This Is Awkward by Sammy Rhodes

Author:Sammy Rhodes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2015-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

God never promises us marriage. Nor does he promise us singleness. What he does promise us is himself. He promises that whatever it is he calls us to, however hard, however long, he will never cease being good to us. This is the secret to happiness: knowing that my life is in his hands and because of that he holds good things for me. And when bad things do come, and they will, that he will never stop holding me.

When I was fifteen years old, just before my freshman year of high school, I became a Christian. In one sense it wasn’t dramatic at all. In another it turned my whole life upside down, especially when it came to girls. Suddenly my heart was no longer set on having a girlfriend. I was pretty content, actually strangely content, just to be a youth group kid. If you weren’t a youth group kid, imagine the best party you ever went to in high school, take out all the things that probably made it fun, and replace them with Disney movies, chubby bunnies, and a plethora of 1980s and ’90s dance music.

Then something happened: my best friend got a girlfriend. He was also a youth group kid, and so was his girlfriend. I looked at them, looked back at myself, and decided it was time for me to find a girlfriend, because obviously what God does in someone else’s life he must do in mine, too, especially when it comes to romance.

It only made sense that I would pursue the friend of my best friend’s new girlfriend. Was she a youth group girl? Check. She didn’t cuss? Check. She didn’t drink? Check. She bowed her head and said a blessing at school before lunch? Double check. Just like the Proverbs 31 woman.

Little did I know how desperate my heart was for someone who would know me and love me to the end. If I could go back, I would try to tell seventeen-year-old me that maybe the best person to love you like that isn’t a fifteen-year-old girl. I probably wouldn’t have listened. It’s hard to hear when you’re busy tightening your matching WWJD bracelets while listening to your favorite Christian ska bands.

The telling moment that things were about to be unhealthy was after a second date. We had finished eating at Applebee’s. (A story should only get better when it begins with eating at Applebee’s. This one didn’t.) As we got back into the car, I gave her a card I had bought earlier that day. In that card I had written the three little words we all long to hear (besides “I ordered pizza”). I remember her face as she read the words, “I love you.” Her expression was somewhere between “squirrel trying to cross the road” and “dog getting too close to the electric fence.”

The crazy thing is four months after that we began dating for real. From the start everyone knew we should break up, but we were stubborn and fought it.

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