When I was a teenager, I read in a nondescript article these words, “Here is some sage advice for you youth girls: Never assume a guy is interested unless he asks you.”
I believe it was written by someone who’d gotten burned. And I took it to heart.
That was a mistake.
The philosophy protected me fairly nicely—I had a broken heart about 20 times, of the kind that generally recovered within the month. But it had a foolish and lasting underside: the naiveté that willfully ignored unmistakable cues, leaving my heart intact-if-slightly-patchy, but his deeply torn—the best boy-friendship of my teenage years gone beyond recovery.
I don’t know why I must say this now, except that some sins take ten years to catch up with you.
Here is some sage advice for you youth girls—perhaps nearly as helpful as the original if not half so sage:
Never assume!
I think most of us carry some regrets from our younger days, wondering why we acted so foolishly and cluelessly. And then we hope and pray those we snubbed or misled come to good ends despite our sins toward them. Nothing is broken forever. Our Jesus is able and willing to redeem whatever is given to Him.