A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about how we tend to pursue things that are easy instead of memorable. I recently taught a seminar where the whole idea of being memorable was discussed. One of my points about living memorable scenes was to “live on a whim.” To illustrate that, I told the following story of when I knew I loved my awesome wife (who was my girlfriend at the time).
We both went to college at the University of Georgia. Every year UGA plays this little team named Florida in a town called Jacksonville. We made the journey down to Florida with about 20 other college students and stayed in a hotel in the city. Like most college students, I was in a room with about 7 other guys and she was in a room with 7 other girls. Our hotel was overlooking the river that flows through Jacksonville and we went to dinner on the other side of the river one night.
After dinner (where they charged us for water, which was an outrage to us college students!) Morgan and I decided to walk back to our hotel. There is a really cool bridge that has blue lights on it (you know what I am talking about if you have ever been to Jacksonville) and we basically had to walk across it. A couple minutes in, we got a call from a friend who informed us that it was about to rain. He asked if we wanted a ride, but we decided to just live on a whim and walk anyway.
Sure enough, the rain began to pour down, and we got soaked. We then proceeded to do cartwheels and jump in fountains and have one of the best times of our lives. Now for several months leading up to this event, I had been considering whether or not I loved Morgan. I had written pages and pages in my journal, trying to understand what love was and whether or not I had it for this girl. I had prayed about it and poured over scripture, and was pretty confidant in my love, but wasn’t positive and did not see the need to rush things. When we went running through the rain in Jacksonville, that sealed things for me. The exact moment occurred when we were in a grassy field in front of the hotel and she straight up tackled me. So not only was I wet, she got me muddy too. I’m not sure why, but at that moment I was sold. I knew then and there that I was in love with her hand there was no getting around it.
The Bridge and Fountain
When we got back to the rooms one of my guy friends made an attempt to make me feel stupid for running through the rain (like I said, most of the time we choose easy over memorable. It would have been much easier to drive and not get wet and have to shower and deal with smelly clothes, but not nearly as memorable). In a sarcastic voice he said, “bet ya feel pretty dumb for walking in the rain, huh?”
I replied, “no, that was actually fun.” To which he said, “yeah, but your going to have to take a shower now! That stinks doesn’t it?” I just smiled and said, “not really,” and in my head I was just thinking about how awesome the experience was, and that he just couldn’t understand.
I would say the rain was worth this...
While it may not have been easy or convenient, it was certainly a memorable experience. Now whenever I go through Jacksonville, I remember this moment and my heart jumps a little bit. The memory is one of the reasons I am married to the best wife in the world, and I would not trade it for anything. I’m not saying that every time you do something memorable or play in the rain you will fall in love. I would even say that it is very dangerous to create moments that you believe will make you fall in love, those moments should happen on their own and after a lot of thought and prayer. What I am saying is this, there are a lot of things in life that are easy, but they are not always memorable. Choose the memorable as much as possible.
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