Set Apart in Prayer

If you missed yesterday's post, you should scroll down or this isn't going to make any sense.

When Ryan came to me and said he had feelings for me, I had no idea what to say. There is a (large) handful of people on the planet I never expected to look my direction, and he was certainly among them. Since I'm sure you would stop me to say WHY????? if we were chatting together over coffee, I'll pause to answer that...

...Honestly? I considered him out of my league. (He HATES it when I say that, but it's seriously how I felt at the beginning.) He's extremely funny, he's an extrovert, he's adventuresome (like he went skydiving this summer...THAT kind of adventuresome), he loves sports and working out, and I just did not feel that this kind of nerdy writer who is scared of thunderstorms and the dark would ever stand a chance of his attention.

So it was quite a self-esteem booster to hear the words "I've started having feelings for you" out of his mouth - but at the same time, I wondered if I'd lost my ability to comprehend English entirely. Seriously? He liked me? This sort of stuff just does not happen in my universe.

We talked for a long time that evening and decided we needed to take some time apart and spend it in prayer to make sure that pursuing anything was smack in the center of God's desire for our lives. We had both been hurt too badly and were too good of friends to sail headlong into a relationship blindly.

You girls will understand this (and probably most of you guys too, though I won't ask you to admit it)...the next morning when I woke up, I wondered if I had hallucinated the whole conversation - and worse - I wondered if he'd changed his mind overnight.

I started keeping a journal just for that season of my life - where I wrote all my prayers, all my fears, all my secret wishes - ALL of it. And as the season drew to a close several weeks later, I went back and read through the journal. It's far too private to share the words on this screen, but let me just tell you what a wildly wonderful thing it is to have a front-row seat to watching your own heart walls collapse in a heap on the ground.

I read through the first guarded pages, laced with apprehension and disbelief and then as the pages progressed, I noticed more bits of vulnerability creeping in...more heart cries for wisdom and a genuine desire for God's blessing. I read the days when I wrestled so hard with ghosts of relationships past and struggled to believe that God would rewrite those hurts into something beautiful.

By the end of the journal, and by the end of the set-apart season, I was convinced beyond any doubt that this was exactly where God wanted me to be. It still surprised me that this was the path He'd chosen for me. It still surprised me that this out-of-my-league guy would even glance my way. It still surprised me that my heart was so open to trying again after all the devastation I'd been through before.

But I was so excited for a new start.