“B-A! B-A! B-A! Broken Arrow Tigers!” There’s nothing like the excitement of a high school football game. The band. The team. The cheers. The beat of the drums. Even the swarms of bugs surrounding the bright lights high above the field. It’s all so invigorating and exciting. So exciting, in fact, that our students section often spent the entire game standing rather than sitting.
This particular night, we were playing a game against our biggest rival, Union High School. While Broken Arrow was well known for being excellent in many areas, were were not exactly well known for being excellent in football. Our band regularly placed at the top of band competitions. Our academic program produced an abundance of national merit finalists. Our drama department produced the best theatrical performances of any high school in the state. But our football team? We were good, for sure. But it never seemed that we were good enough. Especially when we played Union.
Unsurprisingly, we lost the game that night. But we didn’t let it get us down too much. One of the local churches would host what we called the “5th Quarter” after each home game, so the game didn’t really end when the game ended.
The 5th Quarter lasted for a few hours after the game, which always made for a late Friday night. Thankfully, my parents didn’t mind me staying out late as long as they knew where I was or who I was with. Come to think of it, I never had a strict curfew growing up, but I didn’t abuse it. Very seldom, if ever, did I provide my parents cause for concern.
Most nights when I arrived home late, one or both of my parents would be up. I enjoyed talking to them about my evenings. Other nights, I would arrive home to find them sleeping. One night, I remember waking them up to tell them about my evening and ask their opinion about something. I’m not sure how they felt about that. They always gave solid (albeit sometimes sleepy) advice. I appreciated that they were so easy to talk to most of the time.
My parents were cool like that. They’d been around teenagers for years working with the youth at church. Shepherding without repression seemed to come naturally to them. They provided me and my siblings with a solid Biblical foundation and excellent examples of godly lives well lived. Then they watched as God worked in each of our lives, leading us to make our own wise choices.
Naturally, they prayed constantly that God would nudge and prompt our hearts in His direction with each decision they allowed us to make. My mom attended Mom’s In Touch prayer groups all during our school years. She prayed for us, our schools, our peers and our teachers. My dad prayed a lot too. I remember more than one morning waking up to find my dad kneeling beside my bed praying for me before he left for work. Those memories (and prayers) stuck with me.
My parents offered love, guidance, council and lots of prayer. Then they genuinely seemed to trust me to make my own wise choices. I think knowing they had confidence in me helped me do just that. No doubt, their continual prayers for me made an impact as well.
On this particular game night, I was a tad concerned when I realized it was after midnight as I was driving Joey home from the 5th Quarter. I can’t remember why I drove instead of him, but I knew it was going to be late before I got home. Goodbyes were never easy for us. We sat in his driveway for a long time talking about everything from the game and party, to our school friends, to shadows, to even our hopes and dreams.
Then it was silent for a long while.
Joey broke the silence with “Kelly, I’ve realized something recently. I’ve realized that I love you.”
I was shocked. My whole body, from head to toe, felt his words. I can’t even describe the feeling. Tingly, maybe. We had been dating for nearly two and a half years and very much acted like we loved each other, but we had never said those three words. I like you. I like you a lot. I really really really really like you. But never “I love you.” Those words were special. For whatever reason, I didn’t expect to hear them that night.
