Graham

I swiped right on Graham because his pictures were equally split between hanging off rocks in Yosemite, and dancing with a real big smile at a few different weddings. He had my personal check list of beard, cute hair, Christian box checked, and looked goofy and fun.

One thing I can’t get over here in Dallas, and maybe this is true for other southern states, is how many young people dress like their a dad. Strangely crisp khaki, boat shoes, polo shirts, weird sunglasses that double for lake days, and these heinously gaudy gold college rings. If a guy has a college ring on, he might even have a Jack White shirt on but believe me, that’s the only t-shirt he owns. Unless he kept his pledge shirts, in which case just throw in the towel, throw the whole date away.

Graham was sporting a clean shaven baby face, because apparently you can only grow a beard on vacation, and was wearing a yellow and blue striped polo shirt that looked to be 14 years old. I would never sit down to play poker due to the fact I have a wildly expressive face, but in that moment I could have had a full house at the MGM Grand you wouldn’t have been able to tell.

We met up for street tacos at a cute farmers market that is styled after San Francisco’s ferry building. Indoors, packed with vendors and people, high ceilings, equal parts loud and delicious. Graham was completely unimpressed by these things, and told me there was one in his neighborhood but he had never been. By his neighborhood, he meant Flower Mound which is actually a city not a neighborhood. You can also tell if a guy is from Flower Mound because he will have either a Bath and Body Works antibacterial lotion combo in his car, or a severe lack of calluses anywhere on his body.

He knew I was from California, and despite telling him I had lived in Texas for six years he wanted to stress to me just how important sports are in Texas. So he gave me a run down of every team in Texas, and some brief standings. I told him I really only kept up with baseball but wasn’t willing to adopt the Rangers as my team. He gruffed as he said well figures, you’re from California. I began to see just what I felt was happening, he was going out on a limb for me. He was stretching his dating life by dating a non Texan. I wasn’t even that offended, good for him I thought, expand your horizons.

The real problem of the date for me wasn’t that he was Texan, it was that he was basic. He said he played a little of every sport, but upon asking him he meant in High school, or junior high. He meant 14 years ago. It made me wonder if I should list, sometimes plays with Barbies as my hobby, day dreams of Nsync and J.T.T. Ive dabbled in kickball and softball leagues, but this guy just wasn’t interested in doing them. He preferred watching.

If there is anything I will never be guilty of, it is watching. I can’t watch my students draw projects, I want to draw too. I can’t let the comedian just tell his jokes, I want to be funny to. I can’t watch someone else bake on tv, I have to start baking also. I can’t watch my students complain about being hungry, I want to be a solution. I am not a good watcher, it sounds awesome because you do things but it also means you can be a bad listener. Which to my chagrin my friends have told me, lovingly, gently, and then angrily.

He goes to church, so there was that redeeming factor. While he shows up, and is probably a good listener, he doesn’t participate. Not even once to a missions trip internationally or across town, which I figured you had to do if you grew up in a church even if its just VBS. VBS is a small summer program that sounds innocent and fun, but really it’s a week of wearing some ridiculous costume, being tortured by children whose parents have taken off for happy hour laughing all the way, while trying to sing and dance and explain to a kid how Jesus loves them.

While with previous dates I felt were dying, I’d call at around 45 minutes. But with Graham, we got post dinner drinks and talked sports and had fair conversation. The night was pleasant till he stopped me dead by letting me know he had looked up my church. It’s the type of place that homeless and rich people frequent in a once edgy part of town, with its own community coffee shop, and art gallery. It’s also pastored by a husband wife team, they co-lead, co-preach, and basically split the job. Which he wanted to tell me about, because I’m guessing, he probably thought I didn’t realize a lady gets up and does the preaching. As he was telling me how he Googled my church, he let me know that women can’t be pastors.  As a native Californian, I was born with a feminist anti-misogynistic complex that has lead me to believe anyone can do anything. I had been playing the role of Californian, turned sweet Dolly Parton type role up to this point. After which I became a cross between Alanis Morisot and Barack Obama.
 
What this watcher didn’t realize is that when you spend your life watching, and listening to other people you don’t have the experience needed to know the truth about some things. Be it the truth of spraining your ankle at 28 because of kickball, or the truth of knowing Jesus by studying at a Bible college, and then knowing the real Jesus by studying Hebrew at the secular college because you dropped out of the Bible college; truth is something best experienced first hand. There was a lot of Bible being quoted after that, and for every reference he gave me I was giving him several more. I knew the conversation was pointless, after referencing the book of Judges from the Old Testament. God picked a lady to lead Israel for a while, surprise! A lady, one time lead the people. He informed me that the Old Testament was dead, that in Jesus’s words “the old has gone and the new is here”. I told him Jesus never said that, and asked him to show me in the Bible where it says women can’t be pastors. He mentioned how Jesus did say some women should be quiet, but when I asked him about the cultural normative of the time and what the Hebrew was implying he said he never studied Hebrew so how was he supposed to know. That was when I told him my first degree was on religion, and that I’ve seen Jesus show up too many times to believe that I can’t preach about him.  He said he studied the bible in High School, I said that was like 14 years ago. I excused myself to the bathroom.

In my mind, I feel I came off as cool and collected as Frank Sinatra singing about heart break. In reality, I’m sure it was probably closer to listening to heavy metal for the first time. I’m not a good listener, which can mean I miss out a lot on listening to where God is leading a conversation. Do I feel like this idiot needed to be told that God uses women to do things? Yeah. Could I have been missing out on some prompts that would have smoothly guided the conversation, yeah probably. But I’m a very active participant, and sometimes participating means you get a little fired up and a little bit loud. And if your only used to quiet women, maybe every now and then you need to see someone get loud and upset about what the Bible says. I can acknowledge that I could have been more sensitive to the leadings of God, but I don’t think he was shaking his finger at me during the conversation. I’d like to think it was more of a laugh, like when you see a child trying to take something on that is clearly impossible.