deja vu... deja.

it's strange to be back here.

ten months ago today. april 14th. he was sitting in this very spot. it was cold, it was overcast. it didn't really feel like spring, though the season should have been fully in swing. we had had lunch at egg harbor, and i remember he didn't eat much. he said he wasn't very hungry. i didn't realize it was because he was nervous. in my experience, guys are always hungry. i didn't get it. after lunch, we stopped at borders. i don't remember the exact reason why we went there, but i do remember that he picked up the new bright eyes cd, and we listened to it in the car on the way to this place.

i think it was expected that we would talk about important things that day, but i wasn't really prepared for what happened. i don't know what i was expecting, but it wasn't that. he said he wanted a relationship, i said i didn't think it would work. i didn't really give him a chance to plead his case, and he didn't really try. i drove us back to my apartment complex, back to his car. it was somber. "four winds" played on the drive back, or at least, it did in my head.

it was the first time i think i ever saw him cry. it was a heart wrenching moment for both of us. like a break up, though we hadn't been dating. we had spent the better part of six months as good friends. i knew he cared for me, i just didn't know to what extent, and i had been focused on other things. we left that day unsure of when we would speak again. i cried a lot that day and for several days afterwards. i wanted to drive down to his place and knock on his door and tell him that i had been kidding. i wanted to make him happy, but didn't feel like i could.

fast forward a couple months. You shifted some things. all of the sudden, it began to click. it seemed like the door that stubbornly wouldn't open, well, did... at a point when i think both of us had resigned to the fact that it just wasn't going to.

early june, we were at willow creek, and donald miller was speaking on life as story. i don't remember much about it now but some of the impressions it left with me. we are made to be a part of a grand adventure. at our core, we do not want to stand before God at the end of our lives and list off the things we owned or didn't own as representing our value. we want to love greatly, to fight with honor and to win, and to have a great story to tell. i remember that there was particular emphasis on the point that great stories are the ones worth fighting for, and that, ironically, the story does not become great until we fight for it. every story has conflict, and the greatness of the story is not in the absence of conflict, but in the overcoming of it.

the message spoke to us both, it seemed. i know for myself, i am known for saying that i want a good story. the night before we went to this gathering, i remember talking to You about my story, so the timing of the message was quite interesting, to say the least.

that was the night that i thought our story became really really good.

things seemed to take off from there. he went out of town for a couple weeks. we talked a ton on the phone, and i felt such a goodness in letting him come closer to my heart. i loved being closer to his. it was good and pure. i felt You in it.

seven months ago today. july 14th. i sat in the very place i sit now. he sat to my left. we talked for hours. the dog kept coming over to get attention. we decided to move to a different part of the house where the dog doesn't go... the living room area, where a couch faces a bay window overlooking the street. we sat there talking for hours. it was here, in this house, on that couch, that he first told me he loved me. it seemed like it kind of slipped out, like he didn't quite mean to say it just then. i think i stopped him and asked him what he had just said. he then repeated himself and expressed relief that he didn't have to hide it anymore. it was beautiful. we talked about You, and what it would be like to see a little boy raised from the dead.

fast forward. today. february 14th. i sit here alone, in this familiar place. it's weird that this isn't even my home, and yet historic moments of the past year of my life have occurred here. it's funny that the people who do live here have no idea of the great heart moments that have happened under their very roof, or the conversations that their dog has heard.

it's nostalgic, yet it feels empty here. i thought that the feeling of this house was redeemed in july, but... i guess not.

i don't know what else to say about it right now.