A week after Phil broke up with me he proposed.

It was, he explained later, the longest week of his life. He couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, could hardly function. Even though we’d planned this break up for a month— after praying for peace and finding only worry— the intensity of his emotions took him by surprise.

And so he did what he’d been taught to do: he sought counsel. First he talked to the other pastors he worked with. Mostly they just laughed at his concerns. The age difference? No bother. The idea of marrying a partner in piano playing? Nonsense! That covered, they offered to cancel staff meeting and go buy the ring!

He began to wonder if maybe he’d made a mistake.

Next he took my dad out to lunch. Not, he assured him, to ask his permission to marry me. But if he did decide what would my dad’s response be? What did he think?

My dad just laughed and enjoyed the free lunch.

Then Phil called his parents. His mom was all for it, more than ready for her middle son to make up his mind. Her only question was, do you love her? When Phil couldn’t stop talking about how much and all the reasons why she, too started to laugh. His dad agreed. Time to ask her, son.

Still, Phil worried. What about just knowing?

I was oblivious to the drama. The breakup, as far as I could see was final. And so I spent my days trying to reimagine my life- sad, but determined to set my wobbly feet on that Solid Rock we’d sung about.

The reality for me was that practically from the day we’d started dating I’d been holding my breath, hoping to marry Phil. He was everything I wanted and then some. I loved the vision he painted for me of a life lived completely and entirely sold out to God.

Serving along side this man would be the highest honor.

There was not the slightest doubt in my mind that I loved Phil with the kind of love that happens only rarely. I knew I wanted to spend every moment of the rest of my life loving him. Sure, I had worries about certain parts of him... there was that moodiness that caught me off guard sometimes. And the pace he set for himself made me wonder how I'd keep up. But I'd looked those things square in the face of reality and decided I could deal with those glitches. Or at least I thought I could. Because my deep respect for him as a man, as a person, as a follower after God, overshadowed the rough edges that I was pretty sure would poke from time to time.

Once when he’s asked me point blank if I had any doubts, I’d wavered between my self-protective tendency to pretend and the truth. Dare I let him know how deeply I loved him? Wouldn’t that be humiliating? Shouldn’t I just act like I wasn’t sure either in order to save face?

In what was for me a great leap of faith, I told him the truth. Even now I remember that swallowing of pride, then the great rush of trust that I had done what the Father asked of me. I could sense God’s approval even as my face flamed with the admission.

No, there was no doubt whatsoever. I wanted to marry Phil.

I still don’t know what finally changed Phil’s mind. Neither does he.

Maybe we both had more surrendering to do. Maybe he had to count the cost of trusting God for the less-than-absolutely-perfect-ideal. Maybe I had to let go of him in order to begin the journey to learning that “I dare not trust the perfect frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.”

All I really know is that as soon as he asked, I said YES!

And do you remember what I hinted at in the first part of our story? Early on in our relationship Phil set a high standard for physical boundaries in order to protect both my purity and his own integrity.

Lots and lots of affection…

With purposeful restraint of passion.

For us, what that amounted to was no kissing. Okay, maybe a peck on the cheek from time to time— but none of that lip-locked, hot and heavy, body-entangling kind of kissing.

But when he asked me to spend the rest of my life with him, making a commitment to love and protect and cherish and lead and provide for me… that’s when he kissed me for the first time.

Magic. Beautiful, melting, magic.

And I know that sounds corny. I know that no one does that. I know its kind of… strange.

But for us… for the hope of our future… for the kind of all-in-forever romance we both craved— it was just the right way.

Tomorrow I’ll finally get us to the alter… and then we can begin this series…

Together we'll commence the conversation and the teaching and the learning about why ... and what to do... with the absolutely true fact that…

He’s Not Your Prince Charming.

From my heart,

Diane

part 1

part 2

Once upon a time I fell in love with Phil.

I fell in love for all the obvious reasons—all that tall-dark-handsome stuff. Throw in a really cool car, the fact that he was a drummer, the brown suede jacket (with fringe!) he wore, his way of smiling that insisted on response… and I fell head over-heels.

Falling in love was easy.

Riding the ups and downs and tensions and worries of wondering if this was The One? That was hard. 

Pain-filled. Humbling.

Our relationship didn’t develop slowly with friendship first. Instead we rushed headlong into romance. It was a fun, exhilarating, all-absorbing, drastically life changing time.

Everything about Phil was intense: every conversation, every decision, every date.

He was 26 years old, had finished college, then found his niche in music ministry. Just two years earlier, he’d quit the rock band that had defined his life for 9 years and was now a pastor at one of California’s first mega-churches. 

The man spent every minute living, breathing, and thinking ministry.

He had strong ideas about everything.  And I do mean everything.

I loved that! I’d only been a Christian for about 3 years when we started dating and I was still figuring it out, wishing for a rule book to get it right. Or at least clear instructions about what I should do and what I should avoid and what I ought to say,when. 

The attrition rate of new Believers during those Jesus Movement days scared me—  how could I avoid being one of those who “fell away”?

Phil read his Bible voraciously and made sure I was reading mine. For him, this was no rote discipline of duty. He read to discover, to absorb truth, to know God.

He thought about what he read, scribbled notes in a journal, underlined, questioned and studied. And then he talked to me, inviting me into conversation— the depth of which I’d never before experienced.

Our conversations centered around the Scriptures we were reading.  We memorized verses together, mulling over this way of living in alliance with God. It was a heady and exhilarating time with a whole unknown world opening up to me.

But I was scared.

This man was just so much better than me. Smarter, quicker, stronger, more focused and absolutely sure of his calling. I was a freshman in Bible College surrounded by students who had been raised with at least some background of faith. While I was untangling the Patriarchs’ stories, getting lost among the Prophets, and barely understanding the Sermon on the Mount (Blessed are the poor? Are you kidding?), everyone else seemed to know everything. 

And that, I think, is when I first started to pretend.

I’d nod my head knowingly, keep my mouth shut, and fake it. I copied the way others prayed, God-blessing everyone I could think of.

When Phil prayed I’d add all the expected amen and yes, Jesus affirmations in order to sound more sincere.

 Instead of understanding that growing a backlog of faith takes time, I hurried to catch up in order to feel adequate, accepted, good.

With no concept whatsoever of grace, I performed the way I thought I ought to, the way I thought Phil wanted me to. Phil was an idealist and I longed to be his ideal.

And that, no doubt, set me up for some deep disappointment down the road.

Phil was as intense about our relationship as he was about everything else. After 3 dates in 4 days, he initiated “the talk”.

He wasn’t interested in dating just to date. He was on track to marry and wanted to pursue this relationship with that in mind. What did I think?  

Well I would have eloped then and there, that’s what I thought. But I managed to say something somewhat sophisticated like me too, and so we were off.

We had rules.

No kissing on the lips, quick forehead and cheek kisses were okay. Limited hugging, but lots of hand-holding. We avoided being alone at my house and I was absolutely not allowed in his.

Phil was shockingly upfront about why. He’d not lived a pure life before giving his life to Jesus and no way was he going to mess up now. Keeping a safe distance just made sense. 

And those rules worked to make me feel like the most cherished woman in the world. Phil was protecting my purity while guarding his.He wanted more of this relationship than groping in the back seat of a car. He chose to keep his hands to himself while he handed me his heart with the purest trust.

Phil opened his life to me and let me in. He probed the corners of my introverted self— he discovered me.

I’d never had anyone want to know me the way Phil did. Slowly, timidly, I let him see the real me. I shared my worries. Let him see my inadequacies. The more we talked the more I could see my place in his life. He needed help, was barely managing to keep up with the frantic pressures of a mega church music pastor’s life. 

Our differences seemed destined to compliment rather than conflict. 

But there were two problems. Two glitches to the Ideal.

First of all, I was almost 9 years younger than Phil. Was that okay? The second question worried him more. While Phil’s ministry revolved around music, I could barely carry a tune. I couldn’t sing, play the piano, or read music. How in the world would I be a music pastor’s wife? 

His fellow pastors ridiculed the questions when he worried out loud to them. They teased him out of his intensity and told him to relax, forget the “role”. He needed a wife, not a pastor’s wife. 

Still, that sense of sureness eluded him.

We’d been told that we would just know.

Everyone said it: You’ll just know when you find the One. 

But Phil didn’t know.

He knew he loved me and made no bones about his attraction to me. He knew I loved him enough to lay aside my plans to join his, we knew our parents approved, that our goals coincided… but he didn’t just know. 

And so we broke up.

Because he didn’t know.  And he needed to know... 

Our story could have ended there. I thought it would.

Tomorrow I’ll tell you why it didn’t.

Feel free to e-mail in your questions for this new series about love and marriage from a Biblical perspective at hespeaks@ajesuschurch.org