This is kind of a goofy post. But it’s me being real, for whatever that’s worth. Quick ADHD moment: I recently watched a video of a Christian speaker whose name I can’t remember and now, as I write these words, I keep hearing her voice saying, “Just keeping it real!” after each hilarious, self-deprecating confession or anecdote. Back to now: this post, however, is not intentional comedy, at least not in that same way. It’s a slightly edited version of something I journaled about recently, and I have no idea why I’m putting it up on the Internet…other than this vague notion that maybe someone somewhere will find something they need in my words. At the same time, it may not make a whole lot of sense to anyone else.

To me, it’s neither silly nor childish. It describes  a profound and deep realization that I can’t express in words. It’s like coming home…only to discover home is even more wonderful than you remember.

Enough preamble and disclaimer…

There’s been my lifelong — well, since around age 13 anyway — quest for who I thought of as The One Guy. It didn’t take much time for that concept to become less and less about a boyfriend and more about a friend, until the very idea of romance no longer entered the picture. It became all about The One Guy who would “see me for me”, who would “love me for me”, with no strings attached, no hint of sexual overtones to mess it all up. He would be the perfect BFF, the one person who truly understood me. He would believe in me, bring out the best in me, and together we would conquer the world. I imagined that, since Mums always said to marry your best friend, that this remarkable fellow would have to take at least a year or so to gain my trust and prove himself. Then, once he’d earned the highly coveted (by no one, especially since I alone knew of its existence) One Guy status, it would take an additional two or more years (after he’d fallen in love with me) to persuade me that marrying each other wouldn’t ruin everything. That assumed all went well and things sailed smoothly along. Otherwise it would really be a long courtship.

Of course, nothing remotely like that ever happened.

When I attempted to explain this futile quest to my therapist, he shocked me by — very unlike him — trying to go all Freudian on me and make The One Guy about Daddy, but I knew that wasn’t it. So then I tried to make it about wanting a big brother who was a much better big brother, or something like that. But that wasn’t it either.

Apparently it was just a goofy childhood fantasy I never got over. Silly me.

And then, during a time of worship at a recent conference, it suddenly hit me: Jesus is The One Guy! He’s the one I have been searching and longing for all this time, the Intimate Friend my heart has been seeking…

Really — duh! — it’s quite obvious that my idea of The One Guy was something no human male could fulfill, let alone would actually want. I mean, what would be in it for him? No human is capable of that sort of unconditional, unselfish love, let alone the uncanny mind-reading skills required for him to see “the real me”.

This is a far cry from “Jesus is my boyfriend”. It’s more like, Jesus is the fulfillment of my deepest desires. He is Love Personified. He’s the hero and rescuer I’ve wanted to write stories about. He’s the Best Friend I’ve yearned for. He’s true intimacy and unconditional love and deep acceptance and everything else my heart has ever longed for.

He’s The One Guy.