Re: Love like old people

I love old people who love kids.  Some old folks just don’t care for kids and I don’t blame them, but the elderly who like kids, I really like.  I remember being a kid, like maybe nine.  I was at a church garage sale with my mother, outside in front of the building our church shared with the post office in our small town.  I forget the woman’s name now, but she was always so nice to my sisters and I.  She had made some sort of beginner embroider kit items for the garage sale, apparently not understanding that you get rid of old things you don’t want at garage sales.  She had instead created some things for the sale, and I found myself at her table.  I picked up a little blue and white standalone pocket thing she had made, matching cross snugly inside its fold.  There was a typewriter-written poem on white paper stuffed behind the cross in the pocket.  I thought the thing was fascinating, not even reading the poem till I got home.  When I picked it up and asked her how much it cost, I saw something move behind her eyes.  She put a soft hand on my back and told me sweetly that I could just have it.  She then bent over and pulled out a plastic bag, like the kind you get at the grocery store when you don’t ask for paper.  She began to put a number of other things in the bag, telling me they were all things I needed.  She gave me a few things to give to my mother.  I didn’t say very much, because although it didn’t register in my eight or nine year-old brain, I was humbled and almost embarrassed, feeling guilty that this person I didn’t really know was giving me all these little Christian keepsakes and treasures she made that now I’ve lost a long time ago.  There was a very pleasant, warm feeling on my back and shoulders, making the hair on the back of my neck stand up.  It was like goose-bumps and butterflies in my chest.  I was moved inside at her kindness. I was like ten.  Throughout my life, I’ve gotten that same feeling from other older people when they’ve shown me unusual kindness.  Another example is Alma Suhonnen, a woman my mother used to pray with a lot. Alma passed away a few years ago now.  This lady was so sweet and so kind.  She sang in the worship team my parents led at a church in Parker, CO.  Her husband Bill played saxophone in the band, and their son Mark went on to be a professional drummer.  Playing all kinds of music in all kinds of countries.  He influenced me to play drums when I was maybe twelve, and I still communicate with the man on rare occasion.  Last I knew he was in Korea or something playing his electronica for tens of thousands of Koreans.  Life is strange.  His mother though, always gave me that same warm feeling.  She would pray for me and lay hands on me with my mother when I was sick or bothered.  I think it was her that my mom prayed with over my stomach when I had swallowed a penny at age four and was in need of surgery to avoid an ensuing hole in my stomach lining around the stuck penny.  The first miracle my mom ever felt was the penny moving out of the lining of my stomach and safely into my system, right there in that room.  She says she felt the penny move.  Now and then when I’m digging through storage back home looking for something, I’ll stumble upon a manilla envelope with the x-rays of my small body, the penny a bright reflective hole in the picture.  I think about it and the day I painfully passed the penny out of my system, never to eat money again.  God’s miracles are the basis of my life.  There’s another good, more memorable example of old people that make me feel that warm sticky cared-about feeling. I met a girl at youth group senior year of high school named Courtney Carrington.  She had a hell of a past, with family problems, health problems, the whole works.  I should have not hung out with this girl as much as I did.  I think she liked me more than I liked her and I must have hurt her.  I had known her for a number of months when I left for college, moving to the town where I still live.  I didn’t have a car for my first year of college.  I had a trashy bike and a good pair of shoes.  Those got me faithfully around campus, but I had to call on my friends for rides around town and rides back home an hour and a half away, South of the school.  One weekend, as Courtney was trying out schools, her, her mother, and her two sisters all came up North to visit my school.  We spent some time together, I showed her the campus, the dorm I lived in, the IHOP nearby, and the Village Inn a few minutes away down the main road in the town.  I decided as they were leaving that I needed to go home that weekend, so I bummed a ride down with them, sharing the back seat with two little Carrington girls as their big sister drove, sitting next to mom upfront.  We listened through every CD I ever burned for Courtney on the way down.  We stopped by the house they were staying in and I had the pleasure of meeting Courtney’s grandfather, Kirt Gandy.  Him and I connected over the fact that we both enjoyed cigars.  I don’t smoke much anymore, but I had fun then sitting on the back porch conversing with him about it as Courtney got ready inside to take me the rest of the way home.  Apparently she had to change clothes to do that.
About the time she emerged and was ready to leave, I had been ushered into his library and was seeing his collection of books.  The man is a Bible scholar.  He has a degree of some sort that he exhausted before he retired and he also has whatever sort of credentials you get after spending enough time at seminary.  Anyway in his long life that I really know nothing else about he developed this library.  That day as Courtney waited in the living room for me, he showed me book after book I needed if I was every going to study the Bible seriously.  The whole time as he poured out his heart to me regarding the depth and character of the word of God, I was covered in those same goose-bumps I had as a kid at the church garage sale, and felt that same warmth I felt when Alma Suhonnen would pray over me with my mother.  I can’t get enough of that distinctive feeling.  Later that year a box of books showed up with Courtney one day when she came over to see me at our old house in Parker.  Her grandfather had put together a small library to “get me started”, as he wrote on the first page of the blank journal that came with the collection of books, the journal he intended me to fill with clever scholarly notes like the notes he made all over every book he had given me to help me better understand them.  It was the most meaningful gift I had probably every received up to that point, bar my first drum set and guitar, not that I realized it then.  I remember sitting on the floor of my room in the basement later that night after Courtney had driven her mom’s car back to Aurora.  I looked through this box of books, lots of them still brand new, purchased by this guy just for me, and got that same feeling of warmth and unspeakable joy.  He had included a little broken book rack, three or four new versions of the bible I didn’t have, a few books on worship and worship music since he knew that’s what I did, and also a book called “How To Read the Bible for All It’s Worth”.  As we speak, I’m halfway through reading this book and it has already changed the way I read God’s word.  I’ve read a lot of the books from that box, I’m pleased to say, and one of those bibles is now my everyday reader.  The collection is now nicely arranged on my bookcase on the shelf under the fantastic array of worthless math and science textbooks I hope to never use again.  Every time I open one of those books and read through it, I get that feeling again as I stumble across something he’s underlined for me or notes he’s personally made in the margins.  I get the feeling of someone caring for me deeply and genuinely in a way I didn’t earn and don’t deserve.  Kirt Gandy must have thought I was marrying his granddaughter for the time he put into the gift he gave me.  I came back over to the house he lives in a few weeks later with a long thank-you note and him and I talked for a while.

I don’t know if everyone has that same sensation when they encounter selfless love like that.  I’ve felt it at a number of random times throughout my days, strangely always from older folks, but all those times are still so memorable.  Thinking of it now I get that feeling of warmth and closeness, even here alone on my couch tonight.  It’s my favorite feeling in the world.

I think the woman of God I marry someday will make me feel this same way.  The lucky pattern God has established in my life is called undeserved blessing and unmerited favor.  I have lots of things I don’t deserve and lots of meaningful, personal things he’s given me or done for me that were not things I asked for but have greatly improved my life.  Good room mates, for example.  A car.  Good musical instruments.  A phenomenal family and extended family.  A worship leader position amongst people my age.  Just to name a few in no particular order.  I think God will appoint for me a woman who is like these things.  A wonder, a person to make me warm and happier.  She’s sweet and sincere, uplifting and gentle.  I think she, by being a gift I don’t deserve like a box of books or a heartfelt gift from an old church lady, will give me that deep and warming feeling.  When she hugs me as I come home from work, I’ll have that pleasant prickly goose-bump sensation as a sign that not only am I with the right person, but that God is himself a giver of undeserved and marvelous gifts.  From his Son’s death in place of mine, to a lifelong companion someday so that I might not go through life alone, God’s generous character is evident in the lives he’s crafted for us.  I like how I get a warm feeling when people reflect God in this way.

Just that it’s delicate.

Riding bikes through empty streets late at night is a favorite thing of mine to do.  My beloved room mate Tyler Saxton just invested wisely in a cool old French road bike, so we’ve spent a lot of time tearing around Fort Collins together lately.  Tonight we got back to the house just before two in the morning after a long talk sitting on some sticky tables we rode to downtown somewhere, a mile or so from our house.  The cold air, the fast bikes, the staggering drunks, the blue Gatorade, the heart-to-heart, all of it, made a great midnight outing.

We discussed tonight, like we do a lot, what God has for us in our relationships with girls.  My theory is that God has a set “Plan A” girl or guy for every person alive.  There are, in addition to this person, many other good candidates for a lifelong partner, but none will be to you what “Plan A” could be.  That’s the theory.

So my question was, are we guaranteed to find that person if we seek God for him or her and do our best to look and listen for his guidance in our relationships?  I’d like to believe that yes I will, in fact, wind up with my “Plan A” girl.  Now if I fall in love and give my heart away prematurely, I believe God will still bless my relationship with whoever if we, together, put him first in the matter and stay holy.  She becomes “Plan A” at this point, and because I cannot know that this woman is THE one for me without God explicitly telling me that, I have to live like she is “Plan A” and love her and treat her like “Plan A”.  So basically I’m saying that whatever girl I “choose”, as if God hasn’t kindly ordered every step of  mine, will become my “Plan A” girl no matter what.  Maybe this is true.

Regardless, it is my belief that although I would wind up happy with whomever, there is one specific girl who is made for me and I for her.  She is someone I won’t just be happy with, but completed with.  I think I’ll find myself  with that one.  I think I’ll know when I meet her.  I think, as I pray for her each day till we meet and thereafter, that the short term, life long relationship we’ll share will glorify God more than one of the relationships I could have had with any of the other wonderful girls all around me and because God orders my steps and brings himself glory through the ups and downs of my somewhat pathetic life, I can believe him to cross my path with that of “Plan A”.

Just some thoughts.  People talk about things like this just when they’re tired of being single and tired of thier unreasonably high standards.

From Winter Brings the Spring Again.

I love the place I live.  My “9″ house mates are wonderful, happy people who challenge me in my walk with God and challenge me to be a better person with how great they are.  I couldn’t have asked for more.  One of the only issues I have is that every one of them is enthusiastic about their majors and are well on their way to being young professionals of one kind or another.  That makes JD feel apathetic. Also, almost every one of them is in a happy, edifying relationship with a beautiful woman of God.  That makes JD feel lonely.

But if I am lonely some days, it’s no big deal.  I’m not gonna so seek out some one just so I fit in or feel less left out.  It’s worth waiting to find the right person.  All my room mates are in such great relationships because of perseverance and patience.  Seasons come and go.  This one is cold and stressful with school being hard and motivation being scarce, but I believe that Spring is just around the corner, so to speak.  I’m excited for the time of my life where I’m enthusiastic about learning!  I’m pumped for the season where love comes around.  I’m hopeful because I have seen and know that this is how life is.  How great that God made us this way!  I wouldn’t appreciate the warmth of spring and summer if winter wasn’t so damn cold.