Virginia Love Story

Psst.... listen to this story..... sounds interesting....


This spot will do, Rich thought sadly. He peered over his shoulder into the darkness to make sure no one was watching, then raised his shovel and drove it into the earth.
Clang!
The sound of steel hitting rock rang out in the stillness of the night. He dropped to the ground, his heart pounding. Good grief! At this rate he'd house the whole neighborhood. He clenched his teeth at the thought of waking someone inside Christy's house. What if her dad came out to investigate and discover him? What explanation could he possibly give his ex-girlfriend's father for being in his front yard with a shovel at 3AM? He tried not to think about it. ich held his breath and waited. A minute passed, and no one in the house stirred. All was quiet. Slowly he stood up and resumed his work, this time with greeter care. The noise of his digging still seemed unbearably loud, but he decided to keep at it. Christy and her family lived in the Virginia countryside and had a big front yard. Rich was probably a hundred yards from the house. They'd never hear him. At least he hoped they wouldn't.....................

Four years before his secret excavation in her front yard, Rich had met Christy at the small Bible church they both attended. They were fourteen years old. Rich thought Christy was really cute; Christy thought Rich was really annoying. Fortunately for Rich, he didn't stay fourteen. And as time passed, he and CHristy became good friends. During their senor year of high school, tgheir relationship became romantic. They began to write each other -not email, mind you, but old-fashioned, handwritten letters-to express their feelings. Each letter was written from the heart with love.

Christy's dad, Mike Farris, had the chance to interact with Rich on a regular basis-he was his boss. Mike was running for the office of lieutenant governor in Virginia and had hired Rich to drive him to the different rallies and events being held around the state. On most of these strips, Mike worked quietly in the backseat or made phone calls. But to Rich's surprise, one day Mike decided to sit up front. As soon as they were under way, Mike turned to Rich and asked, "So what's this I hear about you and Christy?"
Rich gulped.

As Rich drove, Mike talked to him gently and with fatherly concern about the importance of wisdom in romance, Mike had many regrets about the years he had spent dating girls in high school and college. "When you're close emotionally, you give away part of your heart, "he told Rich.
"There are long-term consequences."
To his credit, Rich really listened to what Mike had to say. The truth sank in. Rich wasn't ready to support a family-both he and Christy still wanted to attend college. And it was also too soon for them to stoke the fires of romance. A premature romantic relationship would only distract them from preparing for their future.
"I had never heard anything like that before," Rich remembers. "Mike convinced me. It wasn't a case of him forcing me to break up with his daughter. As he shared his own understanding about relationships, I saw that he was right."

Ending what he and Christy called the "us" part of their relationship wasn't easy, but they both knew it needed to happen. They went back to being just friends. They interacted at church but didn't act like a couple. They thought of each other as brother and sister, not boyfriend or girlfriend.
The plan worked..... for a while. Wven though they both knew what was right, their hearts were deceitful. They wanted the feelings. They wanted the thrill of expressing how they felt. They wanted the security of knowing they belonged to each other. As a result they began to compromise their commitment to keep the relationship strictly in a friendship. In a letter, Rich told Christy that he loved her. She did the same. All behind her father's back.
But after several months, conviction set in. Deceiving Christy's parents began to tke its toll on them. "We have to tell your parents," Rich told Christy one day. "We can't go on like this"
They never got the chance. A day later, Christy's dad walked by while she was on the phone talking with a girl-friend about her relationship with Rich.
"Christy, what were you talking about?" Her dad asked when she had hunge up. "Tell me in three words."
"Personal prayer request," Christy answered
"Really?"her dad asked. "It sounded more like, 'Richard Guy Shipe."
They were caught.
Christy broke down and confessed her deceit. Rich met with Christy's parents a few days later. Like Christy, he was brokenhearted at the way he had deceived them. He'd gone back on his word to Mike. He'd stolen more of Christy's affections when he knew they didn't rightfully belong to him.
Rich asked Mike and his wife, Vickie, for forgiveness. This time, he promised, the relationship really was going to end. He understood now that this would require drastic measures. They couldn't simply be casual friends. "If we didn't pull back, we would be moving forward," Rich says. Rich asked Christy to give back all the letters he had ever written her. Reluctantly she handed them over. "I wanted to serve her," Rich explains. "I wanted to take everything from her that represented my feelings for her. Those letter were the record of our love and all we had shared. We cherished them and reread them over and over. I knew that in order to truly lay the relationship down at God's feet, we both had to part with them.

Rich was digging a hole in Christy's front yard that night to bury a box that contained all the letters they'd written each other. There were over one hundred handwritten pages inside it. It took Rich nearly two hours of digging to finish the hole. He made it two feet wide by three feet long and eighteen inches deep so it would be beneath the frost line. He picked up the box of letters and laid it gently into the ground. He had wrapped it tightly in several layers of plastic. Rich wanted his hopes to be able to stay in the ground for a long time..... maybe even forever.
It was the funeral of his dreams. He stared at the box one last time, looked up at the quiet house, and then pushed the dirt he'd unearthed back into the hole and packed it down with this foot. He covered the spot with sod, then quietly stole away.

A month later after Rich buried their love letters, both he and Christy left home for college in different parts of the country. They didn't say goodbye. They didn't write or call each other. Because their schools had different schedules, they didn't see each other during the year. Those were difficult days. The love they felt for each other hadn't gone away.
A year and a half after they'd broken up, Christy called her mom from school and told ther that she was still struggling with her feelings for Rich. When her dad found out, he asked if she knew how Rich was doing. "How would I know? I haven't talked to him since we broke up."

Her dad was impressed. Rich had stuck on his words and broken off communication with Christy. Mike decided to intervene once more. A few months later, when Rich was home from college, Mike called him and asked him to come to his office.
"I had no idea what he wanted to talk to me about," Rich says, "I thought I must be in trouble, but I couldn't imagine what I'd done."
As it turned out, Rich wasn't in trouble. Mike wanted to meet with him to thank him for keeping his word. He also wanted to tell him that he felt it was an appropriate time for Rich and Christy to begin a courtship.
Rich was floored. He told Mike that he needed time to pray about it. "Well, next week I have to go down to Richmond," Mike told him. "Why don't you drive me down and we can talk about it then?"
A week later Rich and Mike were on the road again. It was just like old times. And it was time for another talk. Rich had prayed hard that week about starting a relationship with Christy again. But as he sought God, he sensed Him saying that it still wasn't the right time for a courtship. "I still wasn't ready to get married. I was still figuring out what I'd be doing for a living. It seemed that God was saying, 'You committed to these principles, and you need to stick to them even if her dad is giving you the green light."
When Rich shared this with Christy's dad, Mike couldn't have been more surprised or more pleased. It was as though their roles had been reversed since their first talk.

Rich and Christy didn't begin a courtship then, but they did start to talk and ease back into a friendship. A year later, with Christy still away at school, they began a long-distance courtship. All that time the box full of love letters lay hidden. Rich had never told Christy that he had buried them in her own front yard. She thought the letters had been burned. The Christmas before she graduated from college she found out otherwise.
Christmas morning, Rich was celebrating at the Farris home. "This one's for you," he said, handing Christy a small box. She unwrapped it and found a nursery tag for a red maple.
"I bought you a tree," Rich told her
"Oh," Christy said, trying to sound enthusiastic.
Her family, who by this time were all in on the surprise, could hardly contain themselves.
"Why don't you plant it in the front yard?" her father suggested.
"Now?" Christy asked.
"Sure!" Rich said. "Come on." He grabbed her arm and pulled her outside, where the tree and shovel were waiting.
"Where should we plant it?" Christy asked as they walked down the driveway toward the front of the yard.
"This spot will do," Rich said, pointing to the ground. He smiled at Christy, then raised his shovel and drove it into the earth.


By the way, there's one thing Rich had put in that box before he buried it. When he carefully wrapped it years before, he place one new letter on top of all the others. It was a letter Christy had never read. In it, Rich asked her to marry him.
So, Christmas morning, over four years after it had been buried, the box of cherished letters was unearthed and opened. And four years after it had been written, Christy read Rich's letter proposing marriage. And as he pulled an engagement ring from his pocket, he heard her answer, "Yes!"

my quad 

Gue bikin kuis sendiri n jawab sendiri ah........cobacobacoba:

Dari minggu2 kemaren, hari apa yg paling melegakan>?
" hari selasa, soalnya paper church history dah beres, lumayan krn early date dpt 5 point"

Dari minggu2 kemaren, hari apa yg paling menyebalkan>?
"hari sabtu, soalnya beli thermal longjohn dan jaket arctic di online merchant yg kaga jelas, jadi ampir ketipu"

Dari minggu2 kemaren, makanan apa yang paling berkesan di Myriad>?
"hmmm, kalo gasalah, dumpling apa fried ravioli di north cafe, ueeenakkk lho"

Dari minggu2 kemaren, siapa yang paling mengesankan>?
"gue, soalnya kuis NT cuma salah 1, akhirnya............."

Dari minggu2 kemaren, siapa yang paling menyebalkan>?
"gue juga, soalnya ngomong sama orang perasaan kaga ada yg nyambung"

Dari minggu2 kemaren, lagu apa yang berkesan>?
"Be Glorified - pas seminary chapel, soalnya ada gerakan kakinya"

Dari minggu2 kemaren, kebaktian apa yg berkesan>?
"kebaktian pagi di Faith Church, banyak yg maju ke altar, sama 1st seminary chapel, yg bicara Om Gundul, itu bukan khotbah, tapi tips2 dalam dunia nyata....."

Dari minggu2 kemaren, hari apa yang paling nyantai>?
"tau deh prasaan kaga ada..."

Dari minggu2 kemaren, hari apa yg paling cape>?
"ooo...sudah tentu hari rabu dan jumat donk"

Dari minggu2 kemaren, siapa yang paling baek dan sabar?
" no.1 tentu gue, selanjutnya, ada banyak, semua orang baik padaku...."

Dari minggu2 kemaren, siapa yang paling cerewet dan tukang ribut?
"Ooo sudah tentu teman sekamarku, dia kan super rapi dan sangat cinta ketenangan...."

jadi kesimpulannya apa?
GA ADA!

---- maaf, masih lieurr dan cape-------

with good friends: Daniel Li, William Tan, Martini Tan, and Aileen Soon