Now that Serve is over and Raymond is back in Edmonton, let's get back to Jacob and I. All of a sudden, our time together was over. We still had our Friday night youth group together, but we no longer had to spend almost every free moment together.
That did not, however, stop us from hanging out and getting even closer. Because after Serve came a time we now call Twin Time.
On a Monday evening shortly after Serve, Jacob and I got together to plan for a final service for our worship team. We somehow had it all planned and ready in twenty minutes -which, trust me, is not the norm!- and then he turned to me and said "So.... want to talk?"
He started. He talked about how he really really liked our friend, mutual Young Adults leader (oh yeah, did I mention that Jacob, Victoria, and our friend Ericka had started a young adults group, and Jacob and I thus had that together, as well), Ericka. The thing was, the past May, Jacob had made a promise to God that he would not date for one year. Now, though, he was at the point where he liked Ericka so very much, and it was getting harder and harder not to say anything.
Then it was my turn. I talked about how drawn I was to Raymond, and how I so enjoyed talking to him and I definitely liked him. And this happened to be during "Ghost Week" (I'll talk more about that later, but basically I was currently on day 3 of not communicating with Raymond for a week), so I also talked about how hard it was to not message Raymond, and how I was constantly wanting to tell him things, but how weird it was because we had JUST MET!
This conversation was the launch pad for Twin Time. For the next month and a half, both Jacob and I experienced deep, hardcore lessons from God, and delightfully, God was teaching us the same things. Probably weekly, Jacob and I would get together just to talk about all that God was doing in our lives, and through that He taught us even more. It got to the point where we would be listening to a lesson at youth group, or just sitting in church listening to a sermon when we would hear something, look at each other, and start laughing because of what was said -something that inevitably related to the lessons we were personally learning. I remember one specific time, we had a weekend young adult retreat at a cottage up north. On the last morning, I pulled out my Jesus Storybook Bible and started reading to everyone, out loud, from the beginning. I started the story of Abraham and Isaac, when God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac on an alter, and there was a line about trusting God (very much a theme for both Jacob and I during this time- and, I mean, always, but especially then!). Jacob was in the kitchen, washing the dishes (with Ericka, surprise surprise, she clearly liked him, too), and I read the line, looked towards him, and we both laughed uncontrollably while everyone else looked on in confusion. Jacob and I, by this point, could read each other's minds.
I know this is the story of me and Raymond, but during this really key point in my life, God really provided an important friend in Jacob. Because we were experiencing similar life experiences -liking someone, and not being able to act on it- and God lessons, it was a blessing to have him to talk to and trust with some of my deepest thoughts and emotions. This might sound like a strange kind of cousin relationship, but Jacob has always been more of a brother to me, and we were both incredibly blessed by each other during this time. Enough that I felt the need to write a whole post about it!
As a quick side note, this was not the only time that Jacob, Ericka, Raymond, and I relationships were parallel. Jacob and Ericka started dating in June of that year (Raymond and I in July, spoilers), and got engaged this past March (a few months after Raymond and I did), after being in a long-distance relationship from September on. And to wrap it up, on August 8, three weeks before us, Jacob and Ericka got married, followed by a move across the country (to Nova Scotia, sadly, not Alberta like we did). So it's been pretty cool. We like to joke that we alternate in our life events- they started dating first, we got engaged first, and they got married first. So that means that Raymes and I have to have a baby first, to stick with the pattern (but that's actually probably likely, since Jacob is in his second year of law school). Jacob and Raymond also have a bro-mance that makes Ericka and I laugh and facepalm at the same time.
Blessings,
Katie
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