When Raymond got in that van and drove away from my church in the early, early morning of March 16, 2019, I didn't expect to ever hear from him again.
How delightfully wrong I was.
I texted him some jokey thing about making sure that they actually arrived back in Edmonton, to which he responded. And that was the beginning of a text chain that, honestly, never ended. We'd text every day. It started as just a text or two, once or twice a day. Eventually, that turned into three or four texts, and so on. At on point, we were texting each other 20+ messages a day, not to mention 20+ messages on Instagram and Facebook each.
At the beginning, though, it was just a few texts. Every time I saw a message from him, I'd smile. It very quickly became the highlight of my days. Everything changed, though, a couple weeks after we met. I was at work, on a Friday, sticking cuttings. During this time, I'd often pray and reflect on things. This particular day, I was praying for Raymond, and I felt God tell me to stop communication for a week.
"A whole week?!" I thought, "I can't! That's too long! That's too hard!" Which, honestly, weirded me out because I had JUST met this guy a couple weeks before, and already the thought of going a whole week without communicating with him felt impossibly hard. I didn't want to.
"Do you trust me?" I felt God ask.
"Of course!" I said.
"Then let him go."
And so it went all afternoon. God continually asking me to trust Him, and asking me to let Raymond go.
And so I did (very reluctantly). That night, I messaged Raymond and told him that from the next day until the following Saturday, he would not be hearing from me. I explained how hard it was for me, but that I felt God asking me to do that. (He later told me that when he received those texts, his heart sank and he immediately started to pray. And that God gave him an incredible peace about it).
And thus began what we now refer to as "Ghost Week".
Ghost week was HARD. Which again, weirded me out because I had just met Raymond. Just a month earlier, I had never even heard of the guy. On Monday night, I got together with Jacob to plan a service for which the Serve team was leading. The planning was done very quickly, after which Jacob turned to me and said "We need to talk." And talk we did, which I mentioned in the Twin Time post. This was, though, the first time I actually acknowledged that I liked Raymond.
On Friday night, the last night of Ghost Week, we played the song Goodness of God at youth group. After, I went home and played it again, and had such a good, good time with God. It was the end of Ghost Week, but it was also probably the most powerful time of it. It had spent the whole week just wishing I could talk to Raymond again, and I felt like this was the night where I truly surrendered him and the situation to God.
Saturday, I could finally talk to Raymond again. I was afraid that he would have enjoyed the time away from me, and realize that he didn't want to continue this friendship. So I texted him on my break, saying "Hey, it's Katie. You know, that random girl from Ontario. Don't know if you remember me." Raymond responded almost immediately, saying "Katie.... hmmmm, sounds familiar. Aren't you that crazy girl?" Or something like that.
And just like that, Ghost Week was behind us.
It wasn't long after that that Raymond suggested a phone call. And so me, the person who hates phones and does everything possible to avoid calls, started talking on the phone every Sunday night. The first call was our shortest- and it was 3 1/2 hours long. For the next few months, we'd talk on the phone every Sunday night, to the point where we were talking for 8 hours. I wasn't getting to bed until 2:30 in the morning, and I'd have to get up for work at 6. I remember on Monday morning, I was yawning while putting UPCs on pot covers, and my boss asked why I was so tired. "I didn't get to bed until 2," I told him. He looked at me in surprise, "YOU. Didn't got to bed until 2?! Why!?" I responded that I was on the phone, to which he literally looked at me with his mouth open in shock. I think that's when he knew that something was up.
In June of 2019, I went to Edmonton. It was not, however, to visit Raymond. See, my cousin and best friend, Rachel (Jacob's sister) lives here, and she needed to have her wisdom teeth removed. The October before, she was supposed to have it done and I was going to come out and be her "responsible adult" to drive her home, but she ended up postponing it. Perfect timing for me! So I got to see Raymond again. I arrived on Saturday, and on Sunday, Rachel and I went over to Raymond's house and had a bbq with him and his friends. I also met his family that week, but ultimately I was there for Rebecca and so spent most of my time with her (she was also helping me to know boundaries).
All this time, Raymond and I were incredibly close. He'd become my best friend, and me his. But friends was all we were, all we could be.
At that time.
Blessings,
Katie
No comments:
Post a Comment