Currently listening to: everything i wanted – Billie Eilish
And you say, “As long as I’m here
No one can hurt you
Don’t wanna lie here
But you can learn to
If I could change
The way that you see yourself
You wouldn’t wonder why you hear
They don’t deserve you”
The Pastor Chronicles continues:
Chapter 3
Ana was completely different from the three girls that I had ever dated. It became so clear from me from the beginning. It was probably the biggest reason that I liked her so much from the start. She blew my mind with the things that she said and her passion for life. She had gone through much and endured much. She was vivacious; she was fun, she was sweet. I quickly composed a list of the reasons why I liked her. This list reached thirty items, but will not be enclosed for privacy reasons. We chatted online, we chatted on the phone, we video chatted. Ana also was the most physically attractive girl that had ever had an interest in me. She had everything, brains, beauty, wit, and a killer sense of humor. Every guy tried to approach her and she never gave any of them the time of day. She got numerous offers for dinner and drinks, but she graciously turned them all down. And even though I was hardly a month from my previous relationship, I dove in headfirst.
She saw life differently than me. She had different views on relationships and sex. Ordinarily I would not have dated a girl with such radically different views from me. However, our chemistry just seemed to trump all our differences in theology and relationship issues. We knew we had differences, we just chose not to focus on them. We instead focused on how we enjoyed each other’s company and conversation. I came to realize that I didn’t want to end up with the perfect samonym (pastor’s wife) for the rest of my life. I found most of such candidates as simple, uptight and sometimes even boring (ex- not quite included in these feelings). I realized that I needed to find someone who I was crazy about, who allowed me to break out of my shell, and we would work out the other stuff later. I needed to find a girl who was interesting and loved me. These were warning signs for me, but I ignored them. After all this beautiful girl was interested in me. I felt that I could change her. That’s the thing as a pastor. You lead people all your life. And so you think, if she’s willing to follow, I’ll lead her. It’s funny cause she thought the same thing. He wants me, and I could change his mind on these things that we differ on. When we finally confronted each other with these thoughts it caused quite a stir within our relationship.
So obvious warning signs aside, we fell for each other. Maybe it was one of the songs I wrote for her. It definitely wasn’t the emails I wrote her because she later admitted to me that she never read them. But it wasn’t full speed ahead, yet. Ana, had come off a bad breakup. She dated a guy that she thought she was going to marry. Their relationship lasted a year and seven months before he finally left her. And this rocked her world. She went into deep depression. She dropped out of school. She withdrew from all her friends. But that was four months earlier, and she was finally coming around to being herself. This is right when she met me.
And somehow, she felt herself coming back to life. She had felt feelings that had been ripped from her a few months before. She started to trust me. I knew her situation and concluded that we must go “slow.” Going slow is very difficult for a pastor though. This is because before one even dates a pastor, she really has to really consider whether or not there is a possibility for marriage. Most people do not have to go through this process, they can date with no strings attached, but this is not the case for pastors. Unfortunately for pastors, there’s people that you meet initially that cause wedding bells to ring in your ears before the first date. Pastors can’t play around and older single ones can’t waste time. So because a girl has to keep all this in mind even beforehand, when they do actually go out on a date, the first date is actually like the 6th date for normal people. As she thought through all that stuff, she finally concluded there might be a chance, even if it was slim.
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