We dated last summer. I'll call him Jake for the sake of this one-sided conversation. Jake was a breath of fresh air and blew through my life like a cool summer breeze. He was the first man in my life ever to ask me out point blank after having just met me. I was stunned. It was disarming, almost disorienting, his boldness. On our first date, he unknowingly picked one of my favorite places to eat, showed up twenty minutes early, and he asked good questions. He was racking up points left and right. I was still feeling bewildered about the fact that a man had looked my way or even knew I existed. It had been a bit of a dating drought prior to him, so I was suffering from the whiplash of his sudden and eager presence in my life.
We had some hurdles to cross - well, really, I had some hurdles to cross related to his past - but we had some good, long hard conversations about all of that before we decided to move forward with dating.
Dating him was great. It was easy. It was effortless. It was fun. It was exciting. It was all the things that come with the start of a new relationship.
And he treated me like gold. I have no doubt that man would have walked through fire for me, even after the short time we knew each other. We often joked, though, how he was a freight train hurtling a hundred miles an hour down the tracks while I was still sitting back at the station with my feet propped up, wondering which way to go. He said I checked every box on his list of things he wanted in a wife, and he was convinced I was everything he had ever prayed for in a woman, while I wasn't convinced of anything. All I knew was that I was willing to give this thing a shot and trust that God would make the way clear. But I was holding loosely to all of it. I desperately prayed for wisdom in those days and weeks surrounding that time (and still do regularly). I had latched onto Proverbs 2:11 just prior to Jake's appearance in my life, and it's a verse that carried me through, "Discretion will protect you, and understanding will guard you." I deeply desired to have both discretion and understanding, to be able to discern the when's and how's and what's of this relationship and to do it in accordance with God's will.
So, we dated. Until we didn't.
Probably not even a full fourteen days into dating, I suddenly felt like I hit a brick wall emotionally. Overwhelming doubt and hesitation rose up within me. I couldn't shake the lack of peace that had taken over. I couldn't define it. I couldn't put my finger on it. There were no red flags about his character, his past, his present, nothing. So much about us seemed to line up. But there was still something making me pause, something undeniable. I began to wonder if I was crazy, asking God if this was just the swirling of my emotions or if this was something from the Holy Spirit, a certain kind of restraining that was beginning to hold me back from confidently moving forward. I got to the point where I knew I couldn't allow the relationship to continue, not in good conscience anyway. Yes, it would have been easy to just play along. The boy was so over the moon about me, so why not just ride this wave and enjoy it and take advantage of the feelings he had for me? For one, I'm not that kind of person, and two, I knew that he was in so deep emotionally, even this early on, that there's no way I could have allowed his emotions to grow even more for me. It wouldn't have been fair - or right.
I thought long and hard, still desperately praying for that discernment, still wondering if I was crazy. Here was a perfectly good man who loved Jesus and was crazy about me. Why can't you just.make.this.work, Courtney? But it didn't matter from what I angle I came from, I was getting a very clear, albeit unexplainable, impression from the Holy Spirit that this relationship had to end.
So, I broke the boy's heart and ended things.
"Why, Courtney?" he pled with me, tears in his eyes.
With tears in my own eyes, I told him I didn't have an answer to that question, at least not one that was going to make him feel better or make that moment less painful.
But I also told him that I didn't need to know why in order to be obedient to God. I didn't need this tangible, black-and-white, reasonable and rational list of explanations from God about why this relationship should or should not continue in order for me to still follow him. The Holy Spirit was revealing to me that we were not to continue dating - that was reason enough for me. I didn't need any further evidence. I've been in this thing with Jesus for too long and I've followed him down too many roads that didn't make sense before. This wasn't the first time God had asked me to do something that didn't humanly add up. I'm sure it won't be the last, and I'm not about to start demanding he make sense to me now in order for me to continue to be faithful.
In the wake of the break-up, I kept coming back to one central lesson:
Discernment is not merely distinguishing between good and bad, right versus wrong, truth versus error. Sometimes discernment is also about distinguishing between what is good and what is right, what is good and what is best.
Sometimes what is good and what is best is separated only by a hair's breadth, but that hair's breadth still matters. As I kept praying for wisdom in the wake of the break-up, I was led to 1 Chronicles 17. David is now on the throne, Saul long since dead. David is standing in the palace one night and he says to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am, living in a house of cedar, while the ark of the covenant of the Lord is under a tent” (verse 1). David desires to build a temple for God and Nathan tells him to do as he wishes, for God is with him.
But then that night, the word of God comes to Nathan, telling him to tell David that it's not for David to build God a temple. That dream will be for his son, Solomon, but not for David.
The day eventually comes when Solomon does, in fact, build the temple, placing the ark of the covenant in it. At the dedication of the temple in 1 Kings 8, he says the following, looking back on his father's life:
My father David had it in his heart to build a temple for the Name of the Lord, the God of Israel. But the Lord said to my father David, ‘You did well to have it in your heart to build a temple for my Name. Nevertheless, you are not the one to build the temple, but your son, your own flesh and blood—he is the one who will build the temple for my Name.’
You did well, David, to have it in your heart this desire to build God a temple.
Nevertheless, you're not the one.
David's desire was good. But it wasn't right, it ultimately wasn't what God had in store, even though it made perfect sense to David, even though there was nothing saying otherwise that he shouldn't do it.
A hair's breadth between what is good and what is right.
Jake, you do well to desire marriage. You have it in your heart to pour out all that love you have stored up in that golden heart of yours. That is a good thing. But for reasons known only to God, it is not the right thing that it is with me. Yes, you treated me like a queen. Yes, on paper, everything we had - or dreamed of having - made perfect sense. And if any of my friends came along and asked if they could date you, I'd give my blessing. You're a good man, and what we had was good.
Nevertheless, it wasn't right, and I'm not the one.
I trust that God in his infinite wisdom knows the reasons why that hair's breadth between what was good and what was right existed in our relationship.
And that's enough for me.
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