Photo by Brandyn Morrow
When I first met Jamie, she was dating someone else, so at first, she was just another girl to me. I don’t mean that to sound ugly, nasty, or misogynistic in any way whatsoever. What I really mean is she was a young woman in a world full of them at a time when I was interested in none of them.
I had been through nothing short of relational disaster two years before. The entire thing had unceremoniously short-circuited most of my future in a way best described as a train wreck. That’s exactly what happened as a result. It left me an emotional wreck.
God had done a big work in me over the preceding months. During that time, I had begun serving college students through an organization that had helped me so much during my early college years. I had learned a lot about giving back and was excited about new adventures taking shape.
One day we took a big group of people to a nearby mountain. It is a great spot where people go to watch the sunrise and sunset. We gathered on the side of the mountain in the light of a setting sun and I played some songs on my guitar for a while. We sang together and shared laughter and stories. It was a lot of fun.
As we got ready to leave, I tripped, and as I pitched forward the full force of my guitar case smashed Jamie right in the top of the head. I felt awful. I had just gone full on caveman on this poor girl I didn’t even know yet. As I walked back to my car feeling forlorn and jerkish this inexplicable thought popped into my head. I will never forget it. “If you ever married her that would make for a really funny story.”
I don’t know what made the thought pop up. Being totally honest here. There were still no romantic feelings between us, but the thought came just the same. And well, we did get married. I’m not sure how funny the story from the mountain actually is. But the strange random thought turned out to be quasi-prophetic musing.
Jamie and I started spending a lot of time together. Not alone or anything. There still wasn’t any romantic interest anywhere on the canvas. But something beautiful happened. We got to know each other in the company of each of our best friends. We would all go out and hangout as one big group. We would run together. We hiked together. We watched movies, went swimming, and did all kinds of things.
This was all happening at a time when a bunch of religious people were making a big deal out of the idea of “group dating”. It was supposed to be this big thing where people who thought they might like each other would go hang out in groups and do things exactly like Jamie and I had been doing. We weren’t trying to do this at all, but over the course of time we got to know each other.
Eventually Jamie and her boyfriend broke up. A while later we were hosting a large group of young college students at the family farm for a weekend getaway. Something clicked in me that weekend. Something I hadn’t paid attention to in a long time. I realized I had feelings for this girl. Maybe the time at my home in the company of so many good friends had emboldened me. Perhaps it was something else entirely, but I decided to invite her to the movies, and she said yes.
The next week or so was kind of a blur. Those moments opened a part of my heart I had written off as unwelcome territory. Places that were a No Man’s Land of emotions I didn’t want to acknowledge or address. Somehow, someway, Jamie gave me the courage to walk into them, and she still does.
When I realized there were legitimate feelings for her I did two things I will never regret. I talked to my friends Heath and Christie, who were also my pastors, about it. Heath high-fived me and said, “go for it.” That night I did maybe one of the most difficult things I have ever done. I sat Jamie down on my front porch and told her every bad thing I had ever done in my life. All of it. I held nothing back. I finished, and she was still sitting there. Just the fact she hadn’t ran away screaming at some of the finer details of my story was a good indicator of just how special she is.
Jamie did, and still does, for me what all amazing women do in the hearts of the men who love them. The potential of her affection drew me into new places. It helped me go to God and find forgiveness and grace for a lot of the old places too. She came into my life during a time when so much of it felt like it was a recovering disaster. Large swathes of the land of my heart were still full of the wreckage and devastation of the previous two years.
It didn’t take me long to love Jamie. In fact, we had only been a real couple for just a few months. One Saturday night we were at a church we had travelled to with some friends of ours. We all enjoyed going to these small churches to share songs and stories to encourage the people. I was just about to walk on stage to lead the small gathering in some singing when I looked over at her and said the three words that always elevate every relationship to new places when they are sincere. I said, “I love you.” I’m pretty sure she was speechless. Or maybe I only remember it that way because about thirty seconds later I was playing my guitar and singing songs in front a few hundred people.
That was the weekend I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with this wondrous woman God had put in my path. This amazing person who makes me better on every level. Isn’t it just like God to do that? To take two imperfect people and help them find each other.
There’s a cool story in the Bible about a guy named Boaz and his bride to be Ruth. Like Jamie and I, Boaz was much older than Ruth. Ruth entered his life by means of circumstance and surprise—at a time when Boaz was not really looking for anything romantic. Ruth invited Boaz into the places he almost forgot were inside him. Boaz took care of her. They grew together, and God used their family to fulfill a host of promises.
I often hear religious folks talk about putting God first in our lives, and I understand what they are trying to say. Or at least I think do. They are really saying God should be a priority.
I have never liked or identified with this idea that God is first in that sense. It probably sounds like terrible theology. I don’t know. Maybe it is. None of my degrees are in theology.
I think what God really wants has nothing to do with us segmenting our lives into schizophrenic religious weirdness. He doesn’t want a bunch of people stumbling through their days with a heart beset by a segmented organizational chart, quick to give God top billing, yet not access to any of the rest of them.
I’ve met a lot of people who live this way, and they are almost always incredibly weird. If you think about this for a moment you might realize you’ve known some of these weird people too. If you can’t think of any weird people like that, chances are you’re the weird one.
No, the older I get the more convinced I am God never intended for us to chop our lives into pieces and serve him the first chunk. Because usually what happens is we give him some small insignificant part that helps us sooth our conscience but rarely does much to change the rest. Instead, I am absolutely convinced we find the full goodness of God at work in our lives when he is invited to work in every area of our life.
I don’t know if God makes just one right person for everyone. It sounds romantic and wonderful, but also scary. What if you were supposed to marry Susan, but she chose Bob instead? You would be in trouble. I don’t think it really works like that.
I do however know I’ve gotten it right by God’s grace. I have found his grace in my misgivings and mistakes. Somewhere along the way I happened upon a different kind of grace in the form of a five-foot nine brunette I affectionately call Wonder Woman. I’m reminded of this every time we hear a song from our favorite band Needtobreathe:
In my heart you'll always know
There is a place only love can go
There is a place only you can go
There is a place only love can go. God goes there first if you invite him in. This place, the place where love goes, it isn’t solitary confinement. It is the rich part of our soul waiting to be shared with another soul out there somewhere who’s also had the courage to extend God the same invitation.