We are a people with high expectations

So.

I was going to write a post about how friendships are seasonal, but Sara wrote something similar and deeply challenging, and I think you should read that instead.

Her thoughts on Expectations, here.

Then read her story because it will make you think twice, and probably even thrice, about complaining.

Emotional Porn

I read some really great articles today that have me wanting to expand on some of yesterday's comments, where I basically said that I find myself (and some of my friends) believing that a man will complete me. I didn't really get into the "why" of this concept, but here's an interesting theory:

Emotional Porn.

Uh huh, you heard me. Emily Timbol posits here that people--particularly women-- turn romantic comedy films into a source of emotional fulfillment, rather than turning to God for fulfillment.

Similarly, Cole NeSmith asks here: Is there really much of a difference in the hyperbolized sexual imagery of typical pornography and the hyperbolized momentary emotional high felt in a romance film or romantic comedy that sends us looking for “love” that doesn’t exist?

I am guilty of these things. We live in a world where healthy, godly, biblical relationships are a rare thing to behold. I'd guess that many of us did not grow up in families that we perceive as exactly what we want for our own futures. But we have images of what we want-- am I right? We have pictures in our minds of the kind of love we want to find and the kind of family we will create within that love. Are these fantasies based on biblical marriages that we witness or on our culture's interpretation of happily ever after?

I don't believe in soul mates, but I do believe in the kind of love that is challenging, the kind of love that asks you questions, that forces you to put someone else first, that has you giving more than you're taking. I believe in love when you don't feel like it. I believe in love that chooses.

There is hope for great love, adventurous love, captivating love. But I don't think it will play out like the movies, and in fact, I kind of hope it doesn't.

Suspension

About a month ago, I started a new job and last weekend I finally moved into my new place in this new town, and I'm spending most of my free time unpacking boxes and moving the sofa around to various locations. I like this change, I like my new place and I absolutely adore its view. My job is going well-- I feel challenged, encouraged and stretched into professional growth.

The mental transition, however, is not going so well. And this is precisely how I roll, which is not to say that I like it. Historically, I have enjoyed moving into new stages of life. I like settling in, decorating, discovering new places. I appear to handle it all so smoothly. I moved 2,000 miles across the country after college and acted all firm in those decisions, but in reality, there was a lot of turmoil involved.

Here's how this is playing out today: I'm in a new city, with a new job, with no friends in the area to speak of (yet) and suddenly I'm wondering what the hell I'm supposed to be doing with my life. I'm not even finished unpacking and I wonder what my next move will be. Not because I want to move, but because I do not yet feel the comfort of being settled. I spend a lot of breath telling my fellow single girlfriends that having a man, a husband, will not complete us. They will just be men and we'll have to spend a lot of energy and give a lot of love to make it work.

But, whenever I feel this odd suspension during major transitions--this aimless sense of wandering, I am extremely tempted to believe that once I'm married and we start having children, start settling into a particular life, that I will never feel this way again.

But that can't be true. Change and transition will always happen. Even, and probably especially, within marital and familial relationships. So feeling suspended will continue to happen to me in some form or another, no matter what human connections are built in the future of my life.

Is there a way to rid myself of this feeling? I believe the only way is to let myself feel it and then to move forward. For the moving forward part, I've made a list (loooove a good list) of practical things to do for myself, and another list of practical things to do within my community. Sometimes catapulting myself into projects is the best way to think through things.

Do you ever feel this suspension? How do you move beyond it?

Moving

I'll be moving in 6 days. It's for work; I have a new job, and I love it. These past weeks have involved a lot of driving though, and I'll be very glad for that part of the transition to be over. My mind feels as though it has no place to land. There is no settling point for my thoughts and the blank pages I'm used to filling in the early morning hours have remained sadly vacant. Conversely, my mind is full-- the pages of my thoughts are bursting with information-- considering, turning, changing, asking.

The new job has meaning-- eternal meaning-- so it's very different than my job before. And the new job is in a different town, a place I lived once for short while, so that everything will still feel new and hopefully like an adventure. All this different means things are changing, it means new beginnings, but it also means I'm thinking about some things, some people, who I've not been able to let go of. I've been realizing, slowly, that hard work might be necessary for me now. I mean the hard work of asking myself why? Why do you hold onto this?

In his recently re-released book, Father Fiction, Don Miller puts it this way: "I don't actually like thinking about this stuff, but I have a sense wounds don't heal until you feel them."

So I'm wondering what these feelings are that I have tucked neatly away these past years, the way I am packing my dishes and wine glasses, carefully wrapping them tightly, slipping them into the dark and safe corners of boxes and forgetting exactly where they are. I'll figure it out later, I tell myself. I'll figure it out when it becomes absolutely necessary, but only then.

But what healing is waiting for me if I do the work of broaching the questions? It is so easy to avoid hard things. It is so easy to avoid pain, to avoid grief. It's so easy to put off difficult conversations, even if they have the potential to change everything. And is it better?

I fear that I lack the courage and the self-discipline to go searching into those shadowed spaces.

To Be Loved

There's a woman I met in high school. She's about my age and her family is rather famous. You wouldn't know her, but if you heard her family's name, you'd know exactly who I was talking about. I remember the first time I met her; we had some mutual friends and we were all out to dinner. I felt annoyed by her assurance, ticked off by her assumption that her opinions were so relevant.

Looking back, it's clear that my insecure, young, unsure self was jealous. This girl may have grown up in an important family, but more to the point, she grew up with a concrete understanding that she was loved, that she mattered and that her opinions were relevant. And she lived and operated solely out of that love.

I don't mean to say that I didn't know I was loved-- I was, I am, and well. What I mean is, rather than living consistently out of that love, I have lived out of the need to impress, to be better than you, to have it altogether, to put on a front that is not authentic to what's going on inside.

If it's true that "in him we live and move and have our being" and yet I am still disposed towards these narcissistic shortcomings, how do I change? How do we begin to live out of the love of the Father? How do we begin to understand what that love really is?

*To Be Loved is a reference to the oh-so-fabulous Thad Cockrell. Have a listen.

But what the hell do I know?

I heard someplace that the idea of soul mates started with the Greek philosopher Aristophanes. The tale goes that originally, human beings existed with four legs, four arms, and two heads. Once upon a time, humans made the Greek god Zeus very angry and he split the one into two-- thus we have our present form. And thus we spend our lives searching for the other half who will complete us. It's like a romantic little dream and it's a total crock.

I love the way Matt Chandler debunks this idea (for audio, go here, and scroll to 10.25.09). He says that if one man way back when chose the wrong mate, mistaking her for his soul mate, then the next guy would have to end up with the wrong woman and so on, until we're all screwed because one guy picked wrong. So the idea that Aristophones put forth-- and that modern culture buys into and propagates-- is completely absurd. There cannot be one perfect person for each of us. No, it's not romantic to say that, but it is a relief, really. Rather than worrying about finding the one person who will complete us forever, we just have to make a choice.

Yes, choice. We choose one person to walk life with forever. We choose one person to help us seek sanctification. We choose one person to try to love unconditionally, even though we know we will fail. Essentially, we are choosing to fail.

Why?

Because we are made for relationship. We are meant to share life. I don't mean that marriages are guaranteed to fail. What I'm saying is, as human beings we are selfish to our core. When we choose to love an individual for better or for worse, we are saying that we desire to be sanctified, to be made holier, to try to put another's needs and desires above our own. What an amazing responsibility we are choosing then. What a beautiful picture of Christ's love for us.

At the foundation of the earth, God knew we would fail to live in right relationship with him, and yet he chose to create us, to breathe life into Adam's dry bones and to fashion Eve from his side. He chose us, knowing we would fail him.

How humbling it must be for a man to request to spend his life trying to love you unconditionally, with the full knowledge that you will fail him, he will fail you, and the most you can say is I'm committed to being sanctified by our God through a life spent with you.

How much more humbling then, must it be to know that the Creator of this universe, the God of perfect plans, the mind which fashioned all others-- that Being chooses me, chooses you, knowing full well that we will fail him, but also, knowing he will never fail us.

It seems like a lot of people have been writing lately about this whole idea of us as humans expecting other humans to complete us, to be our soul mates, as Aristophanes theorized. And I guess I am relieved that we're all kind of on the same page here-- we're all thinking that being complete can't happen here in this broken world and feeling whole can't come from another person.

I don't know if my thoughts are coherent to you, but I want you to think these things through, especially, especially if you are young and about to be married. Or if you're old and about to be married. Or if you're already married for that matter. Or if, like me, you want to be married someday (even when someday seems very far away). Think about what happens when we expect a person to complete us who was not designed to complete us. We are making demands of people that they will always be unable to fulfill, and I think that leads to bitterness.

I don't want bitterness and I don't want a relationship that is grounded in unfair expectations. It never works.

What do you think? Have you considered these things? Do you disagree? Tell me why. I want to know, I want to explore this, to grasp it and turn it over in my head.

The way eyes see

For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
Isaiah 55.8

I have a friend named Kate* whose eyes see the world differently than mine. It is baffling and beautiful, the way her eyes see. Kate's husband thinks our faith is like a fairy tale, and he works in advertising.

When I started to look for a new job, I used a lot of words to say that I craved meaning in my work. But then, I applied to work for an ad agency. Kate told me not to do it and she sent me links to websites for companies who go to third world countries and change the futures of the people there. But I was more interested in changing the future of my bank account, so I let myself get excited by the time I finished my 2nd round of interviews with the ad agency, and I filed the links away and didn't look at them again for awhile.

But when the earthquake in Haiti happened, I remembered about wanting the meaning, about how I want my life to tell a better story and about how Don Miller might be my soul mate*. I still thought I was getting the agency job and I was still excited, but I thought I might give some money to people who were in Haiti, so I perused some websites, eventually landing on Samaritan's Purse. I saw they were doing some great work in Haiti, and then I noticed "Employment Listings." There were jobs all over the world, but there was one up in the mountains of North Carolina that was listed as "Writer."

So, I applied. And then I kind of forgot. After all, I was going to work in advertising as soon as they called me back. About a month later, after another round of agency interviews but still no word, I got a phone call from some pretty excited people who wanted me to drive up those mountains to see if maybe I'd like to work with them at Samaritan's Purse. I agreed to come up the following week.

Two hours later, an email popped up on my Blackberry informing me that I had not gotten the ad agency job.

*I don't actually believe in soul mates, but we can talk about that later.

*I changed her name-- you know, just in case.