If you read my first blog: "The Long and Winding Road to Becoming a Bride", this is the continuation of that. We left of with me asking myself the questions that many girls do: "have I already met my future prince?" "Is he one of my friends?" "Do I have yet to meet him?"
My mom, had a love for the country of Italy. As a young girl, she and her family had spent 6 weeks in Europe and she had the chance to go to places like Venice, which was the place I think she loved most. This love for Italy was somehow passed on to me. Though I'd never been there, I love the very thought of Venice and of Italy and I dreamed of going someday!
My dad is a pastor. From the ages of 7-16, my dad and the rest of my family served in the same church. It was the church that went through the entire fight of cancer with my mom and our family. It was a small church, but we did manage to support a few missionaries. When I was 8, our church met a new missionary family that we were considering supporting. Where were they missionaries to? You guessed it. Italy! They were really going to be in Sicily, which is the "football" at the bottom of the "boot" of Italy. So they came to our church for a visit. They had 4 kids, and one of them was a girl the exact same age as me! I loved getting to hang out with her! In the end, our church decided to support the family.
Four years later, they came back to the states and were revisiting churches to update them on their missions work. They stopped at our church again. This time, I was 12 and their 12 year old daughter and I loved talking again and even swapped addresses. I couldn't wait to write someone that lived in Italy!
About two years later, the possibility of a missions trip to Italy became available to our church. A trip to serve alongside our missionaries, short term. My dad and the other elders began to ask about peoples interest in the trip. It went slow. Very few people really stepped up and said "YES!I'd love the opportunity to go!" A year later, was the year I turned 15 and my mom passed away. She had made it clear to my dad that she wanted me to be able to go to Italy. More interest had built in the missions trip. 5 months after my mom's passing, my dad and I boarded a plane, along with 4 other members of our church and would be meeting up with several members of our missionaries home church.
Leading up to this time, I was still very much going through my "I just want SOMEBODY to LIKE me" stage. There was a 16 year old guy on the trip. So like I'd become far to prone to do, I started thinking "maybe he's it. maybe he's the one that will like me".
The time in Sicily was WONDERFUL!!! The country was beautiful and I had made friends and even been able to share some of the grief I was still going through. 2 months after getting home, several of the team members met up for supper and this guy was there...the next thing I knew we were boyfriend and girlfriend. We lived 4 hours apart and I don't think he could'ev or would've come to see me. He did come to visit at one point when a few of the team members came to my family's house to help us with a few different things.
We were at that time an "item". On this visit, he kissed me. It was my first kiss. Kissing him wasn't something I'd really thought of. It was much more his thought and I just didn't know how to get out of it. I don't even remember if it was before that visit or shortly after that he first said he loved me. But it was to quick. I'm very thankful that it was the only time he ever got to visit! Two months into our "relationship" (Feb 06) I one day out of nowhere felt very distinctly: "This relationship isn't right. I shouldn't be in it." It lead to a very revealing conversation that he was not a Christian as he'd led me to believe and that he more than likely wanted things from me that I would never be willing to give. So our relationship ended as quickly as it began.
Part of what had upset him was that me and one of my friends were going to go to prom together. I told him I hadn't expected that he'd come all the way down to my house to go to prom so I'd made arrangements with someone else. Well he didn't like it so that amoung other things made us pull the plug.
I talked and talked to my guy friend that was going to prom with me and grew to like him more and more. But somewhere in between my first breakup and starting to like my friend, I decided to let go of my "find someone and don't let them get away" mindset, and instead, approach every guy with prayer.
I went to prom with my friend and after that...our friendship began to trail off. I knew he liked me and he knew I liked him, but we'd never taken the step of kissing each other or anything like that. And I was glad. I was even more determined then to pray anytime I liked a guy even the SLIGHTEST amount and ask God "is he someone I should be interested it?" I was going to let go. And I was going to let God take over my love life.
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