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Jan 12, 2004 Echo’s secret message: “All I will able to think about now is making love to you.” It replayed itself in my mind on a regular basis. I was unable to not think about it. I had been invited and flirted with and lured a few times since the first time I had married. The most memorable occasion was when I went to a friend’s house to pick something up and only his wife was there. She was a real looker, and she shocked me when she opened up her terrycloth housecoat to show me her birthday suit. I babbled, “You are a beautiful woman” and turned and walked out before I changed my mind. Another time I went out to a car at the far end of a parking lot on a frigid night to start it for a female coworker. I had done this already for another couple of the workers there, but this one surprised me by opening the passenger door and getting in before I could bring it up to the front. She put her hand high up on my thigh and told me that her husband would be gone all night because he was on a fishing trip. “My wife is waiting at home for me” I blurted and got out of the car. You see, I had always dealt with illicit sexual opportunities by running away. Echo’s message was different. She was not there for me to run away from. I was no longer married. My previous wife had run off to live with another man, and during the time Echo was gone I was told that the ex had just married that same man. Maybe I was a little hurt and a little mad. But I found myself thinking about actually having sex with Echo, pondering it, allowing it to be a possibility. So Echo was due back, and I volunteered to pick her up at the airport. We talked and laughed on the way back, I accepted her invitation to come in for awhile when we got to her house. I kept accepting invitations until I wound up in bed with her. Here I was, a Christian guy who had taught classes and sung and spoken at gatherings and I had fallen into sin. Heck, I had JUMPED in headfirst and I loved it. It is true that sin can be pleasurable for a season. I knew I was wrong, but I simply decided that I didn’t care. Echo never did go to church with me. Her schedule had her coming home very early on Sunday mornings, very tired, and she never could get herself to come. I didn’t go, either, during the weeks we had our affair. I would take her places like the city or the dunes or a concert and we would go to bed and I would go home feeling good and feeling terrible at the same time. Echo was happy, dragging me around to show me off to her friends and seemingly in love with me and on top of the world. I was unsettled. I tried to read my Bible one afternoon and the words on the page seemed to swim. I felt like I was shrinking on the inside. I had to make up my mind, to be a Christian man and live that way, or turn my back on the whole thing and just eat, drink and be merry. This hypocritical lifestyle was no longer something I could abide. She never really understood why I was breaking it off with her, although she seemed to have seen it coming. I felt bad because I know she was being rejected but in fact I tried to get her to decide, with me, to change our lifestyle and try being celibate and start going to church. She thought that was silly, that what we were doing was normal, and that I was just too religious. We parted with a hug. Ahh, my friends, the great lesson I learned from this! Shakespeare said “To thine own self be true” and herein I had failed. Perhaps my body had craved a physical relationship but the man within became tormented by the sin and shame. I am a Jesus Freak and if I do not live like one I am cheating myself, other and God. Yet I still hungered for a relationship with a good Christian lady that would lead to marriage. I am different, because I love Christian rock music and some secular rock music as well as classical and some other genres. I love sports, both to watch and to play. I am a reader and a writer and a movie buff and a Bible brain. I love puns and lame jokes and love hanging with teenagers and so I teach them. I am out-going, I have acted in plays, sung in church and non-church settings, a public speaker, a bit loud sometimes, passionate and strong-willed. I am not everybody’s cup of tea! After Echo I decided I would be certain to only date women I knew for sure were Christian ladies who would also want to wait to have sex until marriage. It would be great to just take that particular issue off of the front burner and get to know each other instead. During the next five years I learned from several different relationships, as I will reveal in part SIX. ------------ About the author: Kimbal Ross Binder is a husband of one wife and parent of six child units of various sizes. He is a tennis bum, karaoke singer, punster and a reformed liberal who now admires Rush Limbaugh and hates to miss Fox News in the evening. You can pass along plaudits and invectives to: radarbinder@comcast.net Comment on this column in the forum. ------------ |
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