Eleven months after I had ended my six month commitment to “Not Dating”, in March of 2000, a lifelong dream of mine was fulfilled and I got to spend two weeks in Israel, walking where Jesus walked and seeing the things I had been reading about in the Bible.  The scriptures came alive before my eyes and gave me a vivid understanding of everything I had been imagining as I read.

I washed away my past and my pain in the Jordan River where Christ himself had been baptized and I felt an assured sense that God’s plans for my future were fantastic ones.  That trip was a perfect honeymoon with my Lord after a year of renewed courtship with Him. It was a year in my single life that I will cherish forever where I had the opportunity to set everything else aside and soak God in. He lavished me with His Words and His love in a way that fed my soul and repaired my heart.

When I returned back to California after my time in Israel and arrived back to my little hometown and pulled into the church parking lot we had previously departed from, everyone on the bus started to buzz. There were giggles and a whole lot of pointing out the windows and then, it seemed everyone was staring back at me with giant smiles on their faces. I stood up and tried to see what everyone was acting so goofy about.

Standing there, holding a big sign with my name on it… you know… the kind of sign you see in the movies when someone at an airport or train station is waiting to pick someone up? Standing there, with that sign, bearing my name,was a young man who had missed me while I’d been gone.

Thinking about how he looked that day, standing there smiling, in his Tommy Hilfiger shirt, dark jeans, sunglasses on looking so cool, so tall, so strong, so handsome, and waiting for ME… eagerly. The memory of him that day, how he looked, how he made me feel… it still sends butterflies swirling in my stomach just as much now as it did in that moment.

Waiting for me there, to give me a ride home, was the “boy next door.”

To be continued…