Our first date didn’t end with the kiss. It ended with April rescuing me! After saying goodbye I jumped into my car and started to drive off only to have my gas run out two feet outside my parking spot. It was past 10 pm and all the gas stations near the theater were closed. My cell phone had only five percent of its battery left so April picking up on the first call was a miracle. Without a moment of hesitation she turned around, picked me up, and drove me home so I could grab up a gas can. Patiently she took me back to my car, helped make sure it would start, and finally followed me home, making sure I was safe.
Looking back I am shocked it took my heart so long to open up. But, can you blame me, I had been show-goggled (a term here meaning the attraction lessens or increases based on the types of tv shows you watch like when a girl broke up with me because I didn’t like the show Friends), so I was being extra cautious. But April is kind and gracious and is definitely not petty. Never has she held it against me that I ran my car out of gas on our first day nor that I have different opines on television or that I know that Harry Potter does not belong with Ron’s main squeeze Hermione Granger.
If you haven’t read any Harry Potter, all you need to know is that JK Rowling was able to create a world with super lovable and relatable characters.
As long as I can remember, I have always connected with the side kicks or the best friends in stories and TV shows; even though I would rather be the hero. I see parts of Harry Potter in myself, but when forced to choose a character I completely relate with, it would have to be the best friend, Ron.
Ron Weasley holds a special place in my heart because he too is the sidekick and is constantly given the hand-me-downs.
Maybe that is why my first major fight with April was over fictional charactersI was so adamant that Ron land Hermione as she is no hand-me-down.
I am firmly on team Harry and Ginny as well as team Ron and Hermione. April wants Harry Potter and Hermione Granger to end up together because she sees them as the two leads and thus believes they are destined to be together.
She told me that she thought Ron and Hermione argued to much and that if Hermione wasn’t to be with Harry she should at least be with Malfoy, a horrible bully. At hearing this, I was furious.
We are still arguing over this, but along the way, I realized, much like Ron does in the sixth and seventh books, that it is not important to always be right, but it is better to love and be loved. And my love is best when it is given away freely in sacrifice of my own pride.
This argument over the love lives of two fiction characters will not end us.
April was patient and courageous in her own way. She read all of my favorite books and even went hiking with me! She didn’t even run in fear when we heard a mountain lion as we hiked through the Colorado Hogback. Yet her real act of courage came in July after months of dating when she said, “I love you!”
I freaked out. I was convinced that I didn’t deserve something so wonderful, yet I couldn’t bench her (a term that means place the person you are dating to the side so you can check out other options), neither could I friend-zone her.
God kept telling me to be patient but something wasn’t right. I wasn’t being the leader I God had called me to be, nor was I communicating my feelings. Our relationship was more like Ron and Hermione’s than Harry and Ginny’s, meaning it was full of tension. I broke up with her believing tension meant I should move on, but that if she truly was Hermione and I was Ron, then our friendship would last, but it would be nothing more.
I broke up with her after a night out at the movies and through our breakup I learned that I loved April not because she was the same as me, but because she stood up for herself and was confident in her own beautiful unique self.
The night of our break up, as soon as I started communicating my feelings April listened and communicated her own desires. She told me that she did not want to only be my friend and reaffirmed that she loved me. When she told me this, I realized that she was my best friend and that I wanted to work through the rough patches with her.
I realized that when you really love someone, you work through the tension. After four days of crying, I asked her to meet me for coffee and said, “You’re my best friend and I love you.”
April is a die hard Harry Potter fan, but not like I am. She has her own opinions and that is what makes her so lovable. I am learning to love someone who is unlike me. April is not someone I am just with because she is like me and makes me feel better about myself, but she has become the someone I am with because she makes me a better person. She does this because she teaches me to love someone other than myself and unlike me.
In that moment when I told April I loved her too, April showed me true grace.
We’ve been at each others’ sides ever since! But this time with a purpose. Marriage!
Adventure With Brendan 
sounds like a good plan!,… your generation has so much more (external stuff) to “compare yourselves to,” in the eternal search to find the true (and probably simple) answer(s) to “who am I?”,… or perhaps in this case, “who are we?”,… you have been inundated with so much fiction and idealized/unreal stuff, that finding a comfortable position “in reality” is more difficult than in “older and more basic/simple times”,… glad your heart is opening, and you don’t have to fulfill someone else’s fictionalized idea(l)s, to be yourself,… April sounds “wise”,… (-:
April is wise for sure!