I think your truck is sexy.

I just got back from Iowa, and I went there to visit a guy. We talked on the phone more in the week before I went to visit him than I talked to my last boyfriend the entire year we dated.

I'm pretty sure I loved my new guy 100 times more than I ever loved my old boyfriend.

And we'd only known each other for 1 week.

In that one week, however, we talked for a total of....30.5 hours. That's 10 days, for 2 hours each day, and sometimes 3. And one night for 5 hours, with the following day another 4 1/2. That adds up to 30.5 hours in 10 days. Total. I think that's a lot. Especially since I have a full time job, and 2 kids. We did all of our talking after the kids were asleep...so don't worry. But I did lose a lot of sleep! It didn't matter though because I was running on pure excitment and adreneline!

We talked about God, religion, divorce, making out and what is okay to do before marriage, our kids, our jobs, our houses, our renovations, our hobbies, our dogs, how he keeps his dog outside (which I gave him trouble about), how he likes to garden, how I'm trying to get closer to God, how I'm obsessed with my dogs and take them everywhere, what it feels like to be a single parent, how important it is to have friends and how he has so many, our parents, our grandparents, hunting (his love for it and my feelings about never wanting to be involved in it) and.... our excitement for one another.

After talking for about 5 hours, he asked me when I was going to come visit. That made me nervous. I have been working on so many things in my life, and going slow with relationships is one of them. He hung up and called me back to ask me this, but I told him that made me nervous. I was hoping to meet at a later time and just talk for a while on the phone. I wanted to get to know one another before jumping into anything. I think I said that a few times.

15 hours of talking later, I was on my way to Iowa.

I was too excited by then. I had shared too much of myself, asked too many questions, gotten too many amazing responses. I'd been told too many times how excited he was about me and how he couldn't stop smiling. He even told me he let his dog inside for a while one night while we were talking. He told me he'd thanked our friend for setting us up, told his mom about me, and wanted me to meet his friends! And he told me what a hard time he had texting...but still he texted me. He even emailed me every day that he said he would. And lest I forget, he even put his 4 year old and his 1 year old on the phone to say, "Hi Stephanie..." to me!

I decided to be on my way to Iowa because I was afraid of myself. I have had too many blind dates to know that some brown teeth, a bad haircut, or an annoying facial expression is enough to make me go running. And I know that the image I have in my head of "the one" is hard to match. I didn't get to be 32 and single for nothing.

So I figured I better head up there after all, before I found myself losing sleep and talking on the phone for 20 more hours to someone who just wasn't going to make my heart race.

But he did.

Our conversation was just as good in person...and he even looked BETTER than he did in his picture...which never happens!

When I got there, I never expected to feel the same about him in person as I had all those hours getting to know him on the phone.

I also never expected this: he didn't like me.

The night I spent at his house we talked until 3AM, and woke up at 7. I left at noon, and except for 1 phone call to make sure I found the highway, I never heard from him again.

In the days before driving up there, I never called him. I say this to PROVE to you that I didn't make him like me, and mostly to prove it to myself.

In those 10 days, HE called me every night at 8:30, almost like clockwork...which I loved. HE asked me to come up for a visit, and even told me I could bring my dogs....INSIDE. HE told me he was ready for a relationship and didn't need more time to recover from his divorce. HE emailed me...when I never emailed him. And did I mention... HE told me how excited he was?

It makes me angry that I allowed myself to be so sucked in. I had good intentions of trying to take it slow, and I'm proud of myself for not calling him or emailing him. I'm proud of myself for letting him set the pace. But I guess that's where I went wrong. I know enough now to know what a healthy pace is, and I should have done better to do it right.

In the end, I really don't know what happened. What I do know is how it made me feel.

It made me feel mad at myself for not sticking to my guns and taking things slow. For envisioning myself with a hunter, thinking I could have a long distance relationship, and believing the words that he said about being ready.

It made me feel hurt because I always thought one day, God would put someone in my life who I absolutely positively could be excited about. Someone with whom I wouldn't have to temper my emotions or hold back my feelings. Someone I didn't have to play games with or lie to or hold back from. And I figured that with all the emotional hard work I've been doing lately, God had decided that the time was right for me to finally feel safe in the arms of the one He has chosen for me.

And I know that one day He will. But I'd hoped that one day was last week.

So, God, I will keep waiting, and like all of the other people and ideas you have put into my life, I will keep learning. I will grow and pray and rely on my new friends to help me through. But God, right now, I just can't shake the pain that I feel from being so utterly and totally rejected.





"Above all else, Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Proverbs 4:23