I Saw That

The Kiss Box

When I was a child, I spoke like a child,
I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child.
~Paul

I was sixteen when I prayed the prayer. Not the prayer you might expect, though. I had accepted Christ as a young child, followed His call for baptism, and known a deep hunger and thirst for the things of God for as long as I could remember. So, it was not a prayer for salvation that I prayed that day but a very different kind of request.
I asked God for a sign.
Often were my daydreams of what my faith novels said life and love should be, and just as often I would wonder: what exactly should it be like? Not so much life, but love. Outside of the imagination of someone who had the ability to make washing dishes seem like an epiphanous moment, what would finding the right person be like?
I had heard a thousand times and a thousand different ways, “When it’s the right one, you’ll know.” While simple, that idea didn’t seem very certain or concrete. How would I know for sure? Movies, songs, books, and real life were full of people who had once thought they “knew” yet in the end were left disillusioned, empty, and hurt… inspiration, apparently, for decades of country songs. I wanted more than that.
There is an old Gidget movie where she asks her mother how she will know when it’s the right one. “When it’s the real thing,” her mother tells her, “you’ll know it – as surely as if you’d been hit on the head with a sledgehammer!” As painful as it sounded, one could hardly argue with its certainty. That’s what I wanted. No going back. No doubt. No, “I-thought-I-knew-but-now-I-don’t.” I wanted to be sure.
Earlier that day, I had been reading a book in which the main character was struggling with the same thing. How would she recognize the right man for her to marry? Her solution was simple: she asked God for a sign that the man she was to marry would pray with her on a date. That sounded good. I wanted something like that. But what should I ask for? What should be my sign? Then I knew.
“God,” I prayed, “I would like the man You want me to marry to pray with me before our first kiss.” That sounded romantic. Yes, that would be a good sign, I thought. Upon further reflection, however, I knew that this sign might not be clear enough. As far as I was concerned, praying together would be a given when dating a godly man, so would it just be the first guy I dated who happened to pray with me sometime before he kissed me? I realized it might become confusing to know for sure, and wanting no room left for doubts later on, I prayed again.
“God, I would like the man I am to marry to pray with me, giving our relationship and its direction to You and asking for Your guidance. Then I’ll know that he puts You first in his life, even before his own heart’s desires.” I paused, envisioning the details in my heart and mind. Satisfied, I continued. “After he prays with me, in the same moments following his prayer, not weeks or even days later, I want him to kiss me.” How perfect. How romantic.
And yes, I was that specific. My mind was settled. In my young heart, I felt certain that I had found the perfect sign and set my hopes on the unspoken promise it held. After all, how could I go wrong with a sign from God?

~ ~ ~
Shortly after that prayer, I met a godly young man while visiting family out of state. We hit it off right away and decided to keep in touch through letters. After writing to each other for months, along with several long distance phone calls, he came to visit me shortly before I turned seventeen. I could hardly contain my excitement! Even though I was young, I felt I was mature enough to know my own mind and what kind of guy I was looking for. He was it!
One evening, he kissed me goodnight. However, instead of being lost in the sweet feeling of being in love, the moment was overshadowed by the deep disappointment of what had just happened, or rather, what had not happened. The conspicuous absence of one simple prayer left an empty place in my hopes, and loud and hollow was the silence. I went to my room and cried. I had so desperately wanted him to be “the one.” We had so much in common: he loved God with a contagious passion, loved music and poetry, and was a natural artist. Even my parents loved him. Goodness, he was everything I wanted! Everything… except one thing.
Upon arriving back home after our visit, he wrote me a letter. In it he explained that he had wanted to pray with me while we were together and could not believe he had let something that important slip his mind. “It doesn’t matter anymore,” I cried to the empty living room, my tears making dramatic splashes on his letter. “It’s too late. You’re not the one.” My heart was broken by something he had no idea even existed. I had known the moment he kissed me I would break up with him, but seeing how close he had come to fulfilling my sign somehow made it that much worse. He was so close… yet so far away.
And yet, as hard as it was, I felt I could still see the hand of God in orchestrating that fateful forgetfulness. God seemed to have withheld my perfect scenario, even though it would have been in character for this young man to be the answer to my prayer. Why? I asked myself. The answer seemed obvious: God must have someone else waiting for me. This fueled my certainty that God was holding my sign for the big reveal. I clung to this hope with fierce determination and desperate loyalty.
At the age of nineteen, I began dating another godly man who was studying to be a preacher. I was a preacher’s kid and a missionary kid, so I was very comfortable with the idea of marrying a minister. Early on, he had even informed me that he wanted to make praying together a priority and keep God the center of our relationship. Check! However, our first kiss was not until almost two weeks after that prayer. Uh, not check.
This was a good guy, though, I argued with myself. Should I really throw away our relationship based on some unnecessary standard I had come up with as a young sixteen-year-old? Hadn’t it been my own idea? After all, this guy had invited God into our relationship, and since that was what truly mattered to me, I decided not to make the timing such a deal breaker.
A year after our relationship started, we broke up.
Ok, so maybe it was important. Perhaps if I had stopped dating this guy the moment I knew he wasn’t the one God had chosen for me – at least not according to my sign – then we both might have been spared the heart ache of investing a year into a relationship that was not meant to be. On the other hand, maybe I was expecting something that was never going to happen, and our breaking up was just another melancholy song in the making. Suddenly, I found myself wrestling with doubt, and for the first time, I began to seriously question my silly request for a sign.
Even so, something inside of me was not ready to let it go.
Just before my twenty-first birthday, I met a twenty-six year-old pastor. He loved God with a passion, made me laugh, was really smart, and my family loved him. Not only did he ask my father and mother permission to court me with the intention of marrying me, but he also requested the blessing of my siblings. Wow.
One summer night as we sat outside, he asked if he could pray with me. Here it was. I just knew he would kiss me. I practically got out my lip balm. Nope. It was not to be. No kiss that night, or over the next week, or any other time we prayed together over the next three months.