Part 8: Herz Brechen

This is a continuation of my Germany Chronicles series.  Click the link above to see the first 7 parts.


And that night, I probably most definitely dreamt of him and his voice.

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November passed...

December passed...

We had ceased to talk through emails. It was better for us to "slow down" our long-distance relationship and only write snail mail.

Whose brilliant idea was that? Mine.

After hearing from him on my birthday, several months passed without hearing from him. Everyday, I would frantically search the mail in hopes of finding an envelope addressed to me. Nothing. For months.

This kind of waiting is different from all the other kinds I've experienced since then. It wasn't just waiting to hear from a good friend. I wasn't frantically searching for a message that just said "Hi." Or the familiar ring of my cell phone.

My heart was on the line here. All of it - even though Matthias didn't quite know it. I never told him how I really felt. We had been more concerned about doing things in God's timing than sharing our real feelings.

So now, as I look back on that time in my life...I have to wonder if things might be different. The impatience that I experienced at that age was rampant. After several months of waiting for a letter from Germany, I had pretty much given up. I was on the edge of believing he had completely forgotten about me...the girl who made his hands shake and made him wonder what was happening to him.

In his previous letters, he apologized quite a bit about not responding as quickly as he should have and making me wait for him. At those times, I had cared less. I didn't really have to wait that long to hear from him...and it gave me more time to read the letters several times a day at school. Obsessed much? Yes, maybe I was.

I remember the night I received his next letter vividly. I had gone to swim practice that day and went home to eat dinner. After dinner, my mom went to pick up the mail. When she returned inside, I was already upstairs, preparing to work on homework.

She walks into the house, closes the door (beep beep beep went the alarm system), and yells, "ERIN!"

I stopped what I was doing, turned around slowly, and went to see what the fuss was about.

Upon seeing she successfully got my attention, she said, "You have a letter from Germany..."

[Remember to breathe, Erin!]

I ran down the stairs at lightning speed, grabbed the letter out of her hands, and ran back to my room.

Before even opening the envelope, I had tears running down my face. It had been way too long! I had basically given up hope. The whole thing might as well have been a dream.

And yet, here I was, holding the proof in my hands that it wasn't fake. It was a reality.

With my bedroom door successfully shut, I eventually opened the envelope...to read the first few words...and then to start crying my eyes out all over again.

He was sorry that he had waited so long to write...again.

It was that winter night when things started to change. I had put my whole heart on the line without telling anyone, and I had to break it along the way because nothing had lived up to my expectations. The tears shed that night? My broken heart in pieces.  His letter acted as the final blow, without him even knowing.

But life went on...

We continued to be friends that spring and correspond...as I went to a military ball and then a band banquet with other guys who might or might not have been "interested." I was boy crazy, I tell ya!

School ends, and summer begins. Beach Retreat (BR) happens. BR is exactly what it sounds like: high school teenagers going to the beach for a week all under the name of a church. Beaching. Retreating. It all happened.

It was that year at BR when I met Thomas. Nothing happened at first. And then later in the summer, something started happening. [My life is beginning to sound like a soap opera, yes?]

Matthias and his fellow German teammates arrived sometime in June.

Before I saw him again in person, my stomach had turned into a butterfly mill. When I thought about him, I still had those flutters deep down. I couldn't rid them...and didn't really want to. I was so excited to actually see him and touch him (by this I mean hug!) and spend actual time with him.

The youth group was really excited about our partnership with our German friends. Everyone wanted to be involved when they were here. This fact maybe, kind-of, annoyed me. Half of these people didn't even go last summer! That was me being selfish and wanting the Germans to be mine. But sadly, I didn't own them, even if I wanted to. Hello, can you tell I was 17?!

The afternoon they arrived into the country, their first stop was the church. That's where I was waiting for him...butterflies and all. When they stepped off the elevator, I immediately found him and made my way into his arms.

He was still the blue-eyed blonde I had left last summer. But something was different. We had a history this time.
 
A long, detailed history...