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Tuesday, March 25, 2008

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

17 comments:

Lizzie said...

Wow. You described my thoughts perfectly!

Anonymous said...

I'm struggling as of the moment to decide if I completely agree with you or am more confused then before...

I've come to the conclusion that I don't want to live with regret... but I find myself increasingly frustrated with the fact that even if my parents don't want me to pursue a relationship through dating I'm ALWAYS going to have the regret of not at least trying it...

I find it humorous that parents encourage you to try new things through the first 10 years of your life; then encourage you not to try things for the last 10 that you are at home...

great- now you've got me rambling -.- i'm gonna just shut up and go to bed

Lizzie said...

Kor... I'm curious, what kind of dating are you saying that you'll always regret not trying? There's a kind of dating that is basically the same as what some people call "courtship" and then there's the kind of dating that most kids do today.

I believe it doesn't matter if you call it courting or dating, as long as the purpose is to get to know the person better with the prospect of marriage.

You can call it courting and still do it wrong. If you're just courting or dating because you want to get closer to a person, but not because you're interested in marriage, then I believe it's a bad idea and it will most likely cause unnecessary pain.

Allie said...

Compromise in some things is ok. Like whether eating ice cream and talking for an hour after work is actually necessary in a relationship. But somethings, you should never, ever compromise on. Your morals, certain rules you've created in the relationship (such as whether he needs to approach your dad...any guy who first approaches me will be sent to my dad), things of that nature. Believe it or not, guys respect us more when we hold them to higher standards. So many people are compromising their standards nowadays.

Kor, I'm also curious as to where the regret is going to come from. I'm personally not a fan of the modern form of dating just for fun. It's easy for heartbreaks to occur that way.

Lizzie said...

Jess, something about these sentences has been kinda bothering me.
"I worry about weaknesses, but He keeps me strong. I am probably weaker in the imagination than in real life anyway."

I think we're all a lot weaker than we think. I've never heard that He makes us strong, but I know a verse that says in our weakness *He* is made strong (2 Cor 12:9)!! I think that's much more comforting, because we can completely lose it and feel like jello, but in that weakness, He strength is made perfect.

Anonymous said...

Dating, (the dating several different people kind), has never appealed to me because I feel like I'd become "like butter, spread over to much bread." Emotionally stretched. It may not turn out this way but I'd like to fall in love with the man God has for me by just walking our farm and talk talk talking!

Anonymous said...

I agree with what some of you guys said later in the replies... and I actually wouldn't choose to date right now even if my parents weren't against it...

When I say dating, what pops to my mind is probably the old fashioned type; both people are of marriageable age, boy asked father first, focus of the relationship is on marriage, so its helpful if they know one another before hand...

Both families recognize that the two people are mature enough to conduct their own relationship (hopefully they are) and let them run it...

Thats about as far as I've gotten with my thinking cue... feel free to now flame it to high heaven...

Michelle said...

Lizzie, I think you have a point about God's strength being made perfect in our weakness, but I'm not sure that contradicts with what Jessica said.

"but He keeps me strong"

phillipians 4:13 says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

I do like what you said about losing it and feeling like jello, though, because that is certainly true; I'm like jello quite a bit! but I think it is Him strengthening us that allows us to trust in him and say that.

I don't think it's boastfull to say that he strengthens us, because it isn't anything we've done. I love that verse, btw, and the way it ends:

"but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'

"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me.

That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persescutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

anyway, sorry to ramble on!

I have nothing to say about dating:)

Lizzie said...

"Both families recognize that the two people are mature enough to conduct their own relationship (hopefully they are) and let them run it..."
I just have a slight disagreement with that sentence. Hopefully both people WOULD be mature enough to run their own relationship, but I also hope that they'd both be mature enough to realize how helpful it would be to involve their parents. And siblings! You've lived with these people your whole life, they most likely know you better than anyone. And your parents have already been through a lot of what you'll be going through. Why would you want them to just step back and get out of the way? My family is involved in every aspect of my life, and I don't expect my courtship to be any different unless I happen to be too far away from them at the time.

Michelle, I see your point. I do think that those verses contradict with what Jess said however, because she said that "He *keeps* me strong" which implies that she is strong in the first place and God just gives her a boost when she starts sliding down. I think those verses very clearly show that God wants us to know that it's not our strength, it's His strength through our weakness. I know that when I've tried to be strong myself it doesn't work, and when I've asked God to "help me" be strong it didn't work so well either. But then I just completely gave up and told Him I couldn't do it at all, and that He'd have to be all the strength, and then I was strong! But it's not my strength, so I can't really say that He keeps me strong (unless to say that He keeps giving me strength). :)

Lizzie said...

Wow, sorry, Jess. I'm posting comments that are too long.

Anonymous said...

I think we should hang the world and go with what we are convicted that God would have us do. Hang the terms "dating" and "courtship", their meanings are to varied.

Anonymous said...

True!

Jessica said...

Elizabeth - "He *keeps* me strong" was merely a word choice which I gave no real thought to. By that I did mean that He made me strong in the first place, and continues to.

Nicholas - I believe what you were trying to say when you said, "Both families recognize that the two people are mature enough to conduct their own relationship (hopefully they are) and let them run it...", was that both families are involved and supportive, but not trying to control every aspect of the relationship. I would love for my family and my future significant other's family to play a big roll in my relationship with whoever-he-is, but if all they are going to do is boss him and me around telling us what we should or shouldn't do (I said bossing, now--advising is fine), then I would prefer to go my own way. Hopefully I won't have to.

Michelle - Thanks for all the great verses! You're always so insightful.

Allison - I wasn't saying it is wrong to eat ice cream and talk after work, I was just saying that I shouldn't come up with some crazy notion that doing so is the only way of going about any healthy relationship, and to not do so would mean that I was going out with the wrong guy and I should drop him immediately for someone who DOES go out and eat ice cream with me...;)

Abigail - Yes, I do not want to date several people. However, I may want to seriously be in a relationship with someone sooner than later, because what if it's a great opportunity to learn, and possibly grow in Christ?

Neil - Fine, we'll just call it all, "relationships" or something. We have to have a word for it. We can't say, "what we are convicted that God would have us do" every time we are referring to dating or courtship or relationships or WHATEVER. Code words are fun. "I'm currently not in a mango right now, and certainly not trouting anybody."

Okay, those are really dorky code names.

Anonymous said...

What I don't want is my family telling me *how* the relationship should go... advice is GREAT, discussing if the person is right or not, those types of things are fine... I want my significant other to meet my immediate family as soon as possible...


Jess hit it on the head with this "telling us what we should or shouldn't do" how the relationship is conducted is the role of the two in the relationship... they are going to have to deal with one another the rest (hopefully) of their life so learn to deal with temptation now, its not like it just disappears one day...


I'm currently not in a mango right now, and certainly not trouting anybody. - now that is epic! That is going into my profile the first chance I get :p

Anonymous said...

Wow, Jess, thanks so much for this!
You don't know me....in fact I've never been to your blog before. My sister found it and told me I HAD to go and read you post ;P lol :)
wasn't romantic" :) I do the exact same thing :) I open the bible just wishing that God would spell something out for me! ahh!

As far as the whole dating/courtship, our family has chosen to call it dating. In the Home school Christian circles today "courtship" has such a.....agg, conutation....does anyone else feel the same?
To me the name is just a name. And yet many of us base opinions and judge other people just because of the name they are using!!! For pets sake people!! Lets get real!!

Kor said "but I find myself increasingly frustrated with the fact that even if my parents don't want me to pursue a relationship through dating I'm ALWAYS going to have the regret of not at least trying it..."
Sorry, dude, but I don't get it.
Number one, believe me, dating is not what it's cracked up to be!! In my opinion you are basing too much on the stupid name!! Don't fall into the worlds trap, don't think you HAVE to date.....just to see what it's like. Dating the worlds way entails pain and heartache. With dating (unless you are serious about the girl) all you end up doing is hurting one girl after the other. By the time you find your princess your heart has been given to ten different girls, and you can't even give your whole heart to your true love.
Believe me dude, it's not worth it!
You won't have any regrets if you wait on God to bring the right girl into you life!!
I'm sorry I didn't mean to sound really harsh. I just had to say something.

Michelle said...

Jessica- I have been thinking about your statement: "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 think God let's us do alot of foolish things. I'm not sure he would stop me from getting into a situation where I might be prone to making unwise decisions, especially if I'm so confident that I am where he wants me.

Most likely the reality is that I'm just stubborn and telling myself that to feel better.

Jessica said...

Wow...thanks guys, for all these wonderful comments. It really means a lot that everyone is so encouraging like this...I love my little homeschooled-Christian circle of friends... ;) My other friends are great too, though.

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