Valentines Day 2011

As Christians, believers, followers of Christ, we are by the very name we call ourselves to be Christ like. There are too many areas to cover on that so I will cover a piece of just one, love. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." "For God demonstrates His love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." There are more passages. These were the first two to pop into mind.

Christ died for us because He loved us. That was His ultimate act of service, sacrifice, love. Christ served us. God served us by giving us more than what we have. We have taken those gifts and many times unknowingly cast them aside. That is why life is not perfect. In our sin we cast aside His gifts like, love, grace, and His perfect will for us.

Love. Christ served us by giving us everything, by giving us His life. In the same way we should be giving our lives to Him and the ones we love. I don't mean that we should die but we forfeit our lives in love. When you look at that man or woman you are married to you should think to yourself, "what can I do to serve you today?" Love fails because we get caught up in the glitter like Hollywood image of love, because we get caught up in an idea of love, we get caught in lust, because we lose focus on the love for those special others and start focusing on ourselves. If people would just stop worrying about getting mine and start serving those that they love, that means you marry the one that you would serve the rest of your life and who would serve you, divorce would start to disappear, couples would grow old together, children would grow up with fewer problems and be more successful, and this world would hurt a lot less.

True love is not a feeling or something to fall in and out of. It is something that just happens and when it does it has nothing to do with you. Love is not about getting married or having sex or Valentines day or even about feeling good. Love truly hurts a lot of the time. It is sacrifice and service. It is what happens when one realizes that they care so much more about another that their well being and happiness is more important than your own.  I don't think that everyone had had the pleasure of suffering love because some, or many, can't get out of their own way, can't stop focusing on the person in the mirror. True love is about them.  Something to think about.

Happy Valentines Day 2011.

Johnny

And so it begins

Ok, the last several days, maybe even a couple of weeks I have been chatting with several friends on Facebook. I know nothing spectacular. One of these friends happens to be a beautiful country gal who has caught my attention. She has actually had it for some time though I could not remember why. That will come later. I find myself extremely attracted to her and it is not just her looks. I won't bore you with the details. I could list several reasons why I like this woman but in the end I really don't know why her and not someone else or others I have met in the past. I haven't even seen her in a year and even then in the last 4 or 5 year I have seen her just a handful of times and never for very long.

This is a problem for me. During this deployment I have once again shut our many emotions and I have started looking at some things more clearly. Things like what I am going to do when I move back home and how I am going to live my life. I plan on starting over and living closer to right than I have been in nearly 10 years. I know I can do it now. I suppose I just needed to live, be a young man, and then grow up. I did want to eventually find a young lady, settle down and start a family. I figured that would be a long way off. There are women who are potential that I was going to go out with have fun with spend time with but nothing serious, friendly get togethers and eventually, hopefully one of those friends or another would be the one.

I had a plan. that is the point. A plan to do things right and go slow. I guess there was little to no hope of anything else. I am not saying that anything would happen or that she  would be anything but an amazing woman who is an amazing friend. For all I know that is all she wants to be and that would be fine. She really is that good. Now, on to the beginning.

I met her at the bar, she was actually 21. I was in the army reserves about to go active duty. I can't remember if it was when I was in the reserves or when I was active duty but back home visiting but I ran into her at the mall one day. I had somewhere to be in a couple of hours but didn't want to drive home and didn't feel like sitting down for coffee so I went to the mall just to walk around. We chatted for a minute and she and I spent probably an hour walking around the mall and doing some shopping. We visited the pet store and took a look at the puppies. I think I started to be interested then. At this point is was nothing serious. Honestly I didn't think I would ever cross her radar. That may still turn out to be the case.

After my first deployment I went home on block leave and got engaged to another woman, a good friend who I had known for a long time and who I had called and talked to while in Iraq. 2 weeks after being engaged I go out to the bar for the night before the wedding bachelor party. I drank way too much and my friends kept feeding me. They all knew this was a stupid idea, me getting married that fast, and they knew I wasn't going to back down on it. So they got me more drunk than I have ever been and got me to admit that it was a bad idea. It had nothing to do with the girl just with the timing. They wanted me to do it right and take some time. I was being young and foolish and rushing it. I was 26 and tired of being alone.

Well at the end of the night I drank myself beyond drunk. I ended outside of the bar puking my guts out in a trash can as one of my friends interrogated me until  cracked and admitted it was a bad idea. The whole time I was puking, too drunk to even hold myself up to puke this woman was holding me up. Not my best moment actually one of my worst.

I had forgotten about that until she brought it up last night. When I remembered, I remembered her arms around me holding me, then helping me to the car the whole time talking to me making sure I was ok. Oh she got a good laugh out of it but she took care of me. I remember for at least a split second thinking how awesome she was that night.

We have never really spent any time together but somehow now I talk to her on Facebook every day. I have called her once with many follow ons planned. Funny, I lost my phone right before I deployed. So I put a message on FB for people to send me their numbers since my phone was gone. My sister, my GF at the time, and this girl were the only ones to respond. I never even had her number before.

Either there is potential there or the universe is messing with me. That is exactly what I am scared of. Both. I have messed up every relationship I have been in which are few. I would like to say that they weren't meant to be but still. I have also gotten hurt many times by women who never were. I pursue quality women, only the best and most rare. I'll hook up with just about anything, but pursue only the gems. To this point I might have to say that none of them, these gems have said yes to me. I have dated, literally a couple(2) quality women, but they were not as scripture would say "more valuable than rubies" but I have pursued such women and been turned away. She is one such gem. Perhaps a little rough and hidden in the sand but a priceless rarity she is. That scares me.