First Love

It is the bottom of the ninth at an Odyssey High baseball game, and the announcer can barely keep up with the tension. Two outs, a full count, a runner on second, and the home team trailing by a single run. Connie Kendall covers her eyes in the stands while Cheryl McCormick cheers, and then Jeff Lewis, the team's star hitter, sends the ball over the fence to win the game and send Odyssey on to the county playoffs.

Connie teases Cheryl about how many games she has been attending lately, since Cheryl started dating Dan Williamson and has suddenly discovered a deep love of sports. The two girls wait outside the locker room for Dan, who has promised them a ride home. Dan has a better idea than a ride, though: Jeff is throwing a victory celebration at his house, and everyone should come. Connie's mother has gone out of town for one of her weekend management seminars, so Connie is staying under Whit's care, and she phones him for permission. Jeff himself wanders over to make the invitation irresistible, joking that the party will involve Parcheesi, lemonade, and old camp songs.

The party turns out to be nothing like that. Jeff's parents were supposed to be home and are not, nearly everyone is drinking, and Connie is ready to walk home rather than stay. Dan apologizes; he had not expected it to be so rowdy. Before the three of them can leave, Jeff leads them down a path through the woods to a small guest house his parents built and gave him for earning straight A's. It is his hideaway, he explains, a tree fort on the ground where he keeps comic books, souvenirs, and a Mac Mason secret agent decoder ring. Connie admits she watched the same show as a kid but never collected enough box tops to send away for one. Away from the noise, Jeff is easy to talk to, and he asks her out. Connie has work, and church in the morning, and church again in the evening, but she agrees to a Sunday afternoon picnic if her mother says yes.

The next day at Whit's End, Connie polishes, sweeps, and rearranges everything in sight while wearing a dress instead of her usual jeans and sneakers, which tells Whit more than she means it to. He is gentle but honest with her. He does not believe in love at first sight, he says, and when he learns that Connie does not know whether Jeff is a Christian, he tells her he has never thought it wise for a believer to date someone who is not. Connie insists it is only a picnic.

The picnic goes beautifully. Jeff says Connie is different from other girls, that with her he does not have to perform as Mr. Cool Baseball Player. She invites him to church, and he says he is not really interested, though he promises to think about it. Then he asks if he can kiss her.

Weeks pass, and Cheryl notices what is happening. Over lunch she gently points out that Connie has been skipping Bible study and missing church services she never used to miss, and that Jeff, who Dan has been inviting to Bible study for over a year, still only ever says he will think about it. Connie takes the concern as judgment and walks away hurt and angry. Back at Whit's End, she pours out her frustration, and Whit tells her the truth she has been avoiding: the problem is not the meetings she has missed but the reason she has missed them. He describes the tug of war she is already feeling in her heart, points her to 2 Corinthians 6, and warns that dating someone in hopes of bringing them to the Lord rarely turns out the way anyone hopes. He knows because he faced the same choice in college and had to end that relationship himself. Connie finally says out loud what she has been carrying: she thinks she is in love with Jeff.

She goes to see him. Jeff is delighted, because he has dug the Mac Mason decoder ring out of a junk drawer and wants her to wear it. Connie cannot take it. She tells him she likes him too much, and that she cannot keep going out with him, because the most important person in her life is Jesus and she cannot share him with someone who does not know him. Jeff offers to do anything she asks, to come to church, to say whatever she wants him to say, and Connie tells him that would not be real. Faith is something he has to accept for himself, not for her. She leaves while he calls after her.

At home, Connie telephones her mother. The conference was good, she says, and no, not much has happened, except that she and Jeff have broken up. It hurts, she admits. But it was the right thing to do. Then, quietly, she asks her mother to please come home.