Youth On The Rock : View topic

4gvn

I find myself in a state of great confusion. I don’t know what to do. Would you like to read a unforgivably long story made into an almost pardonably long one? No? Then just hit the back button. Otherwise; continue reading.

My troubles can be summed up by two pokes recently received on Facebook.

So you’ve heard of my 27 year old Australian friend? We met at a summer camp. We both worked there as camp counselors. She and I developed feelings for each other during the last few weeks of camp. She said that she really liked me, but didn’t want a relationship right now not to mention her feeling like God didn’t want her involved with me at the time. I felt defeated; we enjoy being very close friends till camp is over.

Then she amends her travel plans and heads to Florida before going back to Sydney. During the few days she was here in Florida at my college we really warmed up to each other; no really, we warmed up to each other-much snuggling. We were both quite taken with each other but her presence was all too temporary.

She left. I mused about wanting to try and make a relationship work. I decided to give it to God and know that if there were a way it could work and He wanted it to, I’d find it rather effortlessly.

And so I did coincidentally, miraculously, or dreadfully enough. By whatever adjective you prefer the BestSemester program offered through the CCCU practically fell right into my lap: A way to study music and theology in Sydney Australia for one semester without all the trouble of actually transferring. It’d all be done through my current college. What providence, what fortuitous circumstance!

In fact for a great amount of time it seemed that if the will of God were perceived by what is easily obtained and what is moving without trouble when the thing is committed to prayer, then I would’ve said it was God’s will that I go to Australia. If only opportunity was the only thing governing a budding relationship.

For you see, my lovely Australian has had a great many doubts since our snuggling in Florida. She feels that God wants her to wait, maybe three years or so, before she should have a relationship.

What the crap.

She is very serious. I asked her that if I were to go to Australia, what would happen? Her reply was that we’d probably just be good friends, something could happen, she does like me, but it most likely won’t.

So what had God wrought? Leaving me feeling so sure that this was right and leaving her feeling so confused? Maybe, I thought, maybe there is no contradiction. Maybe she truly does need to not be in a relationship right now, and I still truly do need to go to Sydney to study just for the opportunity it offered to study abroad and focus and the Bible and music: Both things I’m passionately interested in.

If it were not for a beautiful rose from the past, or perhaps more appropriately a weed equally irremovable as beautiful, I would have just assumed that going to Australia is God’s will for me with my Australian friend involved or not.

However this young dandelion from upstate New York has taken to calling me quite frequently in the past few weeks.

I had a crush on her first week of my first semester of college. I honestly thought, and still do think she is the most beautiful woman in the world. I don’t mean beauty in a merely aesthetic way; don’t get me wrong—she is easiest sight in the world I know to look on—but her beauty is pure and runs straight to her heart. The story of my trying to woo her would be a very depressing post, both by measure of its length and its content, and I don’t wish to give details. Let us sum it up rather nicely and concisely; she didn’t return my sentiments.

We ended up becoming very good friends. She left after the first semester of college and went back to study in New York at Albany yet I have only twice gone longer than a week without either of us at least hearing from each other.

Usually it would be me calling her and not the other way around, but she always said she enjoyed our conversations and would sometimes call me. We grew very close. We’d confide in each other and tell each other our dreams and stay up late just talking about random things. She even invited one of her other friends, a girl, and I up to her house in New York during the summer. I visited her a few days before going off to the summer camp. Nothing happened there—but I found that I loved her family, and where she lived. I could go into detail, but I won’t.

The phone calls happened rather regularly until I started going to the summer camp as a camp counselor. About half way though it I tried calling her three times in a week and she didn’t pick up. I just decided I’d wait for her to call me back—whenever that was.

During my time not talking to her I met my Australian friend. We found out we had feelings for each other the very day that she decided to call me. I did in fact miss that call; I had my phone on “Silence” and didn’t look at it till late that night. I decided, since I thought opportunity and circumstance dictated what was God’s will, that this meant that God wanted me not to call the dandelion so I’d be open to a relationship with my Australian friend.

She, the beautiful flower from New York, has always had a way with knowing exactly what I’m feeling, thinking, and have been up to. When we finally did talk I was depressed because my Australian friend had just gone through telling me that she felt that “God didn’t want me to be in a relationship right now.” She immediately knew that I was depressed and that it was over a girl. I explained the situation and she tried to comfort me but it wasn’t needed. As usually any amount of depression was remedied by the sound of her voice. She told me that if it were God’s will that I be with my Australian friend, then He’d change her heart. She was very supportive of me and the possible relationship with my Australian friend and provided me with all sorts of words of wisdom and comfort.

That particular time I talked with my friend from New York was while I was still at camp. Things have changed since then.

This post has gotten very long and it would be annoyingly hard to convey how our phone conversations got around to this—but since then my flower from New York has said some things that strike my heart with confusion and wonderful torment. It seems the main thing that turned her off from me when we first met was my forwardness and the fact that she’d never get involved with someone she didn’t know for a good amount of time—and she knows me quite well now. I said something about me being silly because I know that she already said that she doesn’t like me in that way, and that she didn’t want a relationship with me. Now she tells me that just because she didn’t then, doesn’t mean she never will.

Oh how this situation has weighted on my heart. I go to sleep tired and wake up the same. I may be physically well and rested by my mind and heart ache with fatigue.

My reluctant Australian friend has been doing nothing to perpetuate any sort of relationship but I feel tied to her, yet I’m starting to feel I’d much rather just throw the whole thing away and have the bliss of conversing with my friend from New York and seeing if anything ever comes from that.

So many considerations; how can I portray the magnitude of them all to you?

What do I mean by liking someone from Australia anyway? Going to do BestSemester is just as temporary as her visiting Florida. I’ve no doubt that no matter how reluctant she is we’d start to form some sort of relationship if I went to Sydney, I mean she was reluctant at first when she came to Florida too, but what after that? Do I find yet another way to stay in Sydney until I marry her and move there permanently forsaking ever seeing my family more than once a year? Do I want to be so cut off from this world I know? If I am seriously perusing any sort of relationship here then that is what I’m subscribing too.

My friend from Australia is also little like me. The biggest thing we have in common is our infatuation for each other. I’m more optimistic, hopeful, and silly. She’s much more cynical, experienced, and serious. She’s 27 and I’m 19. I can proudly sing the theme song of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh while walking through the mall—she’d probably roll her eyes at me. I try and say something romantic, she tells me that I’m mushy but she likes me anyway. Whenever we’re together though, we passionately involve ourselves with each other. Not that we’ve ever done anything other than snuggle on a couch—we’ve not even kissed—but our contact and interaction feels so passionate. It’s almost like all our differences are reconciled by the emotions released by us being near to each other.

Besides, Sydney would be an adventure. Would it be so horrible if I found an exciting new life in an exciting new world? What if I were to go, and were to marry her, would that be all so terrible? But then should I be reprimanded for even thinking about such avenues?

And what of the beautiful flower from New York? I cannot speak with her without feeling a lifting in my heart and without at some point during conversation or directly after bursting into an embarrassing smile. If I’m honest with myself I still feel that she is the most beautiful woman I know. It truly saddens me that if I were to become seriously involved with my Australian friend I would have to stop talking with her so often. I know, I can be involved with someone and still make phone calls to friends who are girls, but I would still feel like something was there and I wouldn’t allow myself. She’s innocent, naïve, funny, charming, beautiful, and virtuous. I’d list more adjectives but I don’t think I know quite enough to express how much I admire her and you wouldn’t read it. We’ve so much in common, especially if compared to my Australian friend. I love her family, and her family seemed to enjoy me. Honestly any situation in which I’d be with her in any way seems like something out of a dream.

I know of no road that would lead to me being with my friend from New York though. I know of no way in which I could be around her long enough for anything to happen between us. I’d embrace this unknown for a chance that my dreams become a reality.

What’s more a reality however is being with my Australian friend. I’ve no doubt that I could with little to no effort be in Sydney by next spring. I’ve no doubt that by the summer we will have found that circumstance and ease of action will us to be together. Finally I have not doubt that we will find that if circumstance and ease of action no longer will it, and I find myself in America, it will suddenly be God’s will that we not be together for a time.

So here I sit with my problem summed up in two Facebook pokes. One from my Australian friend, and one from my flower from New York. I feel so confused and so stretched. In the words of Tolkein through Bilbo, I feel like butter spread over too much bread. The situation weighs heavy on me. I write this now because I need an outlet, a way to express my thoughts to someone, a way to take all that is weighing on my mind and put it elsewhere for a time. I appreciate all of you who have taken the time to let my words fall upon your eyes and I do apologise for the length of it all. You may comment if you wish, but I’m not too sure that I’m looking for an answer.

It seems the more I pray the more I get mixed messages. If anything I think most of my problems come from be being a victim of circumstance. I’ve been assuming circumstance equates the will of God. So I look for circumstance to validate or invalidate what I believe to be God’s will, and thusly as circumstance changes so does my perception of his will.

Maybe I just need to make a decision. I’ve been being horribly pulled around by circumstance and what appears to be easy and what appears to be right for so long. Maybe I need to just simply, or not simply as it may be, make a decision. Maybe that’s the will of God: That I decide what I should do and not look for Him to give me an answer.

Funny. If that is His will it is funny that it was so hard to find. He created humans with free will, He must think it a shame that us Christians seem to never want to use it.

So am I to just make a decision?

Thank you for reading all four Microsoft Word pages of this.

Be blessed,
Mike

Oatmeal

So, I read the whole thing. And I think you'd be crazy to pass up someone who is the most beautiful woman in the world to you, someone you are a lot alike, someone whose family you like and whose family likes you, etc. It doesn't matter if you don't see anything happening there, because when do we really ever know exactly the way our life will turn out, and who will be in it?

On a side note, I wouldn't go by circumstances dictating God's will. All of my circumstances last year seemed to point toward me graduating and heading off to college a year early, prayers were answered, situations were perfect... everything fell into place. But then right at the end I couldn't do it: I didn't have the money to go to college [edit: not to mention that my heart suddenly wasn't in it anymore]. I've seen it as a learning experience, something I should have learned and taken to heart, but not that it was ever necessarily guaranteed I would get out of high school early. What I'm saying is, you shouldn't say every coincidence in your life is "God's will." Sometimes, things just happen. So you do what you think is best.

Good luck with whatever path you choose tho! And heck, for all you know you could end up with neither, or go after one and still end up with the other. Just follow your heart.

4gvn

Yes, thank you. That's what I'm getting from all this too. In fact when I was typing "if coincidence and ease of action determine God's will" I was saying it mostly as a jab at the idea.

Nightingale

I can't say I have ever had any experience with these things.
But I do hope everything works out alright for you.
They both sound like wonderful girls.

4gvn · Last edited by 4gvn on Wed Jun 13, 2007 9:24 am; edited 1 time in total

Restless

4Gvn - forgive me as I mean you no ill, neither do I wish to come across as condescending.

You are only 19 or 20 - full of all the rages that your body and mind will put you through and that's even before God gets involved! From a male point of view, having read your lengthy but eloquent post I would say that the NY girl sounds like she's the one.

But hey, what about this for an idea.... Why not retract from both and see what happens? Forgive me for saying this too but, as an outsider looking in, the girl in Sydney being some 8 or 9 years older than you sounds like you are more about an ego trip than something serious for her. I REALLY don't mean that nastily but I would have to question any lady, or man, that sought the arms of someone considerably younger, or older than themselves. I am NOT saying this couldn't work; but I am saying that you seem such a lovely guy, these young ladies both seem lovely too but the NY sounds more lovely and more right.

What's the rush big guy!? You've got another 10 years before you mature properly - be careful who you tie your heart to at such an age. And I mean and say this with every good will for you and in love.

4gvn

lol, did you not see the post I just made updating the situation?

The original post is a good five months or so old.

Restless

I just missed it but I will stick with what I wrote in my post!

Good luck big fella!! Be honourable.