Rich and Christy

My last tweet was shown in the above figure, which is my blogging inspiration. So, I'm gonna blog about a true story between Rich and Christy. It is a bit lengthy you can just click on the "Close Window", if you don't like a wordy passage.

the Amazing Gift of Romance

Rich Shipe and Christy Farris. They were fourteen years old. Rich thought Christy was really cute; Christy thought Rich was really annoying. Fortunately for Rich, he didn't stay fourteen. He grew up. And as time passed, he and Christy became good friends. During their senior year of high school, their relationship became romantic. They began to write each other - not e-mail, mind you, but old-fashioned, handwritten letters - to express their feelings. Each letter was written from the heart with love.

Falling in love wasn't something Rich and Christy could easily explain. Who of us can describe the mysterious and powerful urge to pursue another person's affection? Words just don't do it justice. Defining romance is like trying to capture the grandeur of the Grand Canyon with a disposable camera. No matter how many snapshots you take, your attempts fall short.

Until Love So Desires

Rich and Christy's feelings for each other were real and deeply romantic. But were those feelings being awakened in God's timing and purpose?

The truth sank in. Rich wasn't ready to support a family - both he and Christy still wanted to attend college. And it was also too soon for them to stoke the fires of romance. A premature romantic relationship would only distract them from preparing for their future.

Ending what he and Christy called the "us" part of their relationship wasn't easy, but they both knew it needed to happen. They went back to just being friends. They interacted but didn't act like a couple. They thought of each other as brother and sister, not boyfriend and girlfriend. Even though they both knew what was right, their hearts were deceitful. They wanted the feelings. They wanted the thrill of expressing how they felt. They wanted the security of knowing they belonged to each other. As a result they began to compromise their commitment to keep the relationship strictly a friendship.

However, he'd stolen more of Christy's affections when he knew they didn't rightfully belong to him. That's when Rich asked Christy to give back all the letters he had ever written her. Reluctantly, she handed them over. "I wanted to serve her," Rich explains. "I wanted to take everything form her that represented my feelings for her. Those letters were the record of our love and all we had shared. We cherished them and reread them over and over. I knew that in order to truly lay the relationship down at God's feet, we both had to part with them"

An Early Morning Funeral

Rich was digging a hole in Christy's front yard that night to bury a box that contained all the letters they'd written each other. There were over one hundred handwritten pages inside it.

Had his feelings for Christy changed? Not at all. But he realized that he couldn't be guided just by his feelings. He had to act on principle and do what was in Christy's best interest. He couldn't just do what felt right; he had to do what was right. Even though it hurt, he knew that the most caring thing he could do for the girl he loved was to get out of her life and end the relationship that was distracting both of them from serving God and obeying her parents. Rich wanted his hopes to be able to stay in the ground for a long time...maybe even forever.

For eighteen-year-old Rich, that moment was the funeral of his dreams. He was summiting his feelings and longings to God. He stared at the box one last time, looked longingly up at the quite house, and then pushed the dirt he'd unearthed back into the hole and packed it down with his foot. If You want to dig this up some day, I know You can, he told God. But if not, this is where it will stay. 

The Rest of the Story

A month after Rich buried their love letters, both left home for colleges in different parts of the country. They didn't say goodbye. They didn't write or call each other. Because their schools had different schedules, they didn't see each other during the year. Those were difficult days. These love they felt for each other hadn't gone away.

Rich and Christy didn't begin a courtship then, but they did start to talk and ease back into a friendship. A year later, with Christy still away at school, they began a long-distance courtship. Things were so different this time. Their relationship was just as romantic, but now it had purpose and direction. They had their parents' blessing. Every day their confidence for marriage grew.

One More Letter

When he had carefully wrapped the box years before, he had placed one new letter on top of all the others. It was a letter Christy had never read. In it, Rich asked her to marry him.

Over four years after it had been buried, the box of cherished letters was unearthed and opened. And four years after it had been written, Christy read Rich's letter proposing marriage.

Today, Rich and Christy have a soaring story of romance because they were willing to be guided by wisdom (...which I will blog about it next time). In the very spot he buried his hopes, he saw them come to life. In the very place he knelt for a funeral of his dreams, he knelt four years later to ask Christy Farris to be his bride. He heart her answer, "YES!"

End of the story. (taken from chapter 3, Boy Meets Girl, by Joshua Harris, and edited.)

Too many similarities between our story and Rich and Christy's (more in the beginning part).
We were both young while our relationship became romantic, we were like thirteen.
Our feelings for each other were strong when we were senior.
We broke up isn't because our hearts changed isn't because we didn't love each other no more. I wish you were thinking like how Rich thought.

Somehow, I even want to have the ending like them, with you. HAHAHA. Everyone has his life, his way of story. It can't be the same or similar that much.

Message to you: Remembering I'd asked you so many times why you dumped me in a sudden, I wasn't realized about what was in your mind. Now I know and I understand, and thankful for being wanted to serve me. Now I realized and felt ashamed because I thought I was mature. You were the one. During the period we broken till then, we both felt for other persons, I supposed. And something I don't understand is that eventually I'm still at the position, the position where we were both in love. Almost everyday I ask myself: Will we some day be like them? HAHA! Fingercrossed.

Keep ma faith.