Covenant Community

I thanked God for Meike and Agus, a great couple friend of mine in Jakarta. I thanked God for my pastors, especially Pastor Jahja and Pastor Benny. They were my safety net, my covenant community. I did not include my parents because they had given me full authority to choose the one for me years before. I remember my father once said, “Son, remember, time is ticking and you’re over thirty already. Just take a wife, you know, like your mom buys spinach in the market. Choose, bargain, pay. That easy. Don’t think too long. Just make sure one thing.... the person is a female...” My dad loves jokes by the way.

To be honest, I still had trauma to start a new relationship. I was quite hesitant whether I would just wait or go to the next step. And covenant community functioned for such a time like this. When I told them about her, they were all in one accord giving me all out support by saying something like: “What are you waiting for? Just express your intention to her.” , “She’s perfect for you, go for her!”, ”Don’t worry, I will back you up”, etc. Pastor Jahja as Yuyun’s pastor was very supportive and even later he and Ibu Istha took time to visit Yuyun’s father and talked about the good things about me. Pastor Benny supported in prayer from Surabaya. I suspected he put this thing in the prayer tower :). Meike actively sought more information about Yuyun and reported to me. She was my number one supporter. So I couldn’t help myself but to take heed of their advice.

I borrowed Joshua Harris’ approach in his Boy Meets Girl as I texted her that afternoon: "I need to talk about a guy I know who's interested in you." We made an appointment to have lunch at a restaurant nearby our church. And that was a mistake. Two friends of us passed by, greeted us and then joined the lunch with us. The good news was I had finished what I wanted to talk to her about and had gotten the answer. The bad news was the news about two of us having lunch together spreaded very quickly and within days everybody was like aware of our situation. Life lesson for the singles: If you want to do like what I did and you want to stay low, find a restaurant with minimum possibility of your friends to come.

Back to that restaurant nearby our church, I told her that I had a feeling about her and thought that she was the one for me. I said that I might be wrong and asked her the possibility to do courtship to get to know each other. She was not so surprised because apparently she knew about what I wanted to talk from somebody. She said that she honestly did not have any feeling towards me, but she was willing to pray about it. I was a little bit down because I thought we had a mutual feeling. But I encouraged myself to see the positive thing. I realized she treated everybody nicely, not only to me, and that thought made me even adore her more. As I told her to take her time to pray, those two friends showed up...