A snap and a hiss rip through the leaves of the undergrowth. His position is less than ideal; it’s time to move. For two days he’s given up ground and waited to be discovered again.

In seconds, streams of blue surround Bryce Lawrence and shower the tree trunks in more paint. His stinging shriek signals another victory for the Idaho boys.

Naturally, supplying the paintball gear brings with it the power to set the scene and arm your enemy as much, or as little, as you like. Lawrence insists his cousins kept the most sophisticated weapons for themselves. Their paintballs seemed to hit harder—Lawrence took a lot of hits and never won a round.

This summer’s trip to the hills near Yellowstone National Park seems to follow a long tradition of city-boy exploitation.

“My cousins are a bunch of hicks from southern Idaho, and they always get me to do some redneck things with them.”

With no hope for victory and a certainty of soreness, he still gave battle to his well-equipped cousins. The parallels between Lawrence’s summertime paintball losses and his struggles on the battlefield of single adult life are patent. With gallant disregard for his doubts about ever finding a spouse, he goes on at least one date every week.

“I can’t wait to change poopy diapers and to spend my nights and weekends building a shed to hold my kids’ bikes and other crap,” Lawrence said.  He wants to be a father, but he has to make some young woman fall in love with him first.

For the sake of understanding the battlefield, Lawrence dedicates his free time to studying the literary classics on love and human existence. He is currently working on Pride and Prejudice and recently finished the Screwtape Letters.

C.S. Lewis’s senior demon, Screwtape, brags to a protégé tempter of rampant success convincing men and women not to marry until a “storm of emotion” confirms they are in love. “Thanks to us, the idea of marrying with any other motive seems to them low and cynical.”

Yet Jane Austen observes, “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony in a moment.”  Surely, Lawrence must himself be waiting to fall in love, as it is not the lady who is slow to do so.

The paintball guns in his cousins’ hands shoot farther and faster, yet one well-placed shot by the underdog is all that victory requires. So, you see, love is not a hopeless battle if you find yourself fired upon faster than you can take aim.