the one about love

I was 16 years old when I had my first kiss but I can still recall all the details - the before, the during, and the after.

He and I worked together and after weeks of on-shift flirting, he finally asked me if I wanted to go see a movie with him. I was thrilled - after years of unrequited crushes, someone was actually interested me. Added bonus: he was a couple years older than me, he was cute, and he had a car. Of course I said yes.

It was October. We went to see Doom. That's about the only thing I could tell you about that movie - we basically just made out in the back of the theatre the whole time.

That was fine with me.

The movie ended. I didn't have to be home yet so we went for a drive. We found a place to park and picked up where we left off at the theatre. It was great. I was even alright with him putting his hand on my leg...until he started moving it up my thigh. That was when I pulled back.

"Come on."

"No. I want to go home."

Looking back now, I can see how easy it would have been for things to go another way but he listened. He drove me home. We said good night, I went inside, and he went home.

After that night, he stopped coming on my break with me at work and stopped answering my calls. About a week later, he broke up with me. Not long after that, he started seeing one of our co-workers.

It sucked.

It also started a cycle for me, one of making really awful decisions related to relationships. I went from the pushy, older boy, to the boy who led me on and dropped me as soon as his ex came around, to boys who only wanted sex, to moody boys who played it hot and cold and left me feeling confused all the time.

And for a really long time, I thought all those things were normal. That they were par for the course when it came to dating and relationships. That love was supposed to be hard. It was supposed to hurt. It was supposed to require an insane amount of work for very little pay off.

I know. Some days, I wish I could go back in time and give my younger self a good smack.

I have some theories as to how I ended up with such a ridiculously warped concept of what love and relationships are supposed to look like. The biggest one stems from my relationship with my parents. My mom wasn't around when my brother and I were kids. My dad did a great job up until I was about 10 or so, then he gave up on us, too. For the longest time, I didn't think that messed up dynamic affected me. It's only been in recent years that I've started to understand just how much having your parents check out on you at a young age screws with your head.

Pair the absence of loving parents with love as its projected in media - books, movies, music - and the drama of high school romance, and I think it would have been stranger to believe love could look any other way.

(my favourite photo of us, courtesy of the lovely Lena Price @ Price Photography) 

Fast forward almost 10 years later.

So much has changed. Healing has happened. Forgiveness has happened. Peace has settled in. And I am in the very early stages of planning my wedding.

My fiancé, Jeff, and I have been together for four years as of Feb. 15. And, cheesy as it's going to sound, these four years have easily been the best I've ever had, as far as relationships go. Things haven't always been easy, of course, but these last four years have taken all the things I thought I knew about relationships and turned them around in the most challenging, but wonderful ways. I feel so blessed to call him my partner and I am so excited to see what our future holds.

This would normally be the part where I'd refer to him as my other half or say something along the lines of "he completes me" or "I've found my missing puzzle piece" or whatever. But I'm not going to go there.

It's sweet rhetoric, yes, but to say it would be a lie.

I love Jeff.

I love him in a way that is deep and real and tangible. He is my best friend and I trust him to be kind and gentle to my heart.

But as much as I love Jeff, he is not my God and I am not his.

And honestly? Thank GOD for that.

oh, that rugged cross! My salvation! 

where Your love poured out over me! 

And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power

Colossians 2:10 

I like to think I am a pretty good listener. As a result of this, I spend a fair bit of time hearing stories from friends about different elements of their relationships- the victories and celebrations, but also the struggles and the hard times.

 I'm not a relationship expert by any stretch of the imagination but, when I reflect on some of the different stories I've heard, there is a common narrative when it comes to struggle: more often than not, the problem comes down to expectations.

To be more specific: the expectation for another human being to somehow fill an empty space in our lives when fact of the matter is they simply can't do that by nature of being human.

Or, in the words of the pastor last Sunday: "Don't look for someone else to complete you. They're broken, too."

Alternative reading: "People make lousy Gods."

That said: I'm a big believer in relationships pursued for the purpose of mutual enrichment. I believe in being kind, in giving, in encouraging others as often as I can and seek to be in the company of like minded people as often as possible. I do think it's so important to surround yourself with people you can pour into and who can pour into you.

"The healthiest people give the healthiest love."

And if, at 25, I've learned anything about relationships (romantic, and otherwise), it is this: I love better when I know how loved I am in Christ. I love better when Christ is my identity, my foundation, not another person.

Loving Christ first makes it possible to release others from my expectations and love them freely - because that's what Christ did for us.

We are His portion, and He is our prize, drawn to redemption by the grace in his eyes

If grace is an ocean, we're all sinking.

So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside my chest

I don't have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way 

He loves us. 

2014.

Coincidence

according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary 

a noun, meaning

: a situation in which events happen at the same time in a way that is not planned or expected.

: the occurrence of two or more things at the same time

: the state of two or more things being the same

Coincidence

according to me, based on experiences in 2014 

neither noun nor verb, because

it does not exist.

I'd even go as far as to apply that logic to other, related concepts: happenstance, serendipity, chance, fate, fluke, luck, right place/right time...whatever name you want to use to describe the randomness we encounter living life every day.  In 2014, I learned none of these things actually exist.

It's a bold, strange statement, given the year I had. There were many high points and when the low points came, it didn't take long for them to be turned into something positive. It would be easy to mistake so many of the incredible things that happened this year for something other than what they were: intentional manifestations of a God revealing himself in every possible place.

Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me. 
Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure:
Calling a ravenous bird from the east, the man that executeth my counsel from a far country: yea, I have spoken it, I will also bring it to pass; I have purposed it, I will also do it.

Isaiah 46:9-11 

As I was praying the other night, reflecting on the year, the thing I came back to over and over again was how much God has used the last 12 months to show me just how much brokenness exists in the world. Whether it was revealed through distant circumstances (like the shooting in Ottawa or AirAsia crash) or more direct means (like the hurting and broken people I know personally or through my line of work), 2014 really brought the suffering of others - the extreme and the every day - into focus and as a direct result, shifted and changed my perspective in a lot of important ways.

Because how could it not? How can a person confront the reality of brokenness and NOT be changed as a result? And how, given that reality, can coincidence or serendipity or randomness or whatever be an acceptable reason or justification for any of it?

To me, it's not. So the natural next question: what am I going to do about it?

This is the question that has the ability to keep me awake at night, the question I dwell on in my down time. The question I confront God with all the time in prayer. It's implications make it important - it is, in essence, what forms the backbone of the kind of life one wants to live.

It's heavy nature has also made it problematic for me because I spend so much time seeking answers to questions - is this where I'm supposed to be, what I'm supposed to be doing, where I'm supposed to be going, etc. - I lose sight of the point.

It's not about me. It never has been. It's all about God.

In mere hours, 2015 will be on us. This is the time where people look at where they've been and make resolutions and plans and goals to improve their future outcomes starting Jan. 1.

I gave up on resolutions a long time ago (when I realized nothing magical happens when the calendar changes) but I do have some areas I'm going to focus on, this year and beyond - putting all my energy into living a life focused on the pursuit of holiness and closeness with God, on reducing the suffering of others and on loving on purpose and like I mean it.  Those are really vague statements and I'll be honest - contrary to my obsessive, type A planner nature, I don't have a detailed plan of what that looks like. That would normally freak me out, but in this case, I'm pretty calm. I don't want hollow or forced; I want it to be authentic. Natural. Real and intentional and entirely counter-cultural.

I'm realistic enough to know there's no possible way I can do this of my own accord. It's going to take a whole lot of grace and trust and just letting God be God. I'm also realistic enough to know there are times I'm going to fail miserably.

But that's the call. And it's worth it.

But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.

Galatians 6:14