My heart began to race and my breath caught in my throat. I could feel the heat rising to my face, yet all I could do was stare into the most intense pair of blue-grey eyes I had ever seen. Every glance sent my heart beating faster and faster.
My married friend leaned over and patted my leg, whispering, “I know, I know.”
The scene then flipped to a view of the female lead and I could feel myself begin to relax. My breathing returned to normal, my face resumed its regular temperature, and my heart steadied. I sighed. I recall looking at my friend and saying, “They just don’t make them like that anymore.”
I have an addiction. Some may call it a problem, but I am not ready to admit that. I love BBC period movies. I can sit for hours (and believe me, I do, as I proved by my four hour marathon last night), and watch the characters from Austen, Bronte, Dickens, and Gaskell come to life on the screen before me. Perhaps more appropriately, I can sit for hours and watch the heroes of these novels come to life. Who would have thought that Rochester calling Jane Eyre a witch could be so romantic? Or Knightley’s nervous gestures as he proposed to Emma so enduring? As last night proved to me, even intense stares from Thornton in North and South send me diving head-first into the sea of raging hormones I thought I had long ago passed.
The sad part is that I cannot remember the last time a real man (it takes a fair bit for me to admit that these heroes are fictional) stirred up a similar response in me. It’s not that I expect John Thornton to walk into my church on a Sunday morning and whisk me off my feet. I’m not even expecting men to fit the bill of a Rochester or Knightley. I am aware of a line drawn between fiction and nonfiction. But what does it mean that a Christian woman cannot seem to find a Christian man who can stir even the slightest of emotions up within her? Will single, Christian women be forced to turn to BBC for the rest of their lives?
Such is the life of a Christian single.
