Bill's Blog

(If you are just now reading, begin with ‘Beauty and the Bill’ blog entry on April 20th).

Towards the end of the art tour, the couple sat alone on a bench. With no transition in the conversation, Sheree bluntly challenged Bill: “So what’s the ring for?” She almost dared him to answer directly.

“It’s a gift from one of my closest friends,” Bill started. He’d explained it so many times, it seemed almost obvious. “We’ve been friends since we were 12-13 years old, and have been through a lot together. We both surrendered our lives to the Lord, and have done our best to live for Him. Early on, each of us made a commitment to sexual purity. During High School, he lapsed, and called it one of the biggest mistakes of his life.

“My Sophomore year of college, we were in our dorm room, talking about Christmas break. He asked what I wanted for Christmas. ‘Nothing,’ I told him–we were poor college dudes.

“‘I know what I want to give you then,’ he said. ‘I want you to learn from my mistakes.’

“So this is the ring that he gave me for Christmas. Every time I put it on, or somebody asks me about it, I remember that I’ve made a commitment to him, to my future wife, and to the Lord to remain abstinent. So on my wedding day, this is the other ring that I’ll give her. It’s my way of telling her, ‘you were worth the wait even before I knew you.’”

Although Sheree knew what the answer would be, she was dumbfounded. Not only was she sitting with a 25-year-old virgin guy, but it didn’t seem to bother him at all to tell others.

Considering Bill’s “other-gender-impairment” [an idiot around girls], his challenge to remain sexually pure was actually . . . no challenge at all.

Sheree hated that she liked him even more.

She remembered a conversation, when Sheree was 18, with her mother. Sheree proudly told her mom that she would one day marry a virgin. “If I can wait for him,” she reasoned, “then he can wait for me.”

“It won’t happen that way,” her mom quickly chided. “Guys don’t wait.”

“Well, if he wants to be with me, he’ll have to have waited.”

Her mom nodded away Sheree’s naivety. Sheree nodded away her mother’s doubt.

Much to Sheree’s own surprise, she invited Bill back to her suite for a movie. They stopped at the movie store, and Bill selected a movie that he had mentioned earlier. Sheree had never seen it, and Bill eagerly grabbed it for her to enjoy. Ever the romantic, Bill rented Planes, Trains, & Automobiles [with Steve Martin and John Candy].

The final credits rolled, a hug goodnight, and Bill drove home.