Mushy Stuff

I promised I’d do this, so here it is.  I was reading another diary the other day, when I realized that I needed to respond to something that’s been happening in my life that needs to be conveyed to all ya’ll out there.  graceandlove was attempting to wrestle with some realizations about her life and what God has been teaching her.  Some of what she wrote resonated very strongly with me, and so I thought I’d address it a bit here.

For those of you who are longtime readers of my diary, you’ll know that to say that I’m pessimistic about relationships is an understatement.  I was accused many times in notes left on my entries about being anti-woman and anti-relationship.  In this diary’s history, I’ve accused women of being:

1. Illogical
2. Cruel
3. Incomprehensible
4. Reprehensible
5. Stupid

and on, and on, and on.

I believed that I had proof of the allegations I’d made and that justified to me in my own mind.  In truth, I was mistreated by some females in my early relationship days.  I was used, abused, and taken for granted.  Was it as bad as I made it?  Perhaps not.  I’m not really sure.  What I know is that after a mistake I made in some relationships, I gave up dating and relationships all together, with a few notable exceptions.

But that didn’t stop me from wanting someone.  I recall many nights when I would long for someone, even though the way I lived my life made that impossible.  I yelled at God for punishing me, even though all the punishment was really the result of my policies for myself, and not something God had done at all.  There was one night, early on in my five years of self-imposed singleness, that I ached for someone so badly that I wrote a love letter to no-one in particular.  That kind of stuff happened a lot in my mind, even in the cases where I never wrote it down or let anyone know it was happening.  Looking back through my diary, it seems clear to me now that the criticizing of women I did was a challenge, begging someone to prove me wrong.  I sought out women who I knew would prove me right, desperate to justify myself in my fear and so forth.  And the problems increased as I went along, as my pessimism went beyond an exercise in humor and safety, and infiltrated the deep places of my soul.

I just stopped loving people.  No one got to touch me or get any closer to me than arms distance.  The real me, the me that loved people for their diversity and ability and giftedness from God, vanished, buried deep inside my soul.  As time went on, I became a caricature of myself, hiding the things that were most true about me as a means of protection from pain.  And the walls were built high and deep, so that no one would ever get through.  And I stood on the ramparts of my ideology of self-protection and screamed from the parapet, challenging all comers to attempt to storm my fortress of stone and pain.   The love I managed to show was always a part of me that was separated off from the rest of me, so that no one would be able to use my caring for them against me. 

But God was not amused. In time, He set to destroying the walls I worked so hard to build, and I eventually started to help.  If you know the walls are coming down, sometimes it’s better to help with the work yourself so that you can control the aftermath a bit.  (Yes, I am a control freak.)  I was very careful and quiet about removing the walls, however, so that in the end, no one knew they were down.  I was exposed, but not endangered, because people had run into the walls so many times that they just assumed they were still there.  It was really kind of beautiful, in a sense.  But I was uncomfortable all the time.  If anyone who didn’t know me walked up, they wouldn’t know not to touch me.  I survived on that precarious balance, pushing people away before they could get to the now non-existent walls, for a long time.  And it was tiring.

But then God brought along a person who I desperately wanted to know. As I stood behind my non-existent walls, I recognized how little I wanted to push her away from me.  Honestly, all I wanted was to have her in my life.  I prayed that God would make it impossible, that He would take her and the temptation to love again away.  I feared her.  And I tried everything I could think of to push her away.  I told her every sordid story, every weakness in my character, everything I fear about my coming life in ministry.  And somehow, she just kept coming.  The closer she got, the more I wanted to give up, but I still put on my valiant battle to keep her from knowing me.

Finally, I had to admit to myself that both myself and God had placed this person in front of me to make me a better man, to force me to be who God created me to be.  I pursued her, carefully but deliberately, and ultimately she became a part of my life.  She gives me strength and support to go out and do what I was always meant to do–love people like God loves people.  And I’m not afraid anymore.  To be honest, I love her in a way that I’ve never loved anyone.  She bypassed all my defenses, knows all kinds of stuff about me, good and bad, and yet somehow doesn’t find any of that stuff repugnant at all.  She has offered me the same love that so longed to offer someone else.  It’s quite incredible.

When I was 20, I made a list of characteristics I deemed important in a potential future relationship candidate.  Because I gave up casual dating, the list also became a sort of checklist for potential spouses.  I had never found anyone who had most of the 20-some things on my list.   Most of things were non-negotiable.  I had given up hope that there would be anyone who would even come close to fulfilling the requirements of my list.  Then I met Britt and started getting to know her.  She has all the requirements.  All of them. Quite astounding, really.

I don’t know what will happen after this, in terms of where it goes from here, though I think I might know.  But what I do know is this:  God put her in my life to teach me about love and how I need to love others.  I am thankful for her everyday, and I will be a better man as a result of having her in my life.  All those years of waiting and longing come into sharper focus now that I understand the reason why I had to go through them:  God was preparing me for something that was much better for me than I ever would have imagined, and had I not gone through those longing, difficult, wistful times, I would never have been ready for the events that have happened in the last year or so.  God was making me ready for my more preferable future.  And in that light, it’s not so bad.  The time I spend with her now makes all that preparation time worth it.

I know that sounds trite and simple and cliche, but I can tell you, it’s only cliche when it happens to someone else.  When it happens to you, it’s always unique. 

Honestly, I wouldn’t trade my time with her for anything, and I thank God for all of it–the years of pain, the years of preparation, and the blessing she is in my life now.  It might also sound kind of mushy, but that’s the part you all are just going to have to deal with–it’s a part of who I am.  I hope this has been an encouragement to some of you.  Blessings.