Everything I Have Built

I'm having a lot of anxiety about the labor and delivery I will go through in a few months, and it has nothing to do with fear of physical pain.

When I gave birth to my son several things happened that, when I think about them today, still feel as sharp as a knife to the heart. In fact,  I cannot think of the overwhelming joy of giving birth to him without also feeling the overwhelming devastation that came with the circumstances surrounding his birth.

Imagine doing the most important work you will ever do in your life and feeling simultaneously like the most unimportant person in the room.

It started months before I went into labor with him, and it continued months afterwards. I felt small and insignificant and like what I said, or did, didn't really matter. If I'm being totally honest, I still feel that way and I have to keep telling myself that what I feel isn't the truth.

But it feels like the truth.

Those four words in the title of this post were part of a sentence that has rocked the fragile foundation I'm standing on, and brought up every old feeling and fear I've spent almost three years trying to bury beneath layers of "get over it" "move on" and "let it go." This morning I realized that the only layer I really need is "forgiveness."

There is nothing harder in this world, or more necessary, than forgiveness. With me, it goes something like this:

"Oh, certainly I forgive you. But I will never, ever, ever, ever forget what you've done. I'll carry it with me forever so that you will never be able to hurt me this way again. I'll keep this all to myself so that when you wrong me, I won't feel the slightest hesitation about wronging you in return."

So, basically I don't forgive you at all.

Another word for "forgiveness" is "absolution" which means "a formal release from guilt, obligation, or punishment." I need to absolve people from my own personal guilt trips and passive aggressive punishments, and from statements like, "well based on past experience I can only expect..."

Here we will transition into the all powerful word of the year: Love.

In 1 Corinthians 13 (the love chapter) verse 5 says that love is "not self-seeking, is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrong."(NIV)

Love is forgiveness and forgiveness is love.

I'm a writer with the memory for wrongs suffered like an elephant. Not only do I have a mental list of every wrong you've done to me,  chances are I also have a physical list (in the form of a journal) somewhere that I can refer back to in case I forget. I like to think of myself as "made in the image of God" in this aspect. He also has a list.

The only difference is He's already forgiven me for everything I've done up to this point on the list and everything I haven't gotten to do yet. We love because He loved us first. We forgive because He has forgiven us first, and fully. I'm glad He doesn't say things to me like "Well, chances are you are going to screw up again cause you did on such and such a date..."

My point is that if I want to love like God, then I have to forgive like Him too.

I should probably go ahead and start layering that new foundation with forgiveness so it can harden into a love so sure that no fear can creep through.

A Naughty Song

I was having a discussion with my sister today about Christian music. I really love Christian music for the most part, and I listen to it almost exclusively these days. But one thing that bothers me is when I hear a song and I'm not quite sure if the artist is speaking about God or their lover. Tossing around the word "Lord" in a song does not a Christian song make, you know what I mean? 

So in order to prove this point, I told my sister that I was going to write a raunchy "Christian" song. This is just for sillies, although feel free to take it and serenade your intended with it on your wedding night if you want to. The inspiration came from the "naughtiest" book in the Bible, Song of Solomon. 

A Christian naughty song - by me! 

Baby, it's our wedding night.

We've done everything just right,

And waited till we're wed,

Before we both went to bed. 

And standing here looking at you,

I can tell your nervous too,

Cause soon two shall be one,

We're like the Shulamite and Solomon.

Is it wrong if I tell you publicly?

That I want to know you biblically?

So if you're a gazelle, I'm the hunter

Chasing after you because I want ya.

If you're a garden, I'm Peter Rabbit,

Whatever your fruit, baby, I've gotta have it.

Your navel is a goblet and I'll do what's implied,

Thank God He put you in my life,

Especially for tonight. 

Baby, when I look at you,

I can feel our love shine through.

Climb under the covers,

We're about to become lovers. 

And I'm not sure quite how this goes,

But we'll let the Bible tell us so,

I'm a wall and my breasts are towers,

Baby, you can climb those things for hours.

Is it wrong to tell you publicly?

That I want you to feed amongst your lilies? 

So if your mouth is wine, then I'm a lush,

Clearly you're vintage that God didn't rush.

If you're a vineyard, I am it's keeper,

Oh, your sweet grapes makes my love grow deeper.

And in the garden of nuts, and I'll do what's implied.

Thank God He put you in my life,

Especially for tonight. 

Love, But More Mature

Valentines Day is tomorrow. I actually really, really, really like this holiday even though it's what my oldest brother calls a "Hallmark Holiday." I like that there is an entire day devoted to love. I don't look at it as just a celebration of romantic love either. I choose for Valentines Day to be all encompassing, a day to celebrate whoever you love, and whoever loves you...

...unless they're a creepy stalker or something. Then yeah...no.

And now, a mushy story.

A couple weeks ago I was reading back through the journals I kept during the years the man and I were just starting to get together. I've known him since I was fifteen years old, but I didn't think of him in "that way" at first. When I turned eighteen, he was in the Marines already, stationed over in Bahrain in 2002. I kept bugging his sisters, who were friends of mine, about him. How was he doing? What was going on? (I was worried about him because American troops were now in Afghanistan and I know nothing of geography) They finally got so sick of it that they gave me his email address in October of that year so I could ask him myself. I wrote him, and he wrote me back. And you can figure out the rest.

In May of 2003, he was scheduled to come home on leave and I was a nervous wreck. The more I learned about this guy, the more I felt like he was someone pretty amazing. I knew we were friends, but I doubted he felt more than that for me, so I was an emotional mess trying to figure what I felt for him. A couple weeks before he came home, his sister and I were out shopping and she started to describe the kind of girl her (and some of her family) always pictured him to be with. Someone blonde. A bombshell. Basically she described the exact opposite of everything that I was/am (though I didn't know it then, I definitely had some bombshell assets I could have been playing up. Curse my sheltered childhood!)

In that moment, when she was speaking those words, I felt just like Jane Austen's Emma: "It darted through her with the speed of an arrow that no one must marry Mr. Knightley but herself!" 

When I saw him for the first time that May, I was shaking like a leaf. I was afraid he'd be able to see my feelings all over my face. The honest truth is that I was crazy about him.

The honest truth is that I still am.

As it turns out, he was in love with me too. He told me a few weeks later in June, just before my 19th birthday, in a lovely letter that I still have. That November we got engaged, and the following August, after he got home from his deployment, we got married.

Sometimes I wish we could go back to those early days of marriage, but the truth is that even they weren't easy. Six months after we got married he was deployed again. In fact, we've spent more time apart in this relationship than we have together. And even for all the struggles we have been through, and all the hurt I felt, and all the things that have happened between us, I am still that fluttery, head-over-heels in love with him...but I think it's finally changing.

Half of the problems we've had in our marriage have been because he and I aren't really on the same page. And so begins the struggle of wanting him to see things MY WAY, damn it, because if you saw it MY WAY you'd probably stop acting like such a tool! And I can't tell you how many times I've asked him why he won't just get rid of me. Why do we even bother trying to go on with this charade??

His answer: Because I am committed to you.

I hated that answer so much, I wanted to slap his face every time he said it. "I don't want your commitment, I want your love!" I would say.

Then one day, not that long ago, I grew up and *light bulb* realized that his commitment to me is real love. I have to face the fact that even though he doesn't feel butterflies for me, he stays true to me. He doesn't write me love letters anymore, but almost never denies anything I ask of him. The truth is that expressing almost any emotion is no longer easy for him, but he tells me he loves me every day now because I need to hear it.

I've come to realize the depth of his feeling by the enormity of what he must sacrifice in order to be with me. It would genuinely be easier for him if he could just be solitary. But he chooses to stay true to his commitments he made to me almost ten years ago, even though it's hard and it's sure to get VERY hard here in a few months when we start living together for the first time in four years.

When I said earlier that I think my love is changing, I meant that I'm beginning to realize the value of his love for me, and I am choosing to love him in the same way: because I am committed to him. Not a love based on action and reaction, but one of every day I choose to love you no matter what because I promised to do so before God and 11 people.

I never stopped loving the man. I just love him for real now.

Gee, if that isn't a reason to celebrate tomorrow, I don't know what is...