Things have been a little serious lately around here with my stories, so let me lighten the mood a little and tell you a dating story. It may make you laugh….shake your head in disbelief…or make you think I’m a horrible person. (I did tell you guys earlier I was far from perfect…this is a judge free zone here, right?)

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I went on a date with a guy last year. Bless his heart, such a sweet, nice guy, but just not the guy for me. As soon as I met him and gave him the most awkward hug, I just knew instantly. But, I was determined to make the most of the date. We had dinner that evening on a Friday night. In fact, it was the night that President Donald Trump came to the city that I live in, for a rally for an upcoming Senate election. I’m telling you this, because it does have some relevance to my story. So we have dinner, and I did in fact try my hardest to make the most of the evening, but by the end, I was ready to leave.  We leave dinner and end the date with the second most awkward hug. The first being the hug we had at the beginning of the date, keep up here people.

As I am leaving the restaurant, I decide to “treat myself” and head to Sonic to get some ice cream.  While I am waiting for my ice cream, I decide it is the perfect time to fill in two of my girlfriends about how the date went. So, I have the brilliant idea to send snapchats of me explaining how bad the date was to my girlfriends. Well, if you could not tell, I love to tell a good story and proceed to explain everything that happened on the date.  I’m not gonna lie, I was trying to be cute and funny and so I may have embellished a bit about the date I just had in these Snapchat videos. I finish sending the videos to my friends, get my ice cream, and start to head home after a quick stop at Walmart.

On my way from Sonic to Walmart, traffic is backed up because some roads are closed because of the President being in town. A short 5 minute drive took longer, and so naturally what do I do? I pull out my phone and take a snapchat video complaining of the traffic because the President is in town.  I post that video to my public snap story. Cell signals were so slow that evening and it had to be related to the amount of people around. I get to Walmart finally, and as I’m walking into the store, I decide to check my snapchat for some reason. I open the app and to my horror, realize I had accidentally posted two of the private messages that were meant for my girlfriends to my public story, that all my friends can see. I immediately delete them and am relieved to see that no one had viewed them. Whooooo! That was a close one, serves me right. I finish my trip to Walmart and head home finally.

When I get home, I get a text message from the guy I went on the date with. This was the second text he had sent, the first thanking me for a nice evening. I am able to see the first few lines of the message in my text preview and all I read is, “those snaps were a bit harsh….”

The genius that I am is confused for a minute. Then I assume, “oh shoot, maybe he is a Donald Trump fan and the video I posted earlier complaining about traffic offended him. Wait, was that video offensive??? I wasn’t dissing Donald, just annoyed about traffic….” (This is the way my mind works) But then I realize, and as soon as I realize it, it is like straight out of a movie and everything is in slow motion.  I let out a long and remorseful “Nooooooooooo! He saw the snaps?!? How could this be? I deleted them? It said it had zero views!! Wait, what’s going on here??“

So I immediately call the two girlfriends, who I meant to send those videos to earlier.  They both don’t answer.  Thanks guys, I really appreciated that.  I then call another girlfriend and ask her to go and watch my public snapchat story and tell me what she sees. She calls me back and talks about a post from earlier that day, my Donald snap, and “oh yeah, you’re complaining about a date you went on tonight….“.

Cue the long slow motion “Noooooo!“

Long story short, a major Snapchat glitch happened to me that night. On my phone, from my viewpoint, the snap videos were gone and were deleted. However, people could still view it in my public story and it was still present. The next thing I tried to do, was deleting all of my posts from that day.  This then turn deleted everything EXCEPT the two videos of me complaining about the date. Are you kidding me right now? Is this a joke? With every second that passed I continued to freak out more and more, I had to remove this.  After a few more panic attacks, I decide to deactivate my snapchat account. This for sure removed the posts, along with my account as well. Serves me right. When I reactivated my account the next morning, they were finally gone.

I think the most surprising part of the story is how graceful the guy was about the whole situation. I could not apologize enough; there was nothing I could do or say to fix the hurt I caused. I was trying to be funny, get a reaction out of my friends, and ended up hurting someone in the process. That was probably one of the worse feelings I have ever felt. Knowing that I hurt someone and how ugly I was to them. And to make matters even worse, the guy forgave me, he told me it was okay. But the truth of the matter was, what I did was absolutely not okay. He did not have to forgive me. Lord knows, I would have struggled with forgiving him that fast.  Not to mention, I would have been in tears if the roles had been reversed.

All this to say, I learned a lot of lessons that night. But the main thing I learned and experienced was grace. Here is a guy who I don’t really know, I was just so mean to him, but yet he was so graceful. His display of grace, taught me a lesson in how I should react to others when they hurt me. I heard the Lord loud and clear that night. That entire situation gave clarity on things I had lingering in my life, even things unrelated to that date.

So while I would have preferred that whole situation to have never happened, there was a message in the mess and let me tell you, it was received loud and clear.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.” – Ephesians 2:8-9