Sooooo Close!

I went swing dancing last night again. I don’t know why I feel the need to humiliate myself like this. But it’s all in good fun. I took it easier this time than I did last time. I didn’t flip around like a moron. One of the friends I went with had a sister and friend she wanted me to show a good time, so I danced with them most of the evening. Since they were really bad it didn’t make me feel so bad about me being bad. Bad.

I was sitting on the windowsill cooling off when a girl came and sat next to me. She said it was her favorite spot. I asked her if she had been on the roof. She hadn’t, so I led her out the window, up the fire escape, up a twenty foot rickety ladder and onto the roof of the ballroom. It was really cool and peaceful up there. We talked for a bit, she showed me a couple of moves and we practiced them for a bit. I’m glad she was very patient with me. The Seattle cityscape, cool breeze and quite night made for a really romantic backdrop. Well… not that kind of romance… I mean in the classical sense. I wasn’t about to engage any funny business. I’m not that kind of a girl!

When the place closed a big bunch of people went for burgers and talked a bunch. I got to know several people I’d danced with a little better. Good times.

I find that God can communicate with me in many ways. One of which is bringing up multiple situations that require the same application or lesson. Here are two such items that have arisen lately….

I got a call from the person at my church who arranges all the helping that people need. As I have realized how much God has blessed me, I’ve been really hungry to help others as much as I can. So I’ve worked with this lady a bit now, helping people move and such. Well, our church recently bought a new building to move into, and on the land are a couple of duplexes. Some people at the church got together and bought that portion of the land so if the church ever needed to expand into that area it could. And they are looking for people from the church to move into them. There was some miscommunication and I was told it would only be $1000/month. Which is very cheap for a 2 bedroom duplex with a garage in Bellevue. I’m paying, with storage, $975 for my 2 bedroom apartment now. So needless to say I had to check it out. It was a really nice place. But the guy told me it was $1,100. Whoops! Well, that really isn’t that much of a stretch. But one thing I’ve been very relieved about since my ex-wife left is making all the financially responsible decisions she would usually overrule me on in the past. I can’t say how many times we moved into houses that we couldn’t quite afford because she pushed and pushed until I agreed. We were always a financial disaster. We had to go bankrupt a couple of years ago because we weren’t even able to pay off the interest on all our credit cards even after consolidation. (Mostly because we were overdrawn in the hundreds by each payday due to poor communication and her insistence that floating a bunch of little checks wouldn’t be a big deal.)

So… I’ve been wanting to move to a home for a while now so my boys could have a little yard to themselves, and neighbor kids to play with. But right now I’m not financially tenable due to my previous life, so I’m not in a position to stretch things. At all. So it felt really good to just say, “Oh, that’s 100 more than I can afford. Thank you though.” So this was something that looked like it could have been a door God opened, but then it wasn’t. (Although at church yesterday the guy told me he would still consider my $1000 if everything else looked good. So who knows?)

And the second thing is with ‘That Darn Girl’. I keep wanting to find out something about her that will put me at peace, where I can say to myself, “See, it never would have worked out because she is X.” Like not having a good sence of humor, or being attracted to the wrong things. Anything! But the more I get to know her, the more I am liking her. It seems like our humor is totally compatible. She is totally independent. Uuugh. She is just so amazing… The only thing I’ve come up with so far is that she is half an inch taller than me! I tried to brush it off as simply a physical attraction. But it just isn’t.

The purpose for playing this head game with myself is that all the reasons I feel like I can’t have a future with her will go away within a couple of years; but I’m quite sure someone else will have snatched her up by then. So in order to ameliorate the inevitable heart-break, I am trying to build up a nice list to console myself with. When she starts dating, (which, amazingly, she has never done before.) I can tell myself it never would have worked between us since she is half and inch taller than me. Those kinds of relationships never work out, right? See, I don’t think that’s gonna cut it. I’m doomed unless I think of something better than that.

But… I think I can apply the house thing to this problem. Both involve what looks like great, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. A great little place to live, and an amazing woman who isn’t married. But both happened at the wrong time. And the question is: am I going to try to force things to go the way I want them, or wait for God to work out His perfect plan for my life? It’s easy with the house, because I can imagine a great deal like this popping up again at some point. But it’s really hard with the girl. She’s just so darn perfect. And I really don’t see how another (available) one of those is ever going to come around again. Especially as I get older. But not seeing is what faith and hope are all about right?