January 9, 2006

January 9
How do I give you, the reader, a quick overview of who I am and what I've gone through without making this nothing more than a big book about me?

I grew up a good kid in a conservative Christian home. I'm not sure exactly when I was saved, but I know I was young. I remember asking the Lord to come into my life any number of times. When you are little you don't understand grace theology and the concept of a done deal...but God understands.

I was a shy, intense, terribly insecure, overweight little girl who had only a few friends and got bullied and teased a lot. I never dated in high school because nobody asked me, but I was an extreme closet romantic. I cried at movies and read romance novels by the dozens. A wildly romantic, passionate relationship became my dream...my goal in life at that time.
In college I went through a "wild child" phase and drank a good deal and smoked a lot of pot. It seemed that "being good" had never gotten me what I was longing for so I perhaps hoped to fare better by cutting loose. Alcohol counteracted the worst of my shyness, allowing me to fit in well with a close-knit group of friends. I somehow managed to keep my weight down during most of this phase and finally dated a bit.

It was during this time that I met my future husband, B. We were the two shy, intellectual types in a group of extroverted partiers and if it hadn't been for heady bouts of shared inebriation I doubt we'd ever have dared to even strike up a conversation together, much less slide into a relationship.
In B I had found someone perhaps even more reserved and insecure in his own way than I myself. We formed a wonderful connection in many ways but from the start it was an oddly difficult relationship. It was an awkward dance with no understandable rhythm, no leader, no goal or momentum. At first we were friends who sometimes drifted into romance. B always kept coming back like an old habit, but never escalated anything to a new level. A pattern developed that after a long time went by I would finally get restless with the status quo and push for more. He would initially resist a little and then give in. For a very long while we remained the close friends who sometimes got romantic. Eventually I hinted that we should actually date. We dated for a long while and eventually I told him that I would like to go steady when it became obvious to me that he was never going to come up with the idea on his own. Unfortunately his marriage proposal came the day after a huge scene in which I informed him that he was going to have to make up his mind if he wanted to be with me or not because I would soon leave the state and move back to California to live with my parents and find work if I had no better alternative. Even though he proposed, with flowers, the next day; I felt much less than swept off my feet. This feeling persisted.

Although we did love each other and we had many very happy times together I have to admit that I never felt very secure in his love for me. Drowning in my own deep pit of insecurity, I often took his tentative approach very personally and felt that his feelings for me were never as strong as mine for him. I now see that his behavior had much to do with his constant uncontrolled anxiety which eclipsed everything else in his life and created in him a terrible fear of any sort of change. The roots of our later problems started right here. He was always in too much of a struggle with his own guilt, worries and fears to give me the kind of focused attention and affection that I craved. I often felt disregarded and abandoned by him and I'm sure he felt my neediness as an added pressure when he already had trouble enough coping with ordinary life.
There is no point in laying blame or itemizing all of the wounds he and I inflicted on each other over time. There were at least as many instances when we laughed together or comforted and consoled each other as there were sad battles that we both lost. In light of all that eventually happened it is easy to lose sight of all the good times. Still we each had our own unique strain of out-of-control human brokenness to contend with, and our individual illnesses seemed to be at war with each other throughout our entire relationship; a war which, despite an abiding love and friendship, escalated until the very end.

A crucial aspect of my ability to forgive and, more to the point, accept forgiveness after the suicide was realizing that my husband and I had both been struggling and suffering; we were both sick and we had both made the fatal mistake of trying to wring our answers out of each other. When we inevitably failed each other on a grand scale, we each began grasping frantically in all directions for something to hold onto. Even though we were both saved, we never surrendered the whole mess to the Lord. B had allowed fear and guilt to get in the way and I, in turn, had allowed a deep bitterness and disillusionment to come between myself and the true Hope.

Only when two people each find unconditional love and acceptance, completeness, wholeness and peace in the infinite wellspring of Christ will they have anything of lasting value to offer to each other. True, some couples are just more naturally compatible than others. Not every couple suffers from a terminal case of diametrically opposed dueling illnesses. Still, the reason that so many romances turn into disenchantment and so many love stories turn into war stories is that we are all broken, incomplete and needy. Unless and until we get all of our deep essential needs met on a day to day, moment by moment basis by the only One who has what it takes to meet them, we are always going to function as little more than needy infants whose natural tendencies are to try to suck the very life out of each other in the name of "love" and then beat each other up when it isn't satisfying.

This "life-sucking" instinct is actually appropriate when it isn't misdirected toward each other. In Jesus' word picture of the vine and the branches we clearly see that we are empty conduits created for HIS life to constantly flow through. He is an infinite spring; a never-failing Source of Life and love. Whenever we turn to human relationships for this Life our own need remains boundless although our resources from which to give are extremely limited. We quickly exhaust each other's resources and are left empty, frustrated and eventually angry because we were led to hope for so much more.

It has been said that in human relationships two wholes make a couple but two halves only make a bigger half. I am not at all suggesting that we abandon love, romance, human relationships and friendships because they "don't work". When we are loved and accepted unconditionally by the only One who can love us that way; when we are made whole by the only One who can make us whole; when we have His Life flowing through our veins, then we are finally equipped to love each other from the vast, unfailing reservoir of His resources. But He, not our husbands, wives, friends or children, must be our fountainhead of love and life. He must be our very center.

To find our wholeness in Him we need to give up some of our fondest but most destructive myths and fantasies. For example the myth common, but not exclusive, to females that human love and romance are the key to happiness and the very meaning of life. Equally false is the fantasy common, but not exclusive to males that we can reach a place of peace and security by controlling, managing and fixing everything ourselves. It is difficult and frightening for us to give up these beliefs because typically they have functioned as our greatest sources of hope. We may travel through our lives unhappy and unfulfilled, but at least we have these glittering illusions to chase after. If we could only find the right romantic partner, then finally all of our broken pieces would fall into place. Or, if we can only find the right job and make enough money then finally we will feel secure and at peace. Daily we need to consciously let go of these illusions with a deep trust that He who is our true Hope will provide everything that we need for love, wholeness, peace, security and joy.