Compromise or Contingent?

I have rendered myself a very confused person. I cannot seem to get my thoughts straight anymore, and I am left wondering which thoughts are really mine and which ones are from the brain of that “Other Me.”

I believe there is a three-way war inside of me. There are the things my brain wants, the things my heart wants, and desires that come from some strange, unknown source which I’d rather just get rid of. My heart says I’ve fallen in love, my brain says that’s utterly ridiculous, and the foreign desires say that if it is love, surely said FDs (foreign desires) would be quite satisfied in areas of emotional and physical intimacy. My brain says to ignore these things now as they only will mess things up later, my heart starts to agree with the FD that emotional intimacy would be kind of nice, and the FDs start some strange rant about how everything’s really okay, as long as I stand my ground at certain points. My brain, for a moment, starts justifying what the FD says for a moment, and then snaps back into being brain-ish, my heart says, “Oh, just listen to music, that will make you feel better,” and happily flutters away as romantic music plays, and the FDs begin to imagine all possible ways things could “go about.” My brain says, “Let’s listen to ‘Love Song’ by Sarah Bareilles (SP?!?!?).” My heart says, “Gee, that’s not very romantic.” The FDs quickly conjure up some fantasy of me singing the song and him loving me anyway. My brain tells the FDs to back off, my heart crosses its eyes in frustration, the FDs go talk to my cross-eyed heart and tell it everything is okay. My heart wants to side with my brain, but also agrees with the FDs, and so my brain and the FDs have a giant dispute over ownership of my heart. My heart, on the other hand, would like to just think for itself, thank you very much, but apparently it really can’t. It’s got to either be all-sensible or all-stupid, it seems. Why can’t it be somewhere in the middle, on its own ground, thinking its own thoughts and—

LOOK OUT!! FLYING UTENSILS!!—

Anyway, nothing has calmed down yet. And somehow I, another separate entity, am left wondering how the actual object of my affection figures into all of this. No matter, I suppose. I should deal with myselves first.

I am just afraid. I mean, I am afraid of things not turning out like they should. I have my ideas of how people should go about having a relationship—but it doesn’t always work like that, does it? If it did, pious, courting-only missionaries would be the only people married these days. Not everyone has to be like a romantic story from an Elizabeth Elliot book. That’s not to say that she doesn’t have good points about romance or anything.

I just don’t want to get ahead of myself. But I think by not wanting to I actually am, in a sense. I come up with all these “rules” that potential suitors must follow. Things like, “he has to ask my dad before even revealing his feelings to me” and “I won’t let him touch me till we’re married” and “I don’t want to get into a relationship till I am 25.” Those are just the few I can think of right now. There are more, but there are so many and most of them are so completely ridiculous…like, “our relationship must consist of him visiting me after work and us talking for an hour over ice cream” or something like that.

It all comes down to that whole romantic ideals thing again. My “rules” and “ideas” about how all guy-girl relationships should be are just more sets of romantic ideals. I hear stories about how other people did the Godly relationship thing, and I think that it can only work out that way, so I should only do it that way, and if life seems to be going differently, I should grab it and set it down on the path of the “better” way. I idealize the perfect relationship.

First of all, no relationship is perfect. Someone is going to get hurt. Even if that hurt gets patched up, it still hurts. It still happened. But you know what? Accidents happen. They are basically unavoidable.

I don’t want to compromise myself. I am afraid of doing so. But what am I compromising? A “perfect” relationship? Well, then, I suppose I’ll end up an old maid.

I just know that God wouldn’t let me get into something like that that he didn’t think I couldn’t be strong in. I worry about weaknesses, but He keeps me strong. I am probably weaker in the imagination than in real life anyway.

Well, we’ll see.

~Jessica