Chapter 25: Evaluations - Part I

Nancy:

    After Loren returned to Dallas, I spent Easter dinner with two of my friends. My emotions were on a roller coaster heading downward and I began to embellish my doubts. Based on his ‘war stories’ at Nordaggio’s, I remember telling them that Loren was harsh and judgmental, like a Pharisee. But another part of my emotion was based on ‘shifting perceptions’:

    Loren had the same nice face that I’d seen on the internet, but his glasses were old-fashioned, like something out of the 80’s. This was more evident in person than in his photographs. Also, I didn’t like the way he’d dressed. He was the typical genius, slightly unkempt in monochrome.

    I was also disappointed that he hadn’t joined more fully in the worship service at our church. But by that time, I was really looking for reasons to push him away. “Oh, there’s no way!” I remember thinking, and I felt such great disappointment. “This just can’t be. No, he isn’t the one.”

    My emotions were bouncing from one extreme to another, but toward the end of the day I began calming down. I’d received Loren’s first email, which he’d written on returning home. I was feeling better so I tried to view the situation fairly.

    Despite the ‘shifting perceptions,’ two important things had carried over from his letters to his presence. He had a devotion to the Lord that was very evident, with a passion for doing what was right. And he was also extremely intelligent, which I found very attractive.

    Even though he appeared a little shy, I was impressed at how he’d kept the conversation rolling. I was especially flattered that he’d shown such a great deal of interest in me, by asking questions that showed his sincerity. He’d kept on capturing my attention as we spoke.

    Looking back, I could see that our conversation at dinner was actually very good and that the misperceptions had only come later. But I was emotionally wrung out by this time, so I went to bed early rather than waiting for the second email that he had promised.

    The next morning I would have overslept had it not been for Annie, my cat. With some mild irritation, namely her pouncing over my head, walking on my hair and meowing in my ear (“Wake up mom, I’m hungry!”), I began to stir. Then I heard the living room clock chime 7:00! The alarm was supposed to go off ninety minutes ago, but I’d forgotten to set it the night before!

    I rose immediately and checked the internet, and heard that wonderful, familiar voice that said, “You’ve got mail!” And there was Loren’s second letter, waiting. Late for work or not, I had to take time to read it, and I was very pleasantly surprised. It was simply wonderful! That part about ‘protecting my feelings with his own’ brought tears to my eyes, and it actually gave me hope again. It was a wonderful, compassionate thing that he said and I believed him.

    In another sense, his openness threw me. I thought, “This guy is being so honest!” It scared me in a good way, because I didn’t know that anyone could be that vulnerable and forthright. It could only have been through Jesus. He was a half-step ahead of me, just as he’d said, which protected my feelings and made it easier for me to step out and respond to him.

    After work, I went for a long walk in LaFortune Park to pray, and the Lord began speaking to me. He revealed my self-centeredness and pride in a way I’d never seen before, and I honestly had to admit to it. I’d been looking at the externals and making judgment calls, which was unfair of me. Loren’s ‘war stories’ were the only exception.

    I really wasn’t finished praying yet, but I wanted to respond to Loren soon so as not to leave him hanging with silence. I wrote him a brief letter in reply. In it, I approached things cautiously but positively, and here were some of the things I said:

Dear Loren,

    “. . . if you will, please allow me some time to carefully and prayerfully consider what you’ve written, as I do not wish to be abrupt or thoughtless toward your letter, but to give you the attention you deserve. I’ve been gathering my thoughts thus far, and went for a walk around LaFortune Park earlier this evening, to pray and get quiet before the Lord.

    “Loren, thank you. I’ve never received a letter such as you have written. Not one with such honesty, sincerity or fearlessness. Words fail me at the moment to convey how deeply it touched me. It frightens me because it makes me want to unlock the hidden parts that are so carefully concealed. As you discovered one of my comments, by something you sent, ‘Is this safe?’ From all you’ve graciously stated, that answer would be ‘Yes, it is.’

    “It’s late now. Annie is laying with her head on the keyboard and almost covering four of the f-keys. I promise not to prolong an answer....”

    In His grace,

    Nancy

    By the way, just as a note to you girls: My concerns about Loren’s style of dress, etc., may have been superficial, but that didn’t mean they were irrelevant. They just needed to be kept in perspective. Such things could change if I would trust the Lord to take care of them. Sometimes they came up again later in a congenial way, and we could discuss them further. The timing was always much better when that happened. Or sometimes, without my saying a word, he would perceive the problem for himself:  

    “Look, I know I’m not the world’s fanciest dresser,” he once said. “The reason I don’t change is because I’m a poor old bachelor who has no taste, and I haven’t been kidding myself about that. But you’re an artist, so of course your taste will be better than mine.

    “So I’ll make a deal with you: I’ll wear the pants in the family, but you can tell me which pair to put on.”

    When I shared that with my girlfriends, they howled with laughter and said, “He’s the one! That’s the right guy for you!”

Loren:

    During the next two weeks, Nancy was very busy at her job. It was the time of year for making catalogs, which is extremely important for any publisher and laborious for their art department. She was working overtime every night.

    In a way, this distraction did our relationship some good. It allowed us to think things through, adjust to the changing tempo and consider what our next steps should be, without a feeling that we were rushing things. We were talking cordially on the phone or writing emails each night, but we were saving the really serious questions for later. And now we were planning to meet again.

    To date, my adventure had taught me an essential truth about long-distance relationships: that one must seriously evaluate their potential, count the cost and even make contingency plans from the very beginning. That’s especially true in regard to travel distance and time constraints, the possibility of relocating, and the expense involved. From what I could see so far, I was willing to do all that and more for Nancy. But she was praying about some long-term concerns of her own, and now we would be meeting to discuss them.

    I returned to Tulsa on a Friday, the 16th of April, 1999. The first part of that day was spent in visiting my customers, and in a business trip to my company’s headquarters facility in town. I wanted to meet some of my phone contacts in person, develop some new ties and check our communication capabilities, to see if a job transfer to Tulsa might still be feasible. But that final item was a contingency which I kept to myself for now.

    Nancy would be getting off work early that day, so we decided to meet in the mid-afternoon. I’m tempted to say that our meeting started off on the wrong foot but in hindsight it was a blessing in disguise.

    Nancy suggested meeting in LaFortune Park, and she gave me directions through email. I was to approach the park from the north, pull into ‘the last parking lot on the left,’ and wait for her. Hmm. As a stranger in town, I thought the best way to find the ‘last parking lot on the left’ would be to shoot past the park entirely, turn around, and find the first parking lot on the right. (That make sense, doesn’t it?) But when I did that, I waited for more than 90 minutes and she didn’t come. I sat expectantly, and every so often I walked to a foot bridge which she had mentioned as being nearby.

    During that time I felt the enemy saying to me, “She stood you up. She’s not coming.” But if that was his plan, it brought the opposite reaction: “No, she would never do that to me. Something is wrong or something else came up, but that’s not it!” It set a determined mood of patience and trust in me—which I was about to need.

    After a while, another thought occurred to me. Maybe Nancy was waiting at the next further parking lot to the north? Maybe she didn’t know there was another one this far south, so she thought that one was ‘the last one’? The footbridge she mentioned was between the two lots, so it still made sense. I decided to drive over and see.

    Meanwhile, one parking lot further north, Nancy had a similar thought: “Loren’s not here. I wonder if he shot past the park and went down to the baseball field parking lot? Maybe he’s there?”

    Basically we’d guessed each other’s whereabouts, but we passed each other enroute and arrived at empty lots. Then we missed each other again on the way back. Later we checked our theories again with the same results. Then I went to a convenience store and called her home, and she checked my lot a third time while I was gone. Finding nothing, she went home to check for messages, and I checked her lot again. But at least she’d gotten my phone message by then and had guessed the truth, so we would soon be meeting after all. When she pulled up, we had a good laugh before getting on to more serious things.

    Although it was cold that day, Nancy wanted to sit at a stone picnic table to talk and eat some sandwiches she’d brought. We were sitting under some trees near the foot bridge, which had a creek trickling beneath it.

    Poor Nancy was terribly shy, in a way that I found deeply touching. She quietly lowered her head and produced a letter she’d written. Instead of trying to say some things openly, she wanted to read them to me from the letter, to make sure she was saying them right. She spoke in a quiet, humble voice and began by leading us in a prayer.

Nancy:

    When I wrote that letter, I thought to myself, “He wants honesty, so I’m going to tell him exactly what I think; and if that doesn’t scare him, maybe this could work. But if he doesn’t make it, then he can go back to Dallas and that will be that. And I’ll go home too, and just cry a whole bunch.”

    After the prayer, I began reading him the letter:

    “It’s sometimes difficult to express many thoughts, especially when they’re intermingled with emotions. But these are the things I wish to express to you, that you may have a clearer picture into my heart, as to who I am.

    “Never have I been touched so deeply; none of the words of kindness from others I’ve received, none of the marriage proposals, nothing has come so close. The sentence, ‘I will take the risk of rejection that you need never fear it’ touched on the very core of my being. It’s with this thought and hope that I press on to share some observations, in order to disclose some fears and concerns that I have. Again, if I didn’t think it was worth it, the easy thing to do would be to smile and to say ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

    “There are some things you believe about me which, I believe, are based on your own thought processes, as opposed to what they may actually be. It’s because of this that I want to reveal some things to you so I can make sure you’re seeing them accurately— without the rose colored glasses, as it were—so you may decide whether or not you want to continue. In order to do that, I have to be candid and frank, and I’d like to stress that if I didn’t feel you were worth it, I’d simply bow out gracefully. So here it goes:

    “You should know that I’m highly emotional. When negative emotions surface I want to run, and in order for me not to run I have to know that it’s safe to stay. How is that done practically? Through listening, repeating what you think you’ve heard as patiently as you can, and through trying to understand.”

    Next I addressed his war stories, to show him what I was afraid of:

    “What if Loren attended church with me, and found it necessary to challenge something we’d heard? What if we were together and it happened again, especially at the church where God has been touching my heart the most?” I was afraid of being drawn into the arguments too, or that he would ask me to leave the church with him, or that he would take me away from them.

    I was also afraid that if we, ourselves, disagreed, I wouldn’t be able to refute his arguments or remain autonomous in my convictions. He was so strong in debating that I was afraid he’d walk all over me.

    “What I want to convey is a fear that, inevitably, I’ll become the focus of criticism and my weakness is that I’m oversensitive. I take things wrong too easily and take things to heart too completely.

    “Unless we could build a trust and confidence that, regardless of position, conviction, or persuasion we could and would talk about things, then such criticism could destroy who I am. I need to feel confident that we can discuss anything without the fear of repercussion.

    “I want to tell you my thoughts about psychology; to tell you my thoughts about personality temperaments; to tell you, that you should know I have a problem with PMS every month; that I fear religious legalism;

    “That my upbringing and history have molded me into the person I am today. In light of that, yes, I’m a new creation, but these things have still shaped my thinking, have caused me to believe lies from the enemy, and have caused me to resist opening my heart to God completely, or to trust Him fully.

    “These are areas of my life in which God is dealing with me. It isn’t meant to be used as an excuse to sin; but I am, with my whole heart, wanting to submit those areas to Him, especially my over-sensitivity and over-emotionalism. If you’re to be significant in my life, then I need you to know that I can soar to the heights with words of encouragement, but I’m crushed under criticism.

    “Loren, you’ve been so good to me, so very kind. I’ve been the object of your affections and I’ve felt very loved. Please consider the investment of energy and effort needed to communicate to a mutual satisfaction before you decide whether we should go any further. I don’t want to hurt you, and I feel this is a foundational brick to be laid in establishing a true and everlasting friendship.”