Wouldn't it just rock and roll if liking someone meant they had to like you back? Of course that'd be a different universe and something else would probably suck.

That’s a quote from Pushing Daisies. I’ve been saving it for just something such as this. The Camp Crush. Heretofore known as CC.

This is a long post. I will tell you this is of no consequence to anyone. Actually, if I were you I’d just skip over today’s post entirely unless you want to relive every moment and thought I had over the last week with CC.

CC has come as a speaker for the students for several years. I’ve been to two student camps, hearing him both times. I’ve also been to one of the DNows that he was teaching at. So I’ve heard him speak many times, and am enraptured with his teaching style and message. Aside from everything else, I enjoy hearing him teach the Word of God. This guy is phenomenal. And hysterically funny.

I’ve always had a little bit of a crush on this guy, but I’ve always been realistic, since he lives a few states away and I never really thought enough of myself to think he’d be interested in me. But then, something was done that changed everything. One of the times I was lamenting that there aren’t any single men my age that love Jesus, it was suggested by my friend MHat (who once dated him by the way…) that he and I would make a good match. Oh Lawsie, that did me in. It was between last year’s camp and this year’s camp that the suggestion was made, and has since been encouraged with the standard “ooooh….guess who called me today to ask about ca-amp?”

That was all before camp entered the picture. Then, this week…. oh my. Middle school all over again. It wasn’t pretty. On my part that is.

Sunday before we left camp he was at church, and we got to chat. I must confess that I was quite dressed up and coiffed with a flower in my hair on the off chance he might be there. And he was. And we chatted. And he gave me a nickname. And the crush was solidified.

Then, we get to camp. I see him immediately, and he asks me if it’s true I’m at children’s camp instead of student camp, and proceeds to call me a traitor. I was wondering how he knew I wouldn’t be with them. I go on to see MHat, and before she even says hello, she asks me if I saw him and says he asked about me. Great. Now I’m going to run away with this in my mind and have us married before Thursday night.

So, we spend the rest of the week talking here and there, chatting up this and that, and laughing hysterically at and with each other. My Sam-I-Am said on the day that I slipped and slid that he watched me all the way down, and then followed me with his gaze as I got in my golf cart and drove away. At one point, he asked me to come and watch him play Ultimate Frisbee in stead of working. You can only imagine where my mind took this one. She also told me as she came from his morning study how much alike we sounded and how we like the same drink at Starbucks and such. It always comes back to Starbucks.

Ugh. The signs, the signals, the confusion. The reading into things. The hopes. And then, Thursday night.

I went to hear CC speak on Thursday night, knowing that above all else, I just love to hear him teach. Well, that was a bad idea. A very bad idea. He was giving a powerful speech about a time in his life when he was crushed and how he felt hopeless about getting married and how nine years later he was still affected by it. (As for me, by the way, September will be 10 years since a similar event set into motion the path I’m on now.) It left me in tears and sighing so loudly that MHat turned around to look at me and ask me if I was okay. Awesome. A very proud moment for me.

And then today, he went home and I went home and it seems we are not meant to be. I’d pretty much summed that up around Thursday evening, so it wasn’t such a huge shock.

So, I come home, not being CC’s promised bride, not really heartbroken over him per se, but more the thought of him. And after I write this, I will pull out a special little notebook with ugly swirly colors on the front. It looks completely normal, but inside it holds letters I’ve been writing for almost 4 years. It’s a journal that I hope to give to my fiance as we leave the church after our rehearsal, on the night before we are married. Whenever I’ve been stressed about him, or had something I’ve wanted to say to him, I’ve put it in there. So I may not be giving it to CC, but I’m pretty sure there’s someone out there besides myself that will one day get to read it.