My friendship with Adam did not escape the notice of others. Family and friends pointed out or even complained about the reality that I spent virtually every free moment I could catch him online chatting with him. A common complaint was that the moment Adam came online, it was next to impossible to get a response out of Andrea. My family quickly decided I had feelings for him. Then, I snapped at a friend online when she said she thought he was interested in me. She deduced it was vice versa and I didn't want to admit it.

She was right. It was March before I would even admit I had feelings for him at all, from fear and confusion over how someone I'd never met in person could mean so much to me.

During the course of our friendship, my strong, wise, bold, insightful friend began bit by bit showing me a soft, gentle, sweet, vulnerable side he had never let anyone see before. My acceptance of his vulnerable side had the effect of deepening our relationship. We felt like we could tell each other anything, and by spring we were sharing our secrets with each other regularly. This sense of trust was an important foundation for us. As for his vulnerable side, I not only accepted it, this side of him actually made me more interested in him. It was his inner strength and gentleness that I fell in love with.

We individually spent late winter and early spring in torment and confusion about our growing feelings. He was actually the first one to realize and admit to having romantic feelings. He dropped hints here and there, the earliest of which I was oblivious to, and desperately searched for any clue I had feelings for him. He didn't have much to go on. His most treasured lead was a flippant question I asked about the weather in Montana. My mother later asked him the same question.

In spring, he finally told me he was confused about his feelings toward me. I was taken by surprise, but, purposely not analyzing what he said, suggested he try capturing it in a poem, saying that poetry sometimes helped me sort out my feelings. He actually wrote two poems, and later more, as my suggestion worked so well once, he kept on at it, and has since turned into quite a bit of a poet. Not too surprisingly, one of the common interests which brought us together was we are both writers.

Adam admitted to his romantic interest to me by letting me read that 19 page poem, in which he debated fear and love over whether or not he was in love with me and whether or not he should do anything about it. His turmoil was clear and this peak inside his head was endearing for me and healing for him. A day or so later, I admitted to myself and him that I felt the same way.

This frightening revelation caused him to consider rethinking the next rule he set for us: no phone conversations until you've known each other a year. We were not even supposed to communicate online until April, and we were talking on the phone by then. I managed to get past my fears to call him once or twice, but most of the time he had to do the calling, and carried the burden of the phone bills too, I'm sorry to admit. Our first conversation didn't go so well, we were both nervous, and I was so scared out of my wits (my traditional reaction to the unknown) that it didn't seem real. Intellectually I was convinced that it was impossible to feel this way from so far away about someone I'd never met in person, but somehow my heart had different ideas. I used my religious training to attempt to argue away from it, saying romantic love is eros, and eros is physical love and you can't have those sort of feelings long distance.

Needless to say, Adam and I were very cautious. Having made this discovery, we did nothing about it. We remained, officially, just friends. My other friends, and family, however, before long, began the annoying practice of referring to Adam as my boyfriend. I suppose they did not know what else to call a young man I felt the need to spend every free moment talking to. One holiday, we had a phone conversation that lasted six hours. My parents found me on the phone at four or five in the morning and told me I was crazy and needed to go to bed in typical parental fashion (like I was twelve or something). We felt we needed to meet in person before doing anything about our feelings. In October 2000, Adam was planning a cross country trip to see some friends of his in 2002 or 2003 and said since he was going to Cincinnati anyway, he might be able to add me to the list. He never made that trip. Instead, he came out to see me August 2001. That in and of itself was a trying time, originally he tried for July, but due to financial straights, it was pushed back until August. There were times when I was desperately afraid he wouldn't get the money together. Miraculously, the money did, and he was able to make it. And the Lord turned out to know better than we did, for other than August being the hottest, most humid month of the year in Ohio, it was a great time to come. Besides having a lot of fun, there was a revival at the church he wanted to visit while he was out there where we met a blind evangelist we will never forget.

I said before we did nothing about how we felt until his visit. I meant officially. Officially, we had even forbidden ourselves from saying "I love you" because he felt it was important to save that at least until we'd met in person, and, because of his deep conviction of what those words meant, until he was ready to make a firm commitment. Not only did we unofficially ignore what we agreed upon and instead of acting like friends behaved like courters, the no saying I love you rule about drove us both crazy because we both felt it so strongly. During one online conversation I was sleepy and accidentally “said” it, though it came out, "lvoe u". This turned into an exercise in creativity, or, that is, a contest to see how many different ways we could say I love you without actually saying the words.

One of his favorite tricks when he was feeling strongly tempted to blurt the words on the phone was to hit mute and then shout it. Once, he didn't get it muted correctly and I "overheard him", this made my heart pound. I debated on whether to tell him he forgot to hit mute. I finally did. He was horrified and embarrassed.

Yes, I know, we were nuts.

The week Adam was in Ohio was, through that point, the best week of my life. Despite this, my mom had to drag me to the airport to pick him up, as I was frozen in terror. I could not look at him. The girl who previously feared she would kiss him right at the airport could only just barely bring herself to shake his hand. We laugh about that still.

While I could not bring myself to look at him, Adam could not take his eyes off me. This frightened me, as I could feel his eyes on me (and I kept peeking to check) and I was not used to this attention and did not know what to make of it. My mother noticed his behavior too, in fact, she said she was afraid he would run into something because he was so busy looking at me.

One of my most clearest memories is sitting on a bench waiting for our ride. He asked if he could join me and I nodded. I finally let myself look at him After an awkward silence, (he must have been feeling desperate), he held out his hand and all but pleaded with me to just hold his hand. I took his hand and let myself look into his eyes as he spoke quietly to me, like one speaks to a frightened horse. He said he wanted to share his feelings with me, but would wait until I was ready. I was frightened and said weakly, "Maybe next tuesday" (the day he was scheduled to leave). He did a good job of hiding his reaction to that one.

Our ride arrived soon after that and someone had Adam sit in the front seat, both to my relief and dismay as my emotions tumbled inside my heart like clothes in a dryer. From the beginning, I had strong feelings for Adam, which began to melt through the icy fear that held me in its grip. When we got to his motel, I sat in the car with Mom and our ride while Adam went into the office to pay. When he came back, we drove him back to where his room was. I jumped out of the car in part to help him with his things, in part as a chance to see his room, and in part b/c he wearily asked us to leave him at the motel to get some rest. Before we left, he said, "do you know what I'd like now more than anything? A hug." The tone of his voice was the first sign he'd given of how my shyness hurt him. I could hear his fear and pain and my heart went out to him. I impulsively hugged him, and I found I liked it very much :)

He didn't stay at his room long, but it sure seemed like an eternity to me. When he arrived at my parent's home, I started out on the opposite end of the couch from him. By the end of the evening, I was virtually sitting in his lap. This reversal must have startled him, as the next day he took his duffel bag with him and kept if firmly placed between us, which hurt me deeply, because it told me he didn't trust me. We had a small fight over the bag, but it stayed between us, though I was bound and determined to climb over it. He did eventually give up on the duffel bag, I think.

We spent most of that week staring into each others eyes on my parents couch playing with fire. Thankfully, nothing more serious than an almost-kiss on the lips that we both jumped back from at the very last possible minute occurred. We also went to church, wrote up a premarital contract, visited the state capitol, the zoo, the city center mall, had a picnic in a field behind the Dominos Pizza where I showed him off to a friend who worked there, and went to the library. We also went on a couple walks around the neighborhood and out to eat a few times. He had a few churches in the area he wanted to visit. The most interesting of these was having a revival with a blind evangelist named Brother Whallee who on the last night gave Adam $20 and told him to take me someplace nice. That $20 paid for dinner at the Olive Garden our last full day together in Columbus. I think I ordered lasagna, he being a man, ordered pizza.

Adam spent the last two days anguishing over whether to propose to me. This was extremely painful as somewhere in the middle of the week I made up my mind about saying yes and didn't exactly keep this a secret. While his vision at the church sealed it for me, he continued to waiver and doubt, mostly because of his rule about not getting married until he'd known me two years and his promise to his family not to come home engaged, married, or pregnant. To my bitter disappointment, we left the Olive Garden unengaged. He finally got up the nerve to propose at the bus stop outside the restaurant right before the bus came to take us home. Despite my annoyance with him, I did happily accept his proposal.

The most difficult day of my life was the day Adam flew back to Montana. He was leaving immediately upon going home to see his dying grandfather, which meant for several days I wouldn't even be able to talk to him. I watched his plane take off from the roof, melodramatically signing "I love you" to the plane as I sang worship songs to the Lord. I had to sing, it was the only way to keep from cursing him. I meant every word of my tear-filled song and learned that day what a sacrifice of praise was. It was the first time I'd ever sang as I wept.

There are a few lessons to pull from this portion of my life. Some are pretty basic. For the first, I think the bible says it best: God works all things for the good of those who love him. Adam and I experienced quite a few set backs during this period and changes of plans, but, in the end, everything worked out, but God first required that we let go of our own ideas and rules about how things should be and let him have HIS way. Even when we're having "control issues", though, looking back at this period of time, its plain to see that God still ultimately had everything under control, again to say, God was still on His throne. I am glad we did thing's God's way, because his plan turned out to be better than ours were, despite the pain of getting there.

Looking back, I can see plainly how God was working on me during all of this to prepare me to receive the Lessons and convictions he was planning on teaching me. Often when we see our loved ones suffering or struggling with sin or giving way to oppressive demonic strongholds, we wonder where God is and how long he will allow this to continue, but God's ways truly are not ours, for he is far more patient than we could ever stand to be, which is why he gets better results. My efforts to "free" my sister from herself, so to speak, have consistently backfired, whereas god, who has sat back and let her have her own way, will get better results. I'm still not sure what he has in mind, but I've seen with my own life that he does have his way of dealing with our hearts. I've seen now how God waits until I've gotten so sick of my way that I'm ready to try things his way, he does not waste his words until I'm ready to hear them, and he has plenty of ways of getting us to that point. Unfortunately, we generally force him to allow us to suffer a good and plenty through our own ways before we'll even consider listening. What about you? Are you ready to listen? (If you're thinking, "who me? God and I are cool, I'm not..." remember what the Apostle John said, "if any one says he is without sin, he is a liar." We ALL have areas we are weak in, and no one ever said dying to "My way" is easy, and anyone who says it is, is deceiving themselves.