Crushes are hard. Molly Ringwald taught me years ago that “if they were easy they’d call them something else.” Of course, Molly Ringwald did get Jake Ryan at the end of that movie so she might not be a great source.
I don’t know if Molly Ringwald can be trusted; all I know is that crushes are hard. They are unplanned waves of emotion that crash over you and sweep you off of your feet. It feels nice at first, letting the deep cool water swirl around you, pulling you in the current. Then you look up and find you are miles away from the shore. Sometimes you are not even sure which way the shore is and you are left treading water for days until eventually you wash back up on the beach gasping for air.
No crush is ever planned. I did not wake up that first morning thinking, I think I’ll develop some feelings today, it has been awhile since I’ve been totally devastated. Actually I woke up that particular morning to the sound of my smoke detector malfunctioning. After an hour of trying to fix it I settled for just screaming back, but that is another story for another time. Having a boy walk up to my game of cards and capture my interest that night was the farthest thing from my mind. Crushes just happen. One day you go to a friend’s party or you sit down at a table for lunch and there he is. It might take a few days or weeks of talking and hanging out, or it might take a few minutes of good-natured flirting. You may not even notice until you are already out in the waves letting the salt water spray your face. Crushes are also no one’s fault. Someone simply walks into your life one day and, even though it is crazy, you want them to stay there.
The true problem with crushes is not how easy they are to fall into but how they make you feel once you are lost in them. That little voice in your head that sounds an awful lot like you, who starts telling you that person would never want you. You are just you after all. Maybe he does make his interest very clear and you are not sure how you want to proceed. You turn to your friends for advice. You sit up late at night texting him and thinking about him. You stalk his Facebook and Instagram wondering who that other girl in the picture is. Tension and anxiety builds in your chest. You will never be happy unless he texts you back. It builds and builds and builds until you think you might burst and then the ringtone you set just for him dings. Even in the most perfect of situations, you find yourself lost and confused trying to decide what you want.
“I’m not really sure what I should do. I really like this guy and… well it’s not like guys are rocket science… he likes me too. It’s just kind of scary. You know?” I was sitting on a park bench overlooking Green Lake while my friend, Heather, fed her baby cheerios. The water was still shining in the late September sun. Only a few days remained before my big date with the guy I had been flirting with for two months.
“Well, what do you want?”
My brain always goes a little haywire at that question. I wanted to know everything about this guy. I wanted to keep feeling the way he made me feel. Above everything else, I wanted to be happy and not slip back into the deep depression it took years to dig myself out of. I ran my hands down my face. “I want to kiss him SO BADLY! But,” my voice calmed, “ I still don’t know him very well and I really enjoy just hanging out with him. I don’t want to ruin something by going too fast. I do really want to kiss him though. Just once.”
“Have you prayed about it?”
Making decisions as a Christian seems strange at times. It is not just about my desires and plans but God’s as well. I’m supposed to ask for wisdom and clarification when I am anxious and unsure. Something I have never been good at. I am supposed to ask for help when I do not know what the next step is. Another thing I do not do well. Part of my brain understands the importance of prayer. Years of teaching Sunday School and working at Church Camps has taught me at least how to say that God cares about the little stresses in your life just as much as the big ones. That is what I always tell the kids. It is OKAY to pray about everything, even if it feels stupid to take something so trivial to the creator of the universe. If something is big to you then it is big to God as well.
I bit my lower lip. “I… I don’t know how to pray about a crush.” I had never done it before.
Hours later I sat on my bed, in my pajamas, getting ready for my nightly prayers. Unlike most nights, I was not sure how to begin. Dear Lord, please make my hopeless crush fall in love with me, ‘kay thanks, did not seem appropriate. It is not like God is a d’jinni in the habit of granting wishes. Beside, I’m pretty sure d’jinni cannot make anyone fall in love either; it’s a rule. I curled my arms around my legs, chin resting on my knees. I was taught that the Holy Spirit interprets the cries of our hearts when we cannot. Was my heart crying out for something? How could I tell?
“Hey God.” That seemed as good a place as any to start. “Can we talk? That’s a dumb question, of course we can talk. Okay, I’ll start. Um…” I pushed my fingers through my hair seeking out exactly what to say. “So there’s this guy and he’s so great! He’s funny and we get along really well and… well I’m sure you’ve met. He’s the blonde one with the smile. I like him so much.” I took a deep breath to refocus. “God, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”
Silence. Well, God directly telling me what to do was a bit of a long shot.
I had always been told that when you feel unsure you should pray for wisdom. God grants wisdom to those who ask for it, just like Solomon. Right? Well I was unsure; it stood to reason that I should ask for wisdom. “God. I want to do the right thing in this situation. I know relationships are serious, that they change you and I know what sort of temptations I am dealing with.” A whole subset of things I do not know how to pray about. “If it is not too much trouble, please give me the wisdom to do the best thing.”
That did not feel like quite enough. There was something else, something else I needed to pray for.
A memory popped into my head from that summer working at camp. After the last campfire of the week one of the graduates, a boy I had known since he was three, walked up to me wrapped in a fleece blanket. It was his last night as a camper.
“Katie,” he told me, “thank you so much for the example you have been in my life. I’m so glad I’ve had you as my leader all of these years.”
Example? Me? I never felt like an example in my campers lives. Most days I wasn’t even sure why I was allowed to come back to camp year after year. I had thought about that moment almost every day since I came back from camp. I knew that I did want to be an example in their lives. I wanted to be the person they believed I was.
“God, please help me to make the right choices that will help me to be the example my campers need.”
I did not feel so good about that one. As much as I wanted to be the best version of myself I did not know who that was in this particular situation. Who was the best example? Was it the girl who was willing to take a risk for the chance at falling in love? Or was it the girl who let the chance for love slip away because she wanted to prioritize that guy’s friendship first? No matter which answer I picked I did not feel good or happy, just scared. I knew that I liked this guy. That he made me want to take those risks. What was too scary with every other guy I had ever liked was all I wanted with him. I could not stop myself from talking to him even when I sounded like an idiot.
A deep sigh pulled from my chest. The familiar weight of anxiety leaving my body until I took a breath in.
“I really like this guy. I don’t know what else to say. I want to make the right decision but I like this guy. I want the chance to fall in love with him.”
I do not know how to pray about a crush.
My body slumped back onto the bed. Pink and white vines stitched into the comforter seemed to twine around my arms and legs, pulling me down. I had said all of the right things. Asked for all of the right things. I still felt heavy with tangled up thoughts. No wiser. No better of an example than I was ten minutes before.
There are a great many things that I know in my head. I know that if you ask God for something and believe you have already received it that you have received it. I believe God puts desires in our heart for a reason. I believe that marriage and sex and attraction can be a part of God’s plans for our lives. Crushes can be the first step in that, can’t they?
“Hmmmm.” I huffed in frustration. “And while we’re talking, if it’s not too much trouble, could you please just let this guy fall in love with me? ‘Kay, thanks. Bye.”
I DO NOT KNOW HOW TO PRAY ABOUT A CRUSH!
It seems silly and more than a little bold to turn to God and say, “hey, this guy. Should I date him or not?” Instead of asking God what I should do with my heart, when the waves start to crash making me feel sparkly and hopeful, I turn to God with a lot of pretty words used by churchy people. Give me peace. Give me patience. Give me wisdom. Is that even real faith? Or am I just parroting what I have been told for years?
We love because God first loved us. That includes romantic love and physical love, though all of my youth leaders would have me believe it only meant a caring neighborly love. Why do we treat dating as Christians in such a way that instead of being willing to come to God with an earnest desire to know if this is a person to put your trust in and build a life with, I hear dozens of young women say things like, “I’m going to just date Jesus for a while.” Oh really? I didn’t realize the Almighty was on the market! I think you will find the romance one-sided. Why do I feel like I can’t focus on both my faith and learning to love someone at the same time? Why do we teach taking everything before God so poorly that as an adult I would rather turn to a Magic 8 Ball for guy advice than to my faith and the God who created my heart? I pray about crushes, asking for things I do not want because they sound like what I am supposed to pray for, when all I really want is for him to text me back. When what I want is to know if this person will break my heart or care about me. I pray for patience when I want to scream at God asking why this person entered my life at the exact right moment for me to look up and see him. Then I sit there and wait for the answers that I did not ask for. Does the Holy Spirit interpret those cries of my heart as well?
Mostly, I do not know how to pray about a crush because I do not know how to ask God for the one thing I do not believe God can give me, someone else’s heart. My heart is mine to give and yours is yours. I can ask God for wisdom in who I give it to but even that, it seems, I am asking for too late.
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