Previous Challenge Entry
Topic: Reward (09/27/04)
TITLE: Confessions of a Love Sick Stalker By Melanie Kerr 09/30/04 |
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My family had long given up the idea that I would ever get married. In the large family that I came from it made sense that someone had to be the maiden aunt and as years went by and I brought no young men home for the family's approval, that role was allotted to me. I wouldn't say that I gladly embraced the notion, but without the young men to prove otherwise I was stuck with it. I had also become serious about my faith and I think they were fully expecting me to join a mission field and take a boat up the Amazon and preach to the pygmies. Being single seemed essential for that kind of thing.
You can well imagine that it came as a shock to them, and frankly quite a shock to me too, when I actually fell in love. I'd had my share of romance and experienced those looks across a crowded room, but this was something on a different planet. I wasn't looking for romance and the person in question, who later became my husband, and still is my husband, had some time previously been weighed up, carefully measured, and in my mind, quite definitely found wanting. Maybe the brain had decided he didn't measure up, but my heart did not agree. Please do not ask me what my criteria was, just bear in mind that I never got over Donny Osmond getting married.
I had all the classic symptoms. I was not eating, not sleeping properly and I blushed guiltily. I could barely string two lucid words together when in his presence. It was totally inconvenient and not the response of a grown up adult.
I began stalking him. I knew where he worked and that he brought his lunchtime sandwiches from a certain bakery in town. I am very embarrassed to say that I hung around on street corners hoping for a glimpse as he walked by. I placed myself strategically in places that I knew I might meet him. I lived for the reward of just glimpsing him. It changed my day.
If I saw him, I would walk away smiling. The birds would seem to singing just that little more sweetly. The sky was a little more blue. The world was turning as it ought. We have all been there. If I didn't see him, the day would be so much greyer and my steps a little heavier. My world on those days simply stopped turning at all. I was in agony. I was thirty three years old and behaving in a very immature way.
This period of obsessive activity thankfully didn't last long. No court orders were slapped into my hand banning me from coming within a hundred yards. Now that we are married I can see my husband anytime I like and his smile still has the power to change my day.
In the book of Jeremiah, God makes a promise. "You will seek me and you will find me when you seek me with all of my heart. I will be found by you." The reward of seeking God is finding him when we seek him with all of our heart. God has not hidden himself. His presence and His smile have the power to change our days.