
We walked along the beach and finally came to a canoe which had been left upside down on the sand, probably so its owner, a camper there, could get an early start on the lake at daybreak. We stopped by the canoe. We were just out of sight of the guard at the entrance gate. I am sure he was aware of what we might do on his beach. But he was not able to see us. Perhaps he thought we would do more than we actually did.
Standing there, face-to-face, our eyes met in the glow of the lights around us. The waves crashed, the stars twinkled, the boat sat there quietly at our feet, and our lips met.
Wow! I can’t believe I wrote that. It sounds like something from a cheap romance novel. But it wasn’t — a novel, or cheap for that matter. It was just two lonely young people together on a starlit night on a deserted beach with just a brief opportunity to kiss, just a little loving.
After the kiss, we walked back to the gate, and to my car. I thanked the young guard. Could he see the smile of delight on my face? Did he know what we did back there on his beach on his watch?
We drove back to Grand Rapids. When I got Angie back to her apartment, which, as I mentioned, was separated from mine by a stairwell, I stepped inside her apartment. I left the door wide opened. There was no one around, but I left the door wide open anyway. And I kissed her again. Then I left, closed her door, crossed the landing to my door and entered my apartment. We had no further contact that night.
A few days later, we went to Townsend Park, a large, beautiful park northeast of Grand Rapids. We walked around the park, we sat on the grass, we held hands, we talked, and, yes, we kissed.
Again, I took her back to her apartment. Again I left the door open as we kissed just inside her apartment. “Do you think it is okay for us to kiss this way?” she asked.
I wasn’t going to say no; after all, I was enjoying the kisses. But I did answer honestly. “The Lord made us,” I said, “to enjoy what we are experiencing. But He knows we won’t go beyond what is right.”
And I believed that with all my heart. And right there, that night, just inside Angie’s apartment with the door wide open in the pale light of night, I realized that I would not marry Angie. She was not the girl the Lord would give me. I knew then He was going to give me someone, but I also knew it was not going to be Angie.
“Angie,” I said, “you are going to make some man a good wife some day.” I looked at her soft, moist eyes. “Just keep following the Lord, and He will show you who that is.”
I kissed her one more time — I’m no dummy, after all — and closed her apartment door and walked across the way and entered my apartment. After all those times I had been rejected by girls, I rejected a girl.
The next day I learned that Angie had given her notice to the school. She was moving back to her parents’ home. We did not kiss again.
As that summer drew to a close, I knew the Lord had used me somehow in Angie’s life. I did not know then, and I do not know now exactly what the Lord did for Angie through our brief relationship. But I like to think the Lord used me to help Angie find His will for her life. I never saw her again after she left Grand Rapids. I have no idea where she might be today. But I know the Lord used my relationship with her to awaken something inside me, a new desire to meet and marry the girl He had for me. My brief romance with Angie gave me the confidence that God did have a girl for me. A little loving had shown me that I was not the loser with women that I had come to think I was.
I hope Angie found His will. I know I did. And I also know that, by now, you are ready to hear about it!
Copyright © 2009, Thomas M. Parsons, All Rights Reserved. - 71
