Get Here If You Can…

Growing pains???  That’s putting it mildly.  I feel like my relationship is being pulled apart by a sadistic taffy machine.  I feel restless, bruised, uneasy, unhappy, and unsure of why I feel any of those things I just listed.  My emotions are so raw and intense yet without a clear, definable etiology.  Something is missing…something is off kilter.  It’s extremely subtle to the untrained eye…probably trivial to most.  But to me, it has become the proverbial elephant in the room. 

I have a good man in my life and, what I have always believed to be an awesome, fulfilling, enviable marriage.  But for the past week, I have been feeling more and more like my husband and I have, in some respects become strangers.  I know that when we started out, we spent every spare moment getting to know each other on the deepest possible level.  But after we got married, our focus shifted to learning how to coexist in the same living space and learning how to be lovers, meanwhile, our friendship has slowly been starving to death.  And perhaps we were so convinced that we knew each so well then, that we stopped doing the work.  Now we’re stuck with understanding and perceptions based on 2-3 years ago and it just doesn’t cut it anymore.  It’s so hard to hear your husband continually say to you that he understands what you’re feeling and that he knows you, but your gut is telling you that he is missing the mark completely.  And trust me, I’m scratching my head more and more lately wondering why and how I keep missing it with him.  Were we delusional back in the day?  I don’t think so.  I think we’ve just both changed so much over these past few years that our marriage has a lot of catching up to do. 

The worst part of all of this, is that it’s not truly a sudden realization.  A part of me has been coming to a slow realization about it for quite some time, but the pending move to GA has converted those pesky, infrequent musings into full-fledged concerns.  We will literally be all the other person has apart from God for the next 8 years of our lives…is that really enough?

When I was a kid, I used to think of myself as this lone soul, wandering on some planet somewhere that no else even knew existed.  I was convinced that the right man for me, not only knew about my planet, but knew where it was and how to get there.  Why do I feel like I’m still waiting to be found?  How can just a few fundamental differences in personality make two people feel worlds apart?  How can one song so perfectly capture what I’m feeling right now??? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h2UVJiIhNk

Walking the Line (Part I)

As someone who has only been truly living for God for about five years, I’m approaching that stage where I’m relying more and more on my personal relationship with God to dictate my life.  I know that probably sounds a little suspect but I think it’s just a natural consequence of maturing in Christ.  When I was a babe, everything a strong Christian had to say about an issue was golden.  Pleasing them meant pleasing God by extension, especially since I was just learning who God was for myself.  But as you mature in your walk with God, you begin to see that there is a distinct difference between God’s standard and man’s preference.  These are things that are considered biblical gray areas…areas that the bible is vague about or doesn’t mention at all…or issues that are not unto life or death but are considered controversial in the church.  Most of these are what I like to call issues pertaining to moderation.  Things that so-called ‘strict christians’ stay a mile away from and condemn as evil and so-called ‘liberal christians’ indulge in  themselves using wisdom and moderation or choose to abstain from without being morally opposed to it persay.

I’m sure you can think of tons of examples…let me just throw a few of them out there….alcohol use, clothing/fashion, dating (unsupervised dates, kissing while dating, etc), secular music, dancing, etc, etc, etc.  These are things that cause people to leave churches and/or abandon Christianity altogether if not handled delicately and with the spirit of truth.  My purpose in writing today is not to create an exhaustive list of how I feel about the most controversial church issues to date.  However, I will say that Romans 14 is perhaps the best and most comprehensive guide to understanding how to deal with differences about issues not specifically or clearly addressed by the Bible.  The pastor at the church my husband and I visited a few weeks ago stated it beautifully.  What I got out of it is that the best kind of Christian to be is one who is biblically conservative but culturally liberal.  This is a person who lives uncompromisingly by the standards that the bible explicitly lays out.  But on those issues that the Bible is ‘unclear’ or silent about, allows for tolerance and differences of opinion from one Christian to another.  As I begin to embrace this more and more, I begin to understand more than ever why Jesus said that the way of life is narrow and few will find it (Matt 7:13-14).  Staying on the straight and narrow is about more than just not sinning; it’s about being able to stand for what’s right without hurting, distancing, or repelling people from the love of God.  This is not an easy mandate that he has placed on us!

Allow me now to come to the point of all of this.  How do you do that?  How do you stand for holiness without coming across like a judgmental banshee?  How do you let someone you care about know that they are headed down the wrong path without turning them off from attending church, or worse, from seeking God?  How do we shine our light (so to speak) without blinding people?  I started thinking about this after another couple (close friends of ours) mentioned that they were seeking wisdom about this very thing.  They wanted to know how to handle a situation involving a new couple at their church who are dating and recently moved in together.  This couple recently had a housewarming and invited them to it.  The concern was that the pastor and other church leaders might be unaware (or worse, aware but overlooking it) and the effect this may have on the ministries that they are getting involved in. 

I don’t personally know this couple but I am very acquainted with this issue so I will be speaking to various rationalizations that I have heard concerning this issue.  My generation is a very smart generation.  We think and reason a lot which is great for education and career planning but terrible for spiritual development.  Most young adults my age who call themselves Christians are really what I call christianoid.  They obey the Bible when it’s convenient but then ignore/rephrase/disregard it when it’s not.  Molding the Bible to fit your life is a huge problem in and of itself, especially since the whole basis of being a Christian is allowing God to mold your life to look like Christ. 

Anyway, we like to test-drive situations first.  I mean, you get to sample everything else in life before buying…music, food, perfume, clothes, college….you name it!  Why not something as important as marriage?  It makes sense to live together in a non-binding arrangement for a while first to see if marriage will work.  It makes sense to have sex once you get serious but before you get married to make sure you’re sexually compatible first so you don’t end up stuck with that person for the rest of your life.  This kind of reasoning is what my husband refers to as wordly wisdom.  It’s logic that makes sense to us given a situation but has nothing to do with God’s standard.  It makes sense for unsaved people to think this way but it makes absolutely no sense for saved people to adopt this mindset.  Unfortunately, this happens all the time with Christians and it renders us collectively weak and ineffective.  Godly wisdom should always outweigh our own.  I know because I am being challenged with this almost daily now.

Back to the couple in question, if you’re operating under worldly wisdom (like they are) then you rationalize by saying that it was a financial decision to live together.  They are both coming from difficult family situations and they both needed to get out but couldn’t afford a place on their own so it just made sense.  ‘We prayed to God and he gave us peace concerning this,’ they say.  If that’s not bad enough, then there’s the argument that just because we are living together doesn’t mean we are having sex, assuming you are still holding to the clear biblical standard that sex before marriage is wrong.  Or you go one step further and say God understands and will forgive us for having sex because we love each other and will be getting married in the future anyway. (Again, I am not quoting them verbatim; I am mentioning some things that were said and adding it to other arguments that I’ve heard)

So let’s put it out there.  To my knowledge, there is nothing in the Bible that explicitly states that living together before marriage is wrong.  But if you’ve already crossed the line of fornicating and you are simply making it more convenient to fornicate by living together, then there’s nothing more to say.  You are no longer living by God’s principle on this issue but by your own justification.  This is called willful sinning (because you know it’s wrong but you’re doing it anyway) and the Bible forbids this.  But if you’re rightly abstaining and believing that living together will not negatively influence your ability to continue to do so then allow me to set the record straight about that right now.  Holding out until you get married is hard enough without placing yourself in a situation that will make it next to impossible.  That’s right, I said next to impossible.  If you are in love and incredibly attracted to one another, then maintaining appropriate boundaries is probably already an issue.  In fact, if you’re anything like my hubby and I were, you’ve probably drawn and redrawn the lines several times already.  Even with separate bedrooms (which is generally not the case) and separate bathrooms (again, generally not the case) there is still plenty of opportunity for you two to find each other in very compromising and tempting situations without any accountability.    No God-fearing Christian is going to tell you that this is a good idea.

Add to this the fact that you are now functioning like a married couple without actually being married.  You’re sharing bills, household decisions, expenses, pets, chores, etc.  This blurs the lines of dating so inexplicably with marriage that it creates confusion within your relationship and complacency (since the urgency/incentive to take your relationship to the next level has been removed).  Furthermore, you’re placing your brothers and sisters in Christ in a very awkward position.  You are casting doubt on the purity/holiness of your relationship and expecting them to fellowship with you in the environment of that situation.  None of the above demonstrates a heart that puts God first in all things and/or a willingness to love thy neighbor as thyself so to me, the answer is clear…living together before marriage is wrong.      

As someone who was there just a few short years ago, I can honestly say that living together before marriage would have guaranteed premarital sex for Immanuel and I.  We pushed the envelope many times in our relationship and, in a way, ‘barely made it’ to the altar.  Mark Gungor says that sex makes you stupid…I would take it a step further and say that sexual attraction makes you stupid, sex just makes the stupidity feel more worth it.  I know now that my emotional and physical attachment to him was clouding my judgment and causing me to falter but I’m proud that we had enough fear and reverence for God in us to keep holding out for as long as we did.  I’m also grateful that the standard we live by is God’s perfect standard and not man’s.  I’m so grateful that he knows the heart and the intention within so he doesn’t have to rely on outward actions to make judgment calls.  So I continue to pray for wisdom on educating teens and other young adults on this issue so that they can do better than I did. 

In my next entry I’ll address strategies for confronting this issue.

Of Heavenly Significance…

I heard a definition of sin in church yesterday that I’ve never heard before.  The pastor at the church I was visiting referred to it as the act of taking worldly/earthly things and giving them heavenly significance.  What things on earth are we elevating above heaven?  But more than this, what things are we trying to take with us to heaven after we depart?  Have you ever thought, well, if heaven doesn’t have playstation then I’m out.  Yea, that’s sinful and should warrant further exploration.  My mind starts running through examples like this involving money, cars, gucci bags, etc.  Then he lays an example on us that makes my head spin.  Your spouse.  Did you just hear the breaks screeching in your ears cuz that’s exactly what happened to me yesterday when I first heard this.

Let me back up for a sec.  After spending the last few days wallowing in marital issues, it was interesting that his theme scripture would come from Luke 20:27-38, the passage referring to the Levirate marriage (see Gen 38:8 and Deut 25:5-6 for the background text on this).  To describe it briefly, its a Hebrew tradition in which the brother of the widow’s deceased husband must marry her and produce a child to bear his name.  I always thought of this as a way of making provision for the widow but what I never realized was that this tradition was steeped in the belief that the only means of living on after death was through one’s children.  This would explain why the child would be considered the deceased husband’s child rather than the new husband.  For those who recognized only the law of Moses (such as the pharisees and sadducees) there was no concept of ressurection after death and/or heaven. That’s why Jesus made the point of telling them that God is a god of the living not the dead and therefore he is (not was) the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
So, the question is posed to Jesus…who’s wife is she in the resurrection if she goes through all seven brothers childless and then dies herself?
I have never been taught formally on the subject of what will happen to your marriage after you die other than a few passing comments from my current pastor to married couples about being brothers and sisters while in the sanctuary.  This, of course, has been a source of irritation to me as I believed it to be his underhanded way of discouraging affection between married couples while in church.  As a newlywed, being told that your spouse will not be your spouse after you die is a tough enough pill to swallow.  Telling me that I need to practice this concept so that it won’t come as a suprise to me later was just plain ludicrous.  On the other hand, I actually feel somewhat cheated that this subject matter was never covered as part of my pre-marital counseling.  If I had to venture a guess, I would say its probably not taught in many pre-marital classes at all.
The thing that really blew my mind was when he referred to marriage as an earthly concern.  Wow.  Really?  Hmmmmm…well, now that I think about it, that makes perfect sense.  He explained that those who cannot accept the idea of not being married in heaven are ‘heavenizing’ something that was not meant to be eternal.  Thus the whole ’til death do us part’ in the vows.  I’ve never thought of it this way.  I’ve always thought that when I was reunited with my spouse, we would carry on just as we did on earth.  But the way this pastor explained it made  all of my objections fall away.  Now that I really think about it I don’t see what use spiritual beings would have with marriage.  It makes you wonder what those Sadducees were really getting at when they asked that question in the first place.  (I mean, leave it to a bunch of men to have a problem if a woman has 7 husbands.  I’m quite sure they wouldn’t have had a problem if it was a man who died with 7 wives.  Not my joke…the pastor’s by the way).  I mean, other than trying to trap Jesus, were they concerned about who was going to have dinner on the table every night, keep the house tidy, and give them good-loving at night?  (I’m cracking up right now cuz I just thought of the little old-school church mama next to me who was having a fit everytime the pastor said the word “sex.”  ‘He better not say it again!  Don’t you say it!’  LOL!!! So hilarious!)
Ok, maybe those examples are a bit shallow.  But Immanuel is my best friend on Earth, my closest companion, an excellent provider, an outstanding lover, and so many other things.  I truly can’t imagine spending eternity without him.  But then, if you look at all those things I just described, God is really suppposed to be all of those things to me even now but on a deeper level after I die.  Would my awesome and loving God who also happens to be jealous want to continue to share my heart forever?  I doubt it.  This is partly what Paul was alluding to when he basically said that marriage prevents a person from being fully devoted to God.  But as eternal beings we will be in constant communion and intimacy with God…marriage simply holds no purpose in heaven.  Its great but comes with its own share of drama and God has promised us no more tears or pain in heaven.  To me, that probably means there isn’t room for marital quarrels and misunderstandings. 
I totally get it now.  I’m not saying that we should just forget about marriage or give up on the one you have since you won’t be married in heaven anyway.  I honestly believe that God takes what we do here on earth very seriously and marriage is among one of our most important life ministries.  But I do think this warrants a shift in my previous perspective.  I still believe in romance and passion, but I think that placing my happiness entirely in the hands of another human being is causing me more harm than good.  In fact, this whole ‘her desire shall be for her husband’ thing was all part of the curse.  But with God I know I am always understood, always heard, always loved, and always taken care of.  My husband can’t do that for me all the time nor can I for him and thankfully this is not our responsibility forever.  So my new thing is going to be to entrust the Lord more than I entrust my husband, my family, or my closest friends with my heart.  How much better to be cared for by someone who knows my thoughts and needs than by someone who always has to figure them out?
I’m reminded of how I felt the first time I praise danced.  I got to this whole new level of worship like nothing I had ever experienced before where I literally felt like all I had to do was reach out in order to literally touch God.  That scripture that says ‘in the presence of the Lord is the fullness of joy’ had whole new meaning for me that day.  I could barely stand…could barely carry out coherent conversation…my mind was racing and I couldn’t stop trembling and found myself constantly either shedding tears or just on the edge of them.  That was the first time in my life I can truly say I was in tune with God mind, body, and soul.  But when I woke up the next day, that feeling was gone.  It was like that fullness was lifted right out of me and I felt empty and drained.  I spent almost two full days on the couch overcome with what felt like incredible grief and sadness.  All I could think about was wanting to be with God.  I literally did not want to be alive anymore…not that I was a danger to myself but I felt completely disconnected from everything around me.  It was spiritual withdrawal and its the reason I am very careful about when and how I will choose to minister in dance in the future.
I honestly think that’s what happens to us when we die and go to heaven.  That part of us that is inaccessible to man…that only God can touch…will become permanantly activated.  Everything we could possibly want will be satisfied and things that make us happy now (like sex) will be forgotten because Jesus will literally be everything that we will ever want or need.  And as much as I enjoy sex, I can truly say that the way I felt that day I danced was better than anything I’ve ever experienced before.  I know that no one but God can do that for me whether its for a moment or forever.  Maybe you already knew all of this but for me, this is an incredible revelation.  Which leads me to my next question…do we really need to prepare for heaven?  Something tells me that spending all of eternity glorifying God will be something automatic and intrinsic…I really don’t think one of the angels or an old saint will have to pull us aside and give us an orientation on how things are done up there but I could be wrong.  Doesn’t really matter.  I’m just happy in what I know does.

Some Hard Truths…

So broken and so humbled right now.  I’m seeing my deficiencies more clearly than ever before and honestly wondering how much more work its going to take before I can begin to look like someone worthy of bearing the name of Christ.  But I’m also finding that this ministry called marriage is challenging the very core of who I am.  I feel like despite my best efforts and all I’ve learned over the course of this relationship, we keep wrestling the same issues.  We have a great conversation and determine to do better and then fall right back into being divided and unsatisfied over some other issue.  I don’t want a band-aid…I want to wear a cast to reset our entire bone structure if that’s what it takes…but I do not want to keep getting emotionally clobbered just as I’m dusting myself off from the last crisis. 
Even though we seem to have a great marriage that’s built on all the right things, we keep hurting each other and running into these mind-numbing communication black holes.   We’re supposed to be better than this but, for some reason, we’re not.  I’m learning that love really isn’t always enough even though we have plenty of it…but greater than this is the purpose of God and the mandate that he has placed on our lives as a couple.  The instructions are simple, but they are painful to obey at times…to honor our vows to each other for life.  Feelings matter but they do not determine our direction or our decisions.  However, they can’t be buried or ignored in favor of keeping the peace either.  So here I am struggling to balance the need to have emotional integrity with the need to honor my spouse by submitting to him as my head. 
Your probably wondering what has me in such a light and whimsical mood (note the sarcasm here).  Believe it or not, its because God has begun to move in the life of my spouse like I’ve never seen before.  I’ve spent the last few years praying over Immanuel’s life…asking God to give him boldness and confidence in who he is…to lay out a clear path before him and open doors of opportunity for him to walk through.  I’ve pleaded with the Lord to send people into his life who can pour into him wisdom, counsel, and mentorship in every aspect and for him to have the courage to begin to operate within the full level of his potential.  What I forgot to do was consider the greatness of God…who rarely answers prayers just as they are prayed.  In my short-sightedness, I forgot to ask Him for the grace to adjust to all of these things as they begin to manifest in his life and effect our relationship.  I couldn’t foresee the possibility that any of this might make me uncomfortable or scared or desperate for the man I married.  So now I’m left feeling inadequate and unprepared for how quickly things are happening, made worse by the fact that I’m not physically living at home right now.  We’ve always had somewhat separately busy lives but now it feels more like a canyon than a small crack running through the center of it all.
I have always been perfectly aware that I married someone who is greater than I am in many respects and on the inside, I have always believed that once he realized this greatness and began to fully walk in it, that it would only serve to highlight my deficiencies.  I just thought that I had a longer window before this became a reality but God’s timing is perfect so this cannot be a mistake.   I also never truly expected him to assert it in a way that would make me feel unworthy of him (unintentionally, of course).  So now I’m presented with a choice:  retreat into his shadow  and become ‘a great man’s wife’ or become a great man’s wife who is also great in her own respect. 
Truth time?  I am happy for him but I know this is only the beginning of even more drastic changes in both of our lives and I’m not so excited anymore.  I don’t know how to be married to a TD Jakes or a Benny Hinn or even a Mark Zuckerberg but I have to be prepared for the possibility that he really could be operating on that level some day…and not when we’re 50 either.  I don’t want to be a First Lady or a Prophetess or a business woman…but is that what it will eventually take for us to be equally matched?  I don’t want to be viewed as some iconic spiritual leader with people looking to me for answers because of who I happen to be married to.  I am just a woman who loves God and tries her best to give back in the smallest of significant ways.  I want to leave a thumbprint not a chalk outline of my body if you know what I mean.  And I don’t want to lose who I am trying to squeeze into some expectation or ideal of who I need to be if it just doesn’t fit.  
There are things happening in my life right now that I don’t love but I’m calling on God to teach me how to.  If I’ve learned anything from all of my frustrations and failures lately, its that I’m not nearly as flexible and centered in God as I once was.  I need to get back to that place of unshakable trust and peace. 
Meanwhile, I’m exploring some of my darker thoughts because I have this unrelenting need to be real with myself.  But I like this about me.  I actually understand how you can be in love with someone and believe that you know them better than anyone else one moment and then feel like they are a stranger you have to get to know all over again in the next.  I understand why people who aren’t christians and christians who aren’t strong in the Lord and even christians who are, can decide to end their marriage to the utter disbelief of everyone around them.  And finally, I can understand how emotions, legitimate and illegitimate can make a person want to give up on something great…especially when it begins to cost more and hurt more than what they bargained for.  But, I also remember what it was like going through life alone without a partner and the tears I cried for the husband I feared would never come.  This marriage is hard, cyclical, and volatile but its worth having and I would never willingly part with it.
So thank you Lord, for the spouse you sent me to try my soul and test my faithfulness.  We are a team but sometimes we forget that we are on the same one.  Teach us to perfect unity and oneness in every area of our marriage.  Help us to master the elusiveness of effective communication.  We will not give up on each other but we cannot hope to succeed without you.  Amen.

                                                                                                                JP

A Word or Two About Love…

I’ve been on this relationship vibe lately.  I keep analyzing mine and comparing it with other relationships good and bad in an effort to make sense of it all.  The latest subject of my analysis is a recent conversation with a good friend who just got involved in an apparently serious relationship.  This chick is excited.  More excited about it than anything else that is going on in her life right now.  I mean, it trumps the new dream job, the new place, and the recent trip to Paris.  So after listening intently (although more or less transfixed by my own disbelief) to her seemingly endless exaltations of this guy’s many merits, I managed to get a word in edgewise.  More or less I said something to the effect of, “you won’t always feel this way but if it’s really love then you two will make it.”  Her response was something along the lines of, “Oh Stacy, you know Immanuel is a wonderful man and you couldn’t be happy married to anyone else.”  I agree, but her comment felt kind of like a patient but firm brush-off.  I was simply making the point that I do not feel the way about my husband that I did when we first started dating.  In fact, my feelings (and I daresay his as well) have undergone many changes over the course of our 4 yr history.  I probably wouldn’t have wanted to hear anything quite so sobering when I was floating on my lovely cloud of magical-Immanuelness but I’d like to believe I was cautious about allowing myself to become that besotted. 

I felt like I  was playing the markedly less attractive, sarcastic side-kick in a romantic comedy…you know, the one where the beautiful leading lady can’t seem to find the right man and then ‘bam!’ he shows up right when she decides to stop looking and then everything about him just seems perfect.  So then she calls up her sensible yet cynical married girlfriend who warns her to ‘proceed with caution lest you fall into my pit of despair.’  Not my vibe at all.  I’m actually happy for her.  I’ve just never been one to fully run away with my feelings and I’m not about to do that to a good friend either.

 So after this rather surreal conversation, peppered with phrases like “I love my man!” and “He’s just so perfect for me!” I hung up the phone wanting to feel happier than I felt.  It’s kind of that uneasy feeling you get when you’re all psyched up for something to be a struggle but it turns out to be easy, something inside of you still needs to be careful, skeptical, ready for things to go south at any time.  The fact of the matter is, I don’t know this guy and I’m wondering what is so ‘special’ about him that can transform my friend so drastically in such a short amount of time.  How much of it is real and how much of it is emotional fog?

I am no stranger to emotional fog myself.  I have been guilty of it in many of my relationships, including my marriage.  It’s a wonder drug, really.  Like a powerful anxiolytic that bakes your brain into this sappy, dreamy, love-struck sponge cake unable to accurately perceive reality.  I know a certain amount of this is necessary just to get things started.  Most of us would just stay single forever if we could immediately detect all the flaws in a potential mate.  In fact, I know people like this and they are pitiful…convinced, but pitiful.  But I think it becomes dangerous if somewhere in the back of your mind you aren’t aware that the fog will eventually wear off…or at least prepare for the possibility that it will.  The fog can only hover for as long as the newness lasts…while everything is about putting your best qualities on display and graduating to new levels of intimacy step by step.  Then comes the gradual, imperceptible lifting of the fog that slowly unveils features, characteristics, and idiosyncrasies that you swear weren’t there before or that you once found so attractive but now drives you nuts.

I guess my real question is, can you really be in love with someone after knowing them for only one month?  After all, my husband said those words unexpectedly to me as we ended our first date, and I have no doubt he was sincere.  I could try to highlight differences in my relationship that justify such a bold early step, but I know that plenty of people would have cautioned me on this.  That’s probably why I kept it to myself for months before sharing it with anyone.  But I think that despite how certain Immanuel and I felt about our relationship from the very beginning, we knew we had to give it time to mature into what we believed it could be.  My stab at an answer is this…I think you can…or at least begin to construct the earliest remnants of love very early in a relationship, especially if you’re someone who knows what you want.  But I think it’s doomed to failure if you never move beyond the butterflies and fireworks.  If you never move to having disagreements and seeing each other tore up in the morning and working each other’s nerves how can you really get to know the core of this other person who you say you love?  If you don’t take the time to understand what makes them tick, what drives their passions, what quenches their soul…how can you really love that person?  If you never face a problem that can and should separate you but make the conscious decision to stay together, then how can you say ‘til death do us part’?  (Unless you’re planning to die real soon, then that’s a different story.)  Love is only partly driven by feelings; the rest is a series of lifelong decisions to keep loving that person.  That is what Steve Carrell meant in the movie Dan in Real Life when he said that love is an ability.  Falling in love is easy, but it takes tremendous skill to stay in love.

 I don’t pretend that Man and I are the perfect couple, although we get plenty of admiration.  If we look happy, it’s because we are and not because we are trying to.  Likewise, if we look unhappy, then…you know, we’re not…at least not at that particular moment.  Relationships are too challenging without the additional challenge of trying to fool everyone else into thinking that you don’t have problems.  And even the most best and saved of couples are breaking up these days so it’s clearly not about what looks good on paper.  Our marriage is hard.  He has a computer science degree that’s like a whole other language to me and I am 8 months shy of a medicine degree which is Greek to him as well.  I’m in the military and this alone has and will continue to turn our lives upside down for the next 8 years.  We spent the majority of our courtship and the first 7 months of our marriage living 7 hrs apart and since then I’ve been required to travel away from him multiple times for considerable lengths of time.  He wears several different hats as a leader in our church which is pastored by his parents, balancing commitments to many different people and ministries other than me. (Do I even need to allude to the host of potential issues for conflict there?)  And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.  We don’t even have a mortgage and kids yet.

I guess I just wish the notion of happily ever after would get flushed down the golden toilet for good after every female turns 10 years old because it’s not accurate or even possible in marriage.  It’s one thing to desire love and happiness in life, but it’s another to be completely deluded.  This belief creates false expectations and the illusion that if one doesn’t ‘feel happy’ anymore they should just call it quits and pursue their happily ever after someplace else.  I think it should be changed to ‘devoted ever after.’  If that’s too corny then create your own precisely worded yet palatable cliché.  I was just throwing something out there for you to chew on.

Someone once told me that God created marriage more to make you holy than to make you happy and that happiness is merely a natural byproduct of a healthy marriage.  My immediate reaction when I first heard this was staunch disagreement.  I mean, God made Eve because Adam was lonely and he needed her to make him happy, right?  But is that really what God meant by ‘it is not good for man to be alone’?  If you look at what really happened, she did something that challenged his role as spiritual leader in their marriage and further tested his personal knowledge of God’s instructions.  She exposed a weakness in his heart towards God as well as his lack of authority in their marriage. They both failed, and Adam even blamed her when God confronted him for answers.  This does not strike me as happily ever after.  Neither does getting cast out of a beautiful garden to fend for myself, having to sweat all day just to get a decent meal and having excruciating pain just to bring new life into this world.  Was this God’s original plan for mankind?  No…but he foresaw it.  And I think he knew that they needed each other to survive…to bring out the best and worst in each other so that He could strengthen them through their commitment to one another.  I think it’s a brilliant construct designed to push us, mold us, challenge us, and reveal our deepest of errors through the eyes of the one who loves you.  It’s a wonderful thought that perhaps God has chosen marriage as the ultimate training ground, working through our spouses as the single greatest means of influencing our character and decisions. If that isn’t worth having, then I don’t know what is.

                                                                                                                   JP

Birthday Blues

So, tomorrow is my hubby’s birthday and I will not be taking the 2.5hr drive back to NJ this weekend to celebrate with him.  Just to add some perspective here, let me explain that since our dating days, I have revered his birthday as I did Christmas when I was a child.  I normally spend months anticipating it and planning something fun or a great gift that I know he will love. Then I get to watch him enjoy his gift in that genuine and uniquely appreciative way he has about him.  Last year it was a surprise party at our apartment that I managed to plan secretly.  He still talks about how much he loved that party.  But on the day he turns 29, there will be nothing…at least from me.

Why this extreme departure from the norm?  Well, it all started with me planning this surprise trip to DC with our close friends.   He unknowingly made other plans for that weekend without discussing it with me and, in fact, had no celebratory plans in mind at all.  So I got furious and called everything off and refused to do anything for him at all.  Real mature, right? 

I can’t seem to let this thing go no matter how much I want to.  I forgive him but I kind of resent him at the same time.  It appalls me that someone can think so little of their own birthday and furthermore, deny their spouse the opportunity to dote on them.  Yes, I know that he is a product of his upbringing and is only mimicking what has been consistently demonstrated to him year after year.  I also know that he is not intentionally trying to make me crazy, but why oh why must I spell this out for him every year?  If I am perfectly honest, I will say that I have harbored this hope in the far corners of my heart these past 4 yrs, that he would somehow grow to appreciate my birthday as much as I appreciate his.  Every woman wants their man to make them feel special on their special day.  But year after year it feels like he just gives up before he even starts and then gives me something only because he doesn’t want to disappoint me.  I just don’t want to do this little dance anymore.  It’s the whole, “I want you to want” argument and it never ends well for the wounded party. 

Back to the b-day boycott.  At first it was about punishing him (which, of course always backfires resulting in him being completely un-phased and me being utterly frustrated).  But in the last week or so, I’ve decided that it’s about desensitizing my apparently unwarranted over-exuberance when it comes to the birthdays of those I love and (more importantly) allowing my husband to celebrate in the way that makes him the most happy (even if that excludes my presence).  I am being unselfish by appearing outwardly selfish.  Go figure. 

So here I am alone in Silver Spring, Maryland…frustrated, hurt, and wondering why he is the way he is but loving him anyway.  Of course, if you know me at all, you know that the birthday thing is just a manifestation of a much deeper issue.  There comes a time in every marriage where your fundamental personality differences become more glaringly obvious than when u were blinded by the haze of dating, engagement, and the early blissful months of being newlyweds.  These differences can be refreshing, inspiring, even liberating from your own way of thinking but after sometime, it can begin to drive you up the wall.

Take my husband for example.  He is essentially, a self-reformed introvert.  After spending his childhood and adolescence deathly silent and withdrawn, he has purposed to come out of his shell during the course of his young adulthood.  He is compassionate, giving, even-tempered, rational, gregarious, and people-pleasing.  He is an idealist, whose opinions and judgments are so pure that they border on self-righteous at times.  For him, finding the good in all people is an absolute must and doing for others is infinitely more important than doing for himself.  So a day that should be devoted to celebrating his existence really is just another day to him and is best spent doing what he loves most.

I am on the other end of the spectrum.  I am a reformed extrovert.  I used to be the quintessential attention-seeking hussy who needed constant validation from other people.  Graduating from college and then giving my life back to Christ really toned my personality down.  Now, I warm up to people slowly and am apt to spend much more time observing and listening than talking in an unfamiliar situation and/or a group setting.  I relish my solitude.  Where my husband is revived by interaction with people, I find it emotionally draining.  In fact, nearly all of the things I love to do most require that I do them alone…reading, writing poems/stories, exercising.  I am introspective, emotionally volatile, and a total home-body.  My personal bubble is very small, so much so that Immanuel is probably the only person in the world I can stand to be around almost all the time.  My time is extremely valuable to me and I am very particular about how and with whom I spend it.

As you can imagine, the source of many of our arguments is my perception that he often places the needs of others ahead of his family and his perception that I ‘don’t like people’ but will have to learn how to better share him.  “I love spending time with you with other people,” he says.  And I get it, I really do.  He considers his church to be his family.  But my family is my family.  He wants to bond with other couples and reach out to children and teens and fellowship with distant acquaintances.  All of that is nice, but to me it’s exhausting and time consuming.  I’m not interested in befriending everyone we know.  I don’t have enough emotional arsenal to sustain that many meaningful relationships.  I am perfectly happy with having most people in my life as acquaintances.  I am all about nourishing the important relationships we already have and leaving room to gradually incorporate (or even out-corporate) people into/out of our circle of trust.  In fact, I am even ok with not liking people and with people not liking me.  That’s perfectly healthy as far as I’m concerned. 

What I am not ok with is the possibility of my husband not accepting me and somehow hoping that this part of myself that I am content with will change.  And so, when he tells me that I am becoming his ‘lady’ (which he means as a huge compliment in recognition of my continued growth in character) I actually feel like he’s being condescending without meaning to be.  It’s almost like being told that who I am right now is not good enough but will be someday.    

Don’t get me wrong, I am gladly perfecting many aspects of my character, like patience, self-control, and kindness but I don’t believe that this will change the foundation of who I am.  I am an introvert by choice and it suits me…not a social recluse, not painfully shy, not cold and unapproachable.  When people describe me as reserved, cautious, unassuming, “quiet at first but a great person once you get to know her…” that makes me smile because it’s how I want to be thought of…a person worth getting to know.  And it’s those that take the time to get to know me, or at least allow me to take my time getting to know them who will become the closest to me.

In fact, in many ways, I don’t even fit the classic picture of an introvert.  I love entertaining in our home and have taken tentative strides towards befriending people who have shown, at best, lukewarm interest in pursuing a friendship with me.  I attend church events and other events for my husband’s more distant friends where, on many occasions, I know no one but my husband.  I am on friendly speaking terms with anyone who attends our small church with any regularity and have no issue with him spending time on his own with his friends or to go play music or to mentor someone, etc, etc, etc.  So I keep asking myself, what is it that really needs to change?  I’m not saying that I am the perfect wife, but I believe that I have adapted to his way of life as best as I can considering how vastly it differs from mine.  And I still believe that I need to be the one who says “no” and prioritizes family first just as much as he needs to be the one who says “yes” and puts others first.  This is not an easy dynamic but one that I believe we will be continuously perfecting for the duration of our marriage.  But the goal needs to be to understand each other’s essential personality differences and find ways to meet in the middle so that neither of us feels as if the other’s emotional integrity is being disregarded. 

So, I guess my gift this year is allowing my husband to be who he is and accepting that no matter how much he may puzzle me, I chose him for a reason.  And for all of this, I don’t really want him to change that much at all; just perfect what he already has to work with.  There is a time to concede and a time to stand firm in who you are as an individual.  The lesson I am still trying to learn is when to do what and why.  I suspect Romans 14 is a step in the right direction:

      ¹⁹So let us then definitely aim for and eagerly pursue what makes for harmony and for mutual upbuilding (edification and development) of one another (AMP)

 ²²Your personal convictions [on such matters]–exercise [them] as in God’s presence, keeping them to yourself [striving only to know the truth and obey His will]. Blessed (happy, ^[a]to be envied) is he who has no reason to judge himself for what he approves [who does not convict himself by what he chooses to do] (AMP)

                                                                                                                              JP

Emotional Infidelity…

I was reading a devotional this morning about the importance of guarding your marriage against infidelity.  http://www.melaniechitwood.com/2010/10/slow-boil.html#comments

It blessed me so much that I wrote a devotional/confessional of my own.  Thanks Melanie!

This time last year, I found myself involved in an emotional relationship with another man.  That’s right, me…sensible, responsible, “head-over-heels in love with my husband” me.  Even now it’s embarrassing to admit it but hindsight has revealed more to me than I was able to see while in the situation.  It was during our first year of marriage, in fact, a few months before our one year anniversary.  Here I was starting only my second medical rotation at a new hospital in a psychiatric unit and sorely in need of a friendly face.  I was clueless and knew no one which made me very uneasy.  There was this male nurse who worked there…tall, mildly attractive, incredibly kind, and comforting.  He paid attention to me when everyone else ignored me.  He made sure I knew my way around and ‘handled’ any patients who were treating me inappropriately.  I could tell he respected me as more than just ‘the annoying med student.’  We became ‘work friends’ and I found myself looking forward to having conversations with him everyday. 

He made no secret of his attraction to me.  He was somewhat apologetic about it but very matter-of-fact in his observations.  If I wanted something, he made sure I got it…whether it was a snack from the cafeteria or a certain kind of pen.  I think it was those little things he said and did that began to have an influence on my feelings gradually over time.  I remember feeling genuinely surprised when I realized that I was developing feelings for him.  Somehow driving home from work with thoughts of him seemed acceptable, but when those thoughts intruded on my home life and worse, when I was with my husband, I became racked with guilt.  Immanuel and I were not having problems at the time.  In fact, we were extremely happy with each other.  I knew what a rare and wonderful man I had married and I appreciated all the things he contributed to our relationship that made me feel loved.  But this ‘work guy,’ let’s call him Dan, had stumbled on a crack in our relationship…a microscopic area of weakness that was founded on my insecurities about my appearance.  He satisfied that need that I had to be doted on and to be told in specific ways about my wonderful attributes.  He eagerly fed my ego while I smiled and blushed and politely told him he was exaggerating.  On my last day of work, I found myself at lunch with him stumbling through a confession of my feelings.  I told myself that I was doing it for him.  Letting him off the hook for feeling the way I knew he felt about me and telling him that I was flattered but in love with my husband and unwilling to be unfaithful to him.  Unfortunately, my little confession only gave him boldness and for the rest of the day he proceeded to tell me in whispers and stolen glances how much he cared about me…how he thought about me at home…how he wanted me in ways that he knew he shouldn’t.  I felt myself panicking inside.  What had I done?  My little ‘innocent’ game had fueled this man into unbridled lust and I was no longer in control of the situation.  Thankfully there was a way of escape.  I would not be working there anymore. 

I wish I could tell you that I took this out and let this thing die down immediately, but I didn’t.  Instead, when he asked if he could call me I gave in, telling myself that a phone conversation here and there couldn’t hurt anything.  This turned into another month of flirtatious text messages, secret phone conversations, and his desperate coercions.  He kept asking me to go out to dinner with him.  But I knew this was a trap.  I knew that if we spent anymore time together physically, a line would be crossed and neither of us would be able to take it back.   I kept trying to end it but found it difficult to do so in certain terms so he would call or text again and then I would give in and answer.  Finally, one day out of the blue he sent me a message that said, ‘I know you can’t give me what I want so I’m going to leave you alone.’  This turned into our last real conversation.  He apologized for confusing me emotionally and said that he could see that I loved my husband and didn’t want to be a home-wrecker.  I thanked him and wished him well.  It was as if the windows of heaven had opened up and intervened despite how badly I had made a mess of things.  I nearly did irreparable damage to my marriage and God still made it so that my foot didn’t slip…at least not all the way.  I am ever so grateful for the revelation that God placed in the heart of that man, who wasn’t really a practicing Christian.  But I think he knew enough to recognize that I belonged to God and took my marriage covenant seriously, more seriously than he took his. 

                That’s right, he too was married…and with two children.   In fact, this Caucasian man who was ten years my senior was on his second marriage.  I’m not sure what the grounds were for divorce in his first marriage, but I’m willing to bet there was at least a small element of infidelity involved.  It’s ok, you can shake your head in disgust at me.  I still do. 

                I had to admit to myself that confessing my feelings to him, though they were completely surface and physical, had nothing to do with him.  It was about stroking my own ego and wanting to hear him confirm what I already knew to be true.  What I didn’t think about was how it would affect him emotionally.  By removing that unspoken barrier, I had given him permission to dwell on his feelings for me and hope that I would embark on an extra-marital relationship with him.  I’m ashamed of the way I behaved now and embarrassed that this part of myself that I thought I had put to death when I came back to Christ still lingered and still had an appetite. 

                The part that truly breaks my heart is that as I attempted to disclose all of this to my husband, his kind heart wanted to think the best of me.  He never blamed me or stopped trusting me.  He never once exploded or showed anger towards me or this other man.  He just listened intently as I stumbled through the whole painful ordeal.  Then he simply forgave me and told me that he needed to do better since I had apparently punished myself enough.  “I just need to make sure you feel appreciated and loved even more so that it won’t matter what some other man says.”  Could I have been so gracious if the shoe was on the other foot?  Sadly, I think the answer for now is still a resounding ‘no’ but more than this, I believe with all my heart that the shoe would never be on the other foot because my husband is the kindest, truest, most honest human being I know.  In fact, as we concluded that talk he expressed concern for this man’s salvation and the state of his marriage.  He asked me if I had prayed for him.  The answer was no, of course.  I was too busy trying to get out of the kitchen without any burns.  And so, we prayed together, first thanking God for taking steps to protect our marriage despite my mistakes and asking him to minister to this man concerning his soul and his marriage. 

                Some months later, I got a text from Dan asking how I was.  I had erased his phone number after that conversation with my husband but I knew it was him just by the tone of the text message.  This time my reaction was so different.  No pounding heart, no tingling fingers, just a strong sense of caution that made me pause and deliberate if and how I should respond.  I then picked up the phone and sent him a string of text messages that told him I was glad to hear from him and that I had been praying for him.  I apologized to him for my behavior and told him that it was inexcusable as a woman of God to lead him on the way I had.  I wished him all the best in his marriage and in all his future endeavors and told him good-bye.  Although we never verbalized it, we have not spoken to each other since and I suspect never will in that way again.  Some part of me believes that our paths will cross again someday but I neither dread it nor anticipate it.  I’m so grateful for this lesson, even though it hurt and humiliated me.  It taught me that those demons I cast out some years ago are always looking for a window of opportunity in my life to return and wreak havoc on me and those I love.  Just because I’m saved and living for the Lord, happily married, and on my way to an amazing career does not mean that I’m invulnerable.  So I will tell you what I’ve learned to tell myself ever since this incident, know yourself and your weaknesses.  This is what you need to guard yourself against always.  That is why a year later, I am revisiting this and examining it.  I need to remember what caused me to stumble.  But now I know more than ever that God loves me and wants me to succeed…so much so that even when I do stumble, He will do whatever it takes to keep me from falling. 

Thank you, Lord for saving my marriage and for preserving the love between my husband and I.  I am undeserving, but that has never mattered to you.  So I will give you my best and allow you to expose the ways in which I need you the most.  For now, I have learned this lesson and will make you proud when I am tested with this temptation again.  All my love…JP. 

Application verses:

^“Now to Him Who is able to keep you without stumbling or slipping or falling, and to present [you] unblemished (blameless and faultless) before the presence of His glory in triumphant joy and exultation [with unspeakable, ecstatic delight]” (Jude 1:24 AMP)

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the LORD, which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.” (Psalm 121:1-3 KJV)

Pages From My Life…

Oct 18 2010

My Way of Saying, “I’m Sorry”…

So there’s been a lot of positive feedback from my husband’s recent comments on www.alopecianmuse.com

I just had to publish his comments here (after all, he is my husband and he is talking about me).  However, if you’d like to read the blog entry that inspired these moving words please visit the above website and give a holler to Angela.  The name of the post is ‘This One is For You Men.’ His comments were as follows:

“I was referred to this post by my wife.

Even though I feel like I have a decent grasp on the subject from personal experience with her, it was good to hear another perspective.

When I met my wife she was not yet wearing a wig or hairpiece on the regular. At the time her hair was not very thick and some days depending on the style I could see more of her scalp than others through the style. Even still, thanks to working closely on the job I got to know her and, though I was attracted to her physically, it was “her” and not simply her appearance.

So yes, I was the guy that knew early in the game that the hair thing was not perfect and still pursued a relationship.

Over time, among other conversations we spoke about her hair and how it got to the point that it currently was and how she felt about it. Long story short, she was frustrated daily with styling it, the way it grew or didn’t and later ways to hide it. Then and still now she asks me various “what if I looked like…” questions that allude, but never directly to, her feelings about her appearance.

Don’t get me wrong. As a man, I think there is an amount pride that I wanted to feel when walking with his girlfriend, woman, wife, etc.. The natural tendecy is to think of your spouse as a extension/refelection of yourself.

With that said, although it did cross my mind that someone would, in her absence address the issue, I think I was more concerned with how it affected her mood, self-confidence, etc…

I think men and women are attracted to self-confidence. So it wasn’t directly the issue itself that bothered me; it was the low self-esteem that was connected to it.

I took a very difficult path as her then-boyfriend now husband. As a christian, I didn’t want to lie to her or myself. As her man, I didn’t want to make her feel worse about herself. Besides that, I knew that most of the compliments I gave her in all honesty she did not believe even if she believed I meant them.

We talked about her cutting it off and I suggested that she didn’t. Not because I didn’t want her to be bald, but because I felt it would have been a decision based on frustration.

She began wearing wigs or getting extensions and I almost never saw her hair again. It did help in public because she was more confident in her appearance. Of course, someone would ultimately compliment her ‘hair’ which would later turn into a conversation about it; for a while even in more intimate times she wore a wig. There were times I’d love to ‘run my fingers through her hair’; however, it wasn’t hers and it would have made her more self-concious as well as remind me that it wasn’t hers (especially by touch).

For a while she was focused on growing her hair while publicly wearing wigs with the hopes that it would ‘look decent’ enough to not need the wigs within a certain time frame. When she wasn’t happy with the results after some time, she cut it short.

For our wedding she got a more expensive wig, similar to those that celebrities used. Looking at the pictures, I really liked how that looked. More importanly, I believe she did too. She was almost terrified about being the center of attention for an entire evening; however, she was beautiful inside and out.

Now when we are home she ties her head up, which I actually like the way that looks. When we go out she puts on a wig. I’d like for her to be comfortable enough with me to allow me to see her hair as is. For now, if she ever needs to re-wrap her head with scarf or something, I respectfully don’t look.

The moral of the story….
I am continually sympathetic towards women and the unreasonable physical expectations placed on them by society and/or pop culture. This goes beyond just hair but into everything potentially physically ‘attractive’ about a woman literally from her hair folicles to her toenails.

Guys indirectly feel this too because there’s a tendency to want others to respect that you have a woman who’s physically ‘all that.’

I really feel that it shouldn’t matter nearly as much as it seems to and ultimately it’s the intangible things that caused me to marry her. There are plenty of attractive women that I never considered for marriage.

I tip my hat to your husband cause I know that was not a easy ride.

Love is an ability; it is not a feeling; not an attraction; not a intimate experience. However, we want all those things from our spouses. I know she wants me to love her for her (and for all of her) and not in spite of her. However, I want her to love her for her as well.”

All I have to say is back off ladies, he’s mine!

Anway, here’s where the apology part comes in.  As mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been a real jerk to my husband lately and I know he’s really frustrated with me right now.  But I wanted to let him (and whoever else reads this) know that I’m sorry for that. (This is me now transitioning into speaking to him directly)  I’m working so hard on deserving every word that you wrote about me.  Anyway, I’ve been working on this tribute to you and I think now would be a good time to share it.  A lot of people tell me that I absently gaze at my ring and kind of twirl it on my finger and so I thought about the subconscious implications of that and turned it into a poem.  I hope this gives you just a glimpse of what marriage to you means to me…

 

The Ring He Gave…

The ring he gave reflects the character of light

The boisterous laugher of the bright sun

The soft sigh of the shy moon

The fractured disarray of a 60 watt bulb

Lending each stone unique favor.

It’s not the light that makes it change

But the eyes that look upon it

A gaze transformed by adversity and proven love,

Tear-stained eyes that bestow meaning on

The midnight sky blue sapphires

Guarding faithfully the center diamond.

The hand that takes this ring’s shape with each passing day,

The skin beneath it carved away like

A lover’s inscription on the trunk of a tree.

The deeply set markings seem to swear that

This hand belongs to this ring.

Reinforced each time it slides so easily into its space,

Worn away with time,

So at home, like my legs entwined with yours while we sleep.

My body, so proud to wear this ring you gave.

Blissful, regal, awakened to the knowing that

I am a wife,

I am his wife

The man who gave his heart and let me wear it on my hand.

                                                ~JP~

Excuses, Excuses…

I’ve been doing a lot of soul-bearing lately and, while it feels great to get everything out that I’ve been protecting these last few years, I think the repercussions are beginning to surface.  I’m acting out, on a subconscious level of course, and feeling like a darn hypocrite because of it.  That’s the only explanation I can think of to justify my actions.  My husband pointed it out to me this morning that I’ve been completely unreasonable, demanding, and picking fights for no reason.  Of course I have.  That’s what I do.  My husband leaves this incredibly sweet, heartfelt comment on someone else’s blog revealing how devoted he is to me and I love that he did that.  But the way I express it is by flying off the handle at the most minute things and blaming him for making me crazy.  He doesn’t make me crazy.  I just am.  I spent this past weekend holed up in my apartment studying and surfing the net.  What happened to all the great advice I’ve been giving people about maintaining balance and enjoying life?  I’ve been thinking more and more about shaving my head also because, honestly, I can’t stand the way it looks with all the diffuse patches of baldness and my scalp just seems to breathe better with less hair on it.  But there are so many mental hurdles to that which I will defer to another post since that isn’t really the subject of this one. 

I find myself wishing that I knew how to receive and show love better instead of acting like a spoiled child.  Honestly, as much as I’ve grown in some ways, I’m still a hot mess in others.  Certain fundamental things about me stubbornly refuse to change and I wonder what will make the difference.  The fact of the matter is, my husband deserves better than the way I treat him.  A lot of people in my life deserve better than what I give and yet they stand by me. 

I know, in part that being a writer automatically makes me emotionally volatile.  Kind of like a psychotic genius, only without the genius part.  I am an inflated paradox.  I wear my thoughts and insecurities on my sleeve and yet I keep people at an arm’s length.  I love to talk and share my feelings but when something is truly gnawing at me, I clam up altogether.  I want to be successful and touch people’s lives with my acquired medical knowledge and my writing and yet I am petrified of attention.  Maybe I can chalk some of that up to having a complex, multi-dimensional personality but I’m honest enough with myself to admit that I just plain out don’t make sense sometimes. 

Here’s the burning question that I need to answer for myself once and for all.  Why do I always expect people to hurt me?  No matter how much love they show me, there’s always this hidden part of me that wants to protect myself from the possibility that they will inevitably crush me in some way.  Not out of malice, but by virtue of the value I place in our relationship.  I come from a culture that says, ‘get a Godly husband who is worthy of your love but make sure you can support yourself in case he leaves you.’  In fact, the other day my mom was spouting off some old-school Jamaican epithets to me and when she mentioned for the millionth time that ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ I kindly pointed out that this was nowhere to be found in the Bible.  I say all of this to say that despite my efforts to walk that line between strong, independent woman who can still submit to her husband and have meaningful, whole-hearted relationships with other people, I’m still missing the mark.  How can I cross that bridge from merely giving good advice, to living good advice?   

I’d like to work on trusting the Lord with my heart concerning my relationships instead of beating up on myself for not being able to trust other people completely.  I can’t expect to never get hurt by people, but I can’t walk around expecting it all the time either.  Maybe if I can just learn to bounce back more quickly from it when it does happen and not internalize it to the point where I think something has to be wrong with me, then I’ll be on my way to being a better person.  On a similar note, I’m trying desperately to adjust to this new realm of openness that I’m being pushed into.  Even now, I’m so defensive of my writing that if someone says something positive about it, I’m always looking for the underlying negativity.  Or, like today, when my husband mentioned the possibility of reading one of my poems out loud in church as a tribute to his father, I panicked.  Instead of seeing the enormous compliment he was paying me, I saw the child that I had spent hours birthing into this world being exposed to God only knows what.  I have to stop thinking of my writing as just mine.  Although it has always been a critical form of self-therapy for me, to not share it would be the equivalent of graduating from medical school and never seeing any patients.  I’ve actually kind of taken comfort in having such a small audience up until now but, once again, this is just my paradoxical nature at work.  I’ve always known that writing is one of the ways in which I’m supposed to minister to people and I’m rarely as fulfilled as when someone reads something I wrote and tells me that it’s comforted, entertained, enlightened, or uncovered some truth for them in some way.  There is no end to my frustration today.  If you’re a believer, please pray for me because I surely am in need.  If you’ve got some poignant advice, please share.  Be blessed.

                                                                                                  Still So Frustrated,

                                                                                                                                JP

The Coping Mechanism…

It’s hard to describe what it’s like being 25 years old and having had to wear a wig or a weave in your head everyday since you were 23.  I HATED hair when I had it.  A bad hair day meant a bad day in general but I would kill for one of those right now.  Hair is hair; no matter how jacked up it might be there’s always something to work with.  But the lack of hair means you’re destined for imprisonment.  It means that everything you do becomes about covering up what’s no longer there and convincing yourself that you’re still the same person in spite of what you’ve lost.  I won’t insult anyone by comparing hair loss to losing a limb or a loved one…but I can honestly say that when you’re a woman, your mind can have a hard time telling the difference.

Four years after my last entry on the subject, I find myself married, halfway through medical school with the next decade or so of my life pretty well secured.  I should be on top of the world.  I should be happy that my biggest problem is my hair.  After all, I can still do all of the same things that I used to do and I still have all of the people in my life that matter to me plus a phenomenal husband and a brand new family of in-laws, not to mention the whole rest of my life to look forward to.  But I’m not the same.  After going through two bouts of cutting my hair off so that it could grow back healthy I found that this last time around, some if it simply refused to grow at all.  I remember waiting, like some parched desert animal in the middle of a drought for those thirst-quenching droplets of reassurance to hit my skin.  But my earth remained dry.  And so, I did the only sensible thing a proud, stubborn woman of good breeding and education could do…I went into complete denial.  Judge me if you want, but no situation becomes as real as when your knee deep in it trying to figure out how you managed to land in quicksand while you were headed for the oasis.  It’s the easiest thing in the world to stand on solid ground and tell that helpless, sinking fool to stop struggling so they can float to the top.  But mark my words, you fall in with that idiot, you’ll be clamoring onto those shoulders to get yourself out first.  Fear makes you crazy.  It cancels out your ability to reason and retrieve basic knowledge so you end up acting just as crazy as every idiot you’ve ever criticized.  So be careful.

 A person will do whatever they can to cope with something that their mind continues to reject, logical or not, so long as it works.  If you’re like me, you’ll tell yourself that it’s cosmetic and to care about it too much is vain and selfish.  You’ll deny that there’s a problem, refuse to talk about with the people who care about you and are concerned, and allow it to silently cripple your life into something that you no longer recognize.  What I found out the hard way was that rooted in each hair follicle was not only my confidence in my physical appearance, but also my confidence in everything else.  With each hair shaft that refused to grow, another shred of my self-worth committed invisible suicide.  My self-image had been shattered; that woman who used to look back at me in the mirror no longer existed and I no longer knew how to be myself. 

Qualities like passion, joy, boldness, and audacity became things that used to define me. I slowly began to morph into this timid, self-conscious, whimpering, poor-excuse for myself.  I forgot how to have normal conversations with people because I expended all of my energy subconsciously worrying about what they might be thinking about my hair.  I stopped speaking my mind and vocalizing my opinions because I stopped wanting to be noticed.  I stopped having fun and enjoying life.  In fact, I stopped doing anything that required me to let go of how hurt and sad and scared I was.  I was carrying around a ghost, and when you do that, you begin to live like one.

That’s probably the thing I regret most, allowing my life to become about avoidance and invisibility.  Solitude was my greatest solace and so I was naturally seeking it all the time.  Being alone meant not having to pretend that I wasn’t painfully aware of some perpetual scalp discomfort.  There was and still is no perfect solution.  I don’t have enough hair in certain places for braids.  When I grew in enough hair to weave, I was ecstatic but discovered a whole new issue…the desperate itch that amounts to me nearly ripping it off in moments of sheer desperation to reach that unreachable spot.  As far as wigs go, it’s difficult to explain my long and complicated relationship with the many I’ve had.  It’s somewhat of a mixture between gratitude at having a reliable fallback option that can instantaneously transform me into a ‘normal’ looking person and feeling some level of discomfort every second that this foreign body is abiding on my head.  In retrospect, I will admit that I’m now beginning to think the discomfort issue is more psychological than anything else.  I cringe just saying the word.  Wig. Ugh.  Wigs are for grandmothers and cancer patients, not healthy women in their early 20s.  I’m feeling like I’m wearing a glorified hat with hair attached to it and I’m subconsciously on my guard every second I’m wearing it and before long the familiar sensation of pressure against my temples, occipital headaches, and neck pain becomes very real.  But all of that magically goes away when I can walk through my front door, peel that wig off my head, and just be comfortable. 

There are things I won’t do simply because I don’t feel like putting on my hair for it.  It’s incredibly heavy because when I’m wearing it, I’m also wearing a whole different mindset and behavior that feels completely inauthentic to me.  I am a walking closet of coping mechanisms.  So why even bother (you might be wondering)?  Well, that’s a whole other blog entry which I will address some other time.  But in short, walking around with the truth out there hardly seems less desirable.  I don’t want to deal with pity (genuine or fake), ridicule, dazed horror, attempts to be overly sensitive, patronizing kindness, or people being unable to look me in the eye because they are too distracted by the horse-shoe shaped bald spot on my head.  I’ve dealt with all of those to some extent at one point or another and I’m simply not well-adjusted enough of a human being to withstand that level of mortification daily.  So my MO has been, put on the disguise and blend in.  It’s just easier not to be seen.  If no one sees you, then they don’t ask you questions.

 We all have coping mechanisms but I don’t consider anything I described above to be healthy despite the fact that its kept me functioning all of this time.  This is me admitting that I’ve had a problem that is far more than physical.  My mentality…my outlook…my entire self-worth has clearly been based on the wrong things all of this time.  Now its my responsibility to actively reform it.  Hopefully, this site will in part be a personal chronicle (and a physical record of accountability) of the progress I will continue to make…

Look…its my future offspring, lol!