Saturday, September 18, 2010

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Waiting Game.

The summer before college was an absolute blast. We spent every waking minute together when he wasn’t working and Mom and I hurriedly made plans for my dorm room. Darin and I grew closer than we ever had before, but remembered to keep a safe distance since we still were uncertain of what God wanted for us.

I began to count the weeks down to the beginning of college. The thought of leaving the normality of my life for the past 18 years was terrifying. The thought of leaving Darin, the boy who I had only known for a year of my life, was equally as terrifying. I was filled with emotion as the excitement of college and freedom was at my fingertips and the fear of being apart from him filled my mind. How could a boy have this much of an effect on me? I didn’t understand it.

One day we decided we need to talk. We needed to define things. We needed to figure out what we wanted to do. We were leaving for college in two weeks and something needed to be established. We both knew what that was.

He picked me up in his little white Cavalier and we headed to Denny’s – the hot new restaurant in town. I was feeling queasy about our conversation (as was he), so we both just ordered strawberry lemonades. I played with my straw – twirling it in and out of my beverage nervously. We made small talk for a few minutes, but we both acted so nervous and weird that we finally just started talking.

“Okay Whitney. You know I like you. I know you like me. What are we going to do?” he asked.

“Well….I’ve been thinking about this a lot. And praying about it even harder” I began, “and I just don’t feel like right now we should do anything. We are going to separate college in two weeks and we don’t know who we will meet or what will happen once we are there. I think we should just keep things the same as they are, and see where to go after our first year. Let’s see if our feelings are just as strong then. Let’s see if we miss each other. Let’s see what happens.”

Those aren't the words I wanted to be saying, but I knew they are the words I had to say.

He looked at me with those enormous blue eyes that speak volumes and quietly said, “I agree”.

We continued our talk and I know that it hurt us both. We wanted to be together. We wanted to have a dating relationship. We missed each other when we were out of town for even a few days. We had gone to separate camps that summer and wrote each other 20+ page letters and called every chance we could. It was insane how much we had to say to each other. I could not imagine not seeing him every day. This was going to be a huge adjustment.

All of my life, I just knew that I would go to OBU and fall in love with a little Baptist guy. I never dreamed I would find anyone before that. And at that point, I didn’t want to fall in love with a little Baptist guy. I didn’t want any one but Darin. I wanted him to go to OBU and BE the guy I was going to fall in love with. The thought of him finding someone else absolutely killed me. I couldn’t imagine him looking at anyone else the way he looked at me. I couldn’t imagine him laughing at inside jokes with anyone else the way he did with me. I couldn’t imagine him smiling at anyone else the way he smiled at me. I knew I was special to him, and I did not want to lose that.

And I feared I would.