Tacober 1st

For all of you avid readers that are deeply interested in my life, today is the birthday of my girlfriend, the beautiful Cortney Michelle Korshak.

Now, I could wax on for quite some time about the virtues of this wonderful woman. And in fact I sometimes do. But she gets embarrassed very easily, and it has occurred to me that SOME people might not be as interested in her as I am, which I admit would be hard, because I find her pretty dang interesting (interesting, enchanting, beautiful, intoxicating, etc...).

So instead I offer this insight. I don't know much about dating, and I haven't done much of it, but I think many of us "good Christians" (including myself) have over spiritualized the concept without truly grasping what a great tool for spiritual growth it can be.

I went to a Christian college, my observation: Christian's make dating weird. Getting married is a life altering decision. Going out with a girl spring of your sophomore year is NOT a life altering experience. You can seek God's will all you want but if you don't get any handwriting on the wall it's FINE, just date her if you like her. If you change your mind later...dump her. Everyone will cry but that doesn't make it a mistake.

But at the same time, despite the fact that I treated dating almost like a sacrament, I never understood how God could use a relationship to teach me about myself, and about Him.
Learning to love someone different from yourself means learning about yourself. It means finding out why those "differences" matter and if any of them are things in you that need to change.

Also, I believe that God gives us ALL KINDS of relationships so we can understand Him. We wouldn't understand the love of the father unless we actually had earthly fathers, we wouldn't understand brotherly love without brothers. Husband and wife, mother and child, friend to friend, these are all relationships that model the God's love for us. As I actively pursue a relationship with Cortney it sometimes occurs to me "how much more so is God pursuing me, and how bad must it feel when I reject him?" The more I have applied this to every relationship in my life the more true it seems to be. I think if I were going to guess God's motivation I would guess that he planned it that way on purpose.

Oh well, enough of my thoughts. Cortney is 22 today, if any of you see her wish her a happy birthday.

(Dear Cortney: Sorry you are embarrassed, but happy birthday, I love you)