Loud music and dim lights.  Food on the floor and girls primping in the bathroom.  Boys with guitars and seats filling quickly.  Loud laughs and quiet smiles.  Each member of our team was running around like crazy taking care of stuff and trying to greet every face that walked through the door all at the same time.  Yes, we were having a Youth Rally.  And I was enjoying everything about it.  Particularly, that Youth Leader walking through the door that I’d hoped to see when I dropped off his letter a couple of weeks ago.

Somehow, while everyone else was singing along to the praise and worship music, I had found myself on a set of stairs in the hallway.  Distracted.  Distracted by that same Youth Leader.  And he had joined me out on those stairs too.  How did he even know I was out here??  As we sat and talked, I was secretly hoping he was distracted by me too.

The night went on and my heart smiled as I watched students making decisions and leaving to talk with the counselors we had on hand.  As the evening ended, our team was full-speed on the clean-up details.  I looked around to find that same young, single, distracting Youth Leader playing basketball with some our boys.

When I went to leave for the night, I found my notebook lying open with my stuff and he’d written his cell phone number with: CALL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! under it.

Okay, so maybe it was mutual.

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“I heard from him today.  He called after school like he used to.”

“So I take it he told you that he’s engaged?”

“What?!?  No!”

“Oh.  I figured he had, I’m sorry.  I found out today.”

My mom closed the door behind her and I lost it.  I cried and cried and sobbed hard until I about hyperventilated and then I caught my breath and continued to cry some more.  I didn’t understand.  How was he engaged?  It wasn’t until about a week ago that we had been on the phone with each other about every single day, sometimes more than once.  We’d gone together to watch A Walk to Remember with all of his friends not even two weeks ago.  He had been at my house several nights in a row.  What did she mean he was engaged??

She slipped back into my room and asked me if I knew why I was crying.  I didn’t understand her confusion.  She had just told me that boy I had fallen for so quickly was engaged to someone else and I felt stupid.  Stupid for falling so fast and stupid for crying over him now.  I mean, let’s get real.  He was the complete opposite of “blonde hair and blue eyes”.  Oh, and he played basketball, not soccer.  And he was a Carolina fan!  What had I been thinking anyway?!?  I looked up at her and said, “Because, this means it’s really over.” 

And it was.  It was really over and my heart was a mess.  More of a mess than I wanted to admit at the time.  And I would go on and bury the heartache but never really deal with it.  I would let it walk through life with me and it too would play a part in the building of walls around my heart…