The book of Luke records that God silenced Zechariah before the birth of his son John, and sometimes I wonder if He did the same to me during my final year of high school when it came to girls. By this time, I had been out on a couple dates, so it would seem that I would be over getting cold feet when it was time to ask a girl out on a date. (though, I suppose most single guys don’t ever get over the anxiety of asking a girl out for the first time, I know I never did.) I would’ve thought so, too, but that last spring proved otherwise.

On more than one occasion, I would be talking to a girl, sometimes even when we were alone, but the words would never come out of my mouth and we’d go our seperate ways. I can even remember having conversations with girls about dances (homecoming, prom, whatever) and the conversation would seem to lead into a perfect transition to asking her out! But, no, for some reason there was always a hand on my shoulder and a voice in my ear saying “no, now is not the time.”

For my senior prom, I even short-circuited any opportunity to start any new romance by asking my good friend Tracy Rollo to go with me. Going to prom with Tracy was a safe alternative to an expensive first date with someone and it provided two big benefits. 1.) The evening would be expectation and stress-free. There was no worrying about how the night would end. 2.) We could be total fools and have fun without caring what the other thought. (The night also gave an unexpected benefit when I brought someone totally outside of my high school’s sphere of influence because tounges were wagging about the mysterious, unknown attractive girl that accompanied me all night. It was nice to have people gossip something good about me for once.) But regardless, it meant that romance was something that just didn’t happen at the end of my high school term. It was just as well, I supposed, for I would be meeting college girls next year! (More on that later)

I really did have a lot of fun my last year of school and it was nice to be free from entangling relationships and enjoy my time with good friends. I’ve always wondered if God was steering me clear of trouble by making me so fruitless in my dating endeavours during those final months before college. I tend to be a person who speaks before thinking and sometimes the things I say have drastic and dire results. It would seem that there have been several periods in my life where I have felt the hand of God clapping over my mouth just as I’m about to say something devestatingly hurtful or malicious (sometimes I beat Him and it still gets out.) I don’t know any other way to describe it than the work of God, because if it were up to me, I might not have kept my big mouth shut.