Exhausted from Loving

What is it about laying on your bed all week
That makes you dream.
A lot.
Call me lazy,
Or call me maybe,
But I plead food poisoning. Or dengue fever. Or love sickness.
Regardless, I can barely get out of bed.
And with this exhaustion of body,
Comes an exhaustion of spirit.

All week I've been gearing up to say goodbye to him.
And I'm all sapped out of loving things to say.
I'm all spent on the reasons I love him.
Because at the end of the day,
He's still leaving me.
And I'm still lying here alone.

And so I resist thinking about him.
I resist talks of a wedding.
I resist exchanging saliva-covered nothings.
Because I feel like I'm saying goodbye forever.
I can't do this.
And so I close my eyes.
And I see him.
I'm randomly escaping from a camp in the woods,
And he is in my getaway car.
Dang him.
I'm playing a game and I kiss someone.
I pull back,
And it's his lips I kissed.
It gets so I wake up and I don't know how he was in my dream,
But I remember him distinctly being there.

Ever get into a relationship that lasted all of 5 seconds?
Before the relationship you were probably like, forget women/men!
Suddenly when the relationship becomes a possibility,
Life is beautiful.
You skip around convincing people that all those other people were nothing.
THIS one is the one.
And then it happens.
Any one of a number things could happen - and it does happen.
And you wake up the next morning with a crushing realization that you're all alone again.
Time to start over.
Or give up.
Again.
Time to reconvince yourself that that person was NOT the one.
Time to embrace a new day full of new possibilites and new people.

This is me.
Knowing he wants me.
Knowing I want him.
But feeling like - of course it had to end.
Of course it was too amazing, too beautiful, too precious to be true.
Of course I'm alone.
Because in my mind, I fear that of all the things that can go wrong,
It won't be him or me this time.
It will be an airplane plucking him from the sky,
Burying him in the grounds of Australia.
And it will be death this time that cheated us both from love.

Silly?
Okay.
Absurd?
Fine.
But as he realized he had 13 minutes left to say goodbye to me, I could hear it in his voice.
The finality.
The ragged intake of breath.
The sweet nothings.
Never mind that we had been talking non-stop for hour upon hour.
13 minutes left.
And I felt cold all over.
The dial tone buzzed in my ear and my heart sank.
No guarantees.
I HATE goodbyes.
It's too much to hope I'll see him again.

It's crazy.
In the past he has disappeared around the corner,
He's left my arms to go get a drink of water,
He's driven 500 miles away to his home,
He's spent 22 years of his life away from me.
And in any one of those instances,
God could have taken him.
A wreckless moment, a freak accident, an internal failure.
Anything could have happened.
And I didn't fear that.
But now, he flies 14 hours literally to the other side of the world.
In two days, he is 10,500 miles away from me.
And I am paralyzed with fear.
I'm afraid from loving him.
I'm exhausted from the fear of losing him.

Who knew that love was so exhausting?
And I know.
God loves him more.
God is watching over him.
But, God.
I still fall on my knees.
Or I would if I could get out of bed.
And I beg you to spare him from everything that could go wrong.
I beg you.

And I know he is safer in your will in the middle of venomous spiders in Australia,
Than he would be out of your will and here at my house holding me.
God, I know you hold the world in your hand.
You know the hairs on his head.
You see the sparrow fall.
You own the cattle on the hills.
So I know you can guard him.
Please guard him.
Because selfishly,
I can't live without him.

A Love Exchange Student

Saturday May 4, 2013. How do you tell someone goodbye for the summer where you both go to separate countries and can't talk for months? Take it from the guy who just said he loves me for the first time. He planned an adorable weekend and got creative with saying goodbye. If you're going to read this, get a trash can and prepare to throw up from the sappiness.

First, we bought and stuffed each other build-a-bears to take abroad. Their names are Andy and Andi (he calls me Andi). He is such a good sport lol. He even picked out the heart to go in the bear and did the whole "rub the heart and make a wish" thing. This is the sign of a real and confident man. :P When I wished on the little heart I put in the build-a-bear, I wished that he would say he loves me. EW, sappy. See? I told you.

www.sisterhoodofthetravelingstamps.com 

Andrew started out the evening giving me a t-shirt to remember his home town. You know what was sweet, though? He gave this to me after I made him drive me around and take me to a meeting where he waited in the car with no guarantee that I wasn't going to mess up all of his carefully laid plans for the evening.

For dinner he took me to the Lazy Goat downtown (see below) where he had made reservations weeks ago. I'm not an appetizer/most-expensive-meal-on-a-date person but he insisted I get an appetizer because he knows I love different cheeses. From the window seat that he had requested for us in the restaurant we could see a couple slow-dancing on the TD stage and we agreed we should do the same after we finished eating. He's a planner and this girl is not complaining! There's nothing like getting all dressed up with your man and accidentally matching and then feeling like you're playing grown up. :) Then it's like, o wait, graduation just happened. WE ARE grown up.

 

 www.thelazygoat.typepad.com

Below is the bridge where our friendship started last November. It's an ironic bridge because I had expected to meet another guy there and Andrew appeared instead. Most of my first conversations to Andrew were of him patiently listening to me talk about another guy. I remember being surprised at how I had misjudged him. I heard him talking on the phone with his mom that night in November and I remember thinking that it was so cute how he talked to his mom because he clearly loved her. I thought at the time that I would want a guy who talked to his mom like that.  Since we're dating now, he took me back to this bridge and we took our first kissing picture.

  wedding.theyeagleys.com 

 

 

Right after this he got me coffee at Spill the beans (pictured below) and gave me like 4 pieces of heart jewelry. He was so excited to give them to me and so proud that he had picked them out lol it was cute.

www.tripadvisor.com

 

Saturday May 4, 2013, TD Stage in downtown Greenville, S.C. (pictured below). This is the date and place that he first told me he loves me. :)  He hadn't planned this but he had accidentally slipped a couple times referring to me as his love. So after Lazy Goat we took a walk around downtown and when I called him 'mi amor' teasingly under the TD stage cover, he turned me to face him and asked me, "Do you love me, Andi?" I said, "You first." He took a deep breath and earnestly/slowly said, "I do love you." I smiled and shyly said, "I love you, too." And he goes, "No, like, I REALLY love you." And I said, "I meant it, too." He then spent like the next 15 minutes standing on the stage declaring his love to me and all the reasons why he loves me.  I seriously was concerned he was going to drop down on one knee. It sounded like he had rehearsed it in his head and was never going to get a chance to say it again. I learned later that he was worried about saying he loved me because he had listened to my radio show where I had long ago said that a man should never say he loves a woman before he's been dating her for at least 4 months. We've only been dating for 2 months. Little did he know that I had just Googled that factoid and I was an idiot for repeating it!!

www.greenvilleonline.com

 

Andrew ended the evening with a hand-written card that he had written when he couldn't sleep because he was thinking of me. He admitted later that he had been tortured because he wanted to sign it "Love, Andrew" but because of what I had said on my radio show about not saying love too early, he regretfully signed it "Yours, Andrew". That made me smile. I took that card with me to Antigua and read it a minimum of 14 times.

 

While in Antigua for the last two weeks, I missed him so much that I wrote him a love letter every night. I found out later that he has been doing the same thing for me. We both agreed that we'll exchange our notebook of letters at the end of the summer.

 

See? Told you. Vomit. SO sappy. But sooo sweet. :) I love and don't deserve this guy - which is probably why I come to my blog less and less to complain about relationship problems. :)

It's scary to be so happy

We haven't said those words yet. But in an effort to avoid writing a legal brief for class, I'm here. My little fingers are furiously typing on this wretched Dell keyboard on keys that have known me since my freshman year in 08. And I see his smile. The way he looks at me. The way he encourages me. The way he's so patient with me.

And I love him.

But I don't say it because I'm afraid I'll mess it up. It's the only reason I try to deny that I love him. It's scary to be so happy. But last night I was grading his paper and ripping it apart, and I gave him a merciful A-. And he says, "Babe, what would you really give me?" And I wasn't thinking and said "my heart haha". He said "would you really?" And I said "if you want it". Anyways he wanted it, and then we did this really sappy exchange of hearts over text. It's really sickening in the light of day but last night it seemed really sweet. UG. WHAT IS HE TURNING ME INTO????

He said he's glad I don't remember single life and he's going to do his best to keep me from ever experiencing it again. Let's just say he has said a minimum of 5 times that he wants to marry me and give me his last name. He's not possessive but he is fascinated with this idea that I am his and no one else's. :P

But seriously. I'm having a hard time remembering what I did with my time when I was single. What was life before him? I thought I would feel limited to be with one guy. And yet I don't know what I was so afraid of - it's great. As it is now, when I'm not with my friend at school and working on some project I'm with him. And I think I could spend all my time with him and not feel like I was missing out on anything at all. He makes me feel like I don't need anything else but God and then him.

Let me show you what a good guy he is. Yesterday, I conducted a failed social experiment. Literally, I pictured a hundred people freezing all over the front of campus holding thank you cards and then we would get on our radio show and talk about positive communication and speak out against cyberbullying! Instead, you have me and a straggling few freezing in front of campus with panicked looks in our eyes as people stare at us as they pass by. And we're holding these signs that say "Take a moment. Thank someone." My cheeks were burning with shame. It was supposed to be a freeze MOB but it turned out to be a freeze trickle. I think they caught me on camera saying I wanted to crawl under a pillow. I didn't even get the phrase "crawl under a rock" right!!! Afterwards, I got interviews of the thankful few and later realized I hadn't even pressed record. Let's just say it was an EPIC fail. And Andrew was one of the 10 people that showed up and froze with me. Let's just say I wanted to sarcastically thank the 50 people who had said on facebook they would be "attending" the event and then just never showed up. Included in the no-shows was the guy who came up with the idea to do the freeze mob. He had NO excuses!!

And Andrew just calmed me down. He thought it was adorable that I was doing it and he supported me even though he had a class in the next 5 minutes. He makes me feel special and he listens to me rant about the injustice in the world! He just has this way of shutting me up haha. He has good ideas sometimes that really make me think about things I can do instead of throwing my hands up in the air.

Today I was having issues with my schedule for next semester and he's like, "Well, let's go talk to them." I wanted to just give up and talk about all the brick walls I was hitting. But instead I followed him upstairs to find the Dean's office and he sat outside patiently while I talked to him for about 35 minutes. When I got out he didn't complain about how long I'd taken or how he didn't realize it would be that long. He just said, "How did it go?"

Two months ago I would have said he didn't deserve me and I was only into him for the physical. Today I would say that I don't deserve him and I love him for who he is.

Critical Learning Curve

I still see my Dad showing me how to wash the front window at my house. I was 16. He watched me cleaning it for a minute and then said, "No. Clean like this." He took the papertowel from my hand and went higher and cleaned up and down. I started trying to reach higher, trying to clean it like he wanted. He shook his head. "NO. Like THIS. Stop being disobedient." I'm sure I was doing it all wrong. I'm sure my cleaning job looked atrocious. But I remember being so frustrated that he couldn't see how hard I was trying. It was like that for most of my growing up years. I would work hard on something and he would find the flaw. I think he believed he was helping me learn perfection. I just felt criticized, humiliated, and frustrated. I got so I didn't even want to tell him what was going on because I didn't want to be criticized for both the good and bad things I had done.

For that reason, I have always wanted to be someone who is approachable. I've always wanted to be that person you can go to with any problem, any failure, any acheivement and I will lift them up. I have wanted to be an encourager - not someone who finds flaws and tears people apart. For the most part, I feel like I have been this person. I've never had a shortage of friends and counseling opportunities and young girls who have looked up to me as an example.

But then you come to look at my dating life. You survey the damage and find bodies of men strewn across the battlefield. These are the bodies of men who have opened up their hearts to me. They chose to be my closest companion. They chose to cherish me and spend money on me and be vulnerable with me. And I selfishly loved the first two weeks of it. But there's this fascinating thing about a relationship - you have to make a commitment to the other person to love the good AND the bad. And about the time when he begins opening up to me, I start noticing his flaws. At first it's just an annoying habit or two. Then I begin questioning everything about him. I begin to focus on something about him that I don't like and suddenly I can see nothing else he does right. Instead of meditating on his good qualities and instead of showing even the slightest hint of selfless love toward his imperfections, I begin the cruelest attack of all - I dismiss him without giving him a chance. I bring up an issue and he writhes around trying to explain himself. And I say with great justification to be rid of him, "Ok. This is why I'm saying goodbye."

But the issue is not his flaw, poor fellow. It's the fact that I am my Dad. My 15 year old child is standing in front of me trying so hard to please me. And I tell them, "No. Do it my way. My way is the only right way. You're doing it all wrong. You can't do anything right."

For this first time in my life I'm realizing that I do this with the me in my life. This is why I am so indecisive about men and why I am so terrified of commitment. In the moment of passion and sophisticated dates I'm like, Heck yeah, take me down that aisle and put that diamond on my finger. But in the moment when he is most vulnerable and broken and stupid and careless - I don't seek to love him selflessly. I look down at him and I cruelly rub salt into the wounds he has revealed. I don't cherish and protect his heart. I rip it open and then broadcast his failures when I'm done with him.

All I can say is - Why the HECK is Andrew dating me? Not only am I full of physical imperfection but I am also sometimes the most cruel woman you could ever meet. I am selfish and I am thoughtless in my words toward him. I give him things because I care about him, yes. But a part of me does it only because he gave to me and I want to repay him.

Yesterday he opened up to me. He shared flaw after flaw and stupid moment after careless moment. Nothing he did was big or a deal breaker. But in my eyes it reduced him from a powerful, sexy, perfect guy to a little boy. And the more I thought about it the more I didn't like him. I didn't want him to touch me and I definitely didn't want to talk about a future with him. I didn't say any of this last night, though. I really have been working on being more thoughtful when I am with him. But I was silent and he always knows that means something is wrong.

So today he asked me multiple times to tell him what was bothering me. And I HATED to say anything because I KNEW it was all stupid. But I spoke because I would rather argue than be silent with him. I should have immediately prayed about it last night and been doen with it. Instead I lit into him. I let him have it. I brought up the DUMBEST things - from how he bites his nails to how he slathers his hamburger with ketchup. And he listened, thought carefully, and explained. But I wouldn't hear it - I had already moved on to "the deeper significance" of these little things. I told him it all made me see him as careless and stupid.

No one can accuse me of not speaking my mind.

I came home to find that he had written me a private message on Facebook last night after he had been with me.

It read:
"hey babe, i just want you to know that i care about you so much. not only for the physical but more because of who you are! i really like how compassionate you are, not only to me but to others. i really like that you want to be involved with church. i love how when you set your mind on something you just go for it, and no one will stop you. i love just spending time with you and we don't even have to be talking. i love playing games with you, whether i win or lose. i love how i can go to you no matter what it is and you will just listen or give me advice. i think you have so many good qualities babe!! i also believe, that in the future, you will also be a great wife and mother! you are just an amazing woman, with an amazing personality, and i am lucky that you would say to be in a relationship with me! i think you are beautiful and that and the physical is just an added bonus! you are the complete package :)"

Can I just say that I wish the floor would swallow me up? Here I am, brandishing a sword - WAITING for him to mess up. And he literally bows to offer me his neck and while he's down there he bares his vulnerable soul to the cruelest woman viking in the world.

So how do I fight myself? How do I fight back my cruel dating pattern? How do I truly learn selfless love that cherishes this guy I care about?

#1. Meditate on scripture that helps me remember how GOD defines selfless love.
Phillipians 2:4, "Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interest of others."
1 Corinthians 13, "Love is kind....Love is not self-seeking"

Love is NOT self gratification.

#2. Write a list of his good qualities and meditate on them.

#3. Be willing to acknowledge/share my own faults, failures, and flaws. These are the things HE will have to over-look when he is loving me.

#4. Instead of sharing frustrations with my friends in a way that might embarrass him, seek wise counsel from someone I trust in an effort to improve MY response, not in an effort to complain about him.

#5. Pray about it before talking to him about what's bothering me.

#6. Let him be his own person. He does not have to be just like me. I don't have to control him in any way at all. He doesn't have to be perfect. He just has to be himself. Do I LOVE him for who he is? Or do I ony love him when he is doing something for me? The answer doesn't tell me there's something wrong with him - it only tells me whether I am practicing self love.

#7. Think through how he completes me by being different from me. So today I think he's stupid. Maybe he's just stupid in ways that I'm smart and I'm stupid in ways that he's smart. 
       He thinks through feelings better than I do.  He can express feelings much better than I can and he helps me express my feelings.
       He has a better attention span than me. It's like I have all these blank holes in my brain from times when I wasn't paying attention and he fills in those holes for me.
       His brain is wired to understand science and math far better than me. I just happen to be wired for English which is why I can tease him when he messes up with a spelling or pronunciation.
       Part of the reason I think he's stupid is because he's really humble about the good things. He's not always bragging about the good things people say about him. He only tells me those things when I ask.
       Even when he acts stupid he lights up people's lives in a silly fun way that I could never do. He makes people feel at home by putting himself last and paying complete attention to them.
       He is smart when it comes to me. He knows and repeats the things I like and he never forces me to do anything. He pays attention to what I say. He is NOT selfish with my time. He always tells me to put my responsibilities first and him second.
       He is smart about the things of God. He spends a lot of time in His word and he knows what God teaches both in his head and his heart.
       He reads slower than me. This doesn't mean he's stupid. It just so happens that I read REALLY fast.
       So what if he's not exceptional at anything. We can serve God and be average together and I should be able to love him for HIM and not for what he can do.

#8. Ask myself - what are my motives for being with him?

1.       Am I just in the relationship for the physical, or can I truly be his best friend first?

2.       Do I make him a better person like he makes me a better person?

3.       Am I being GOOD to him?

4.       Do I pray for him?

5.       Do I pray about him?

6.       Do I trust God with him?

7.       Do I make him want to grow closer to God?

8.       Do I have to be in control?

9.       Do I have expectations of him?

10.   Am I humble around him and do I put him first?

11.   Do I lift him up or tear him down?

12.   Are the qualities I focus on qualities that will matter for eternity?

13.   Do I think less of him because of his life’s circumstances or am I understanding of things he can’t help?

14.   Would I be any better in his field of study/work?

15.   Do I try to help him with his problems or I diligently judge?

16.   Do I want him to be perfect and therefore shut him out when I see flaws?

17.   Can I ask God for grace?

18.   Can I ask God for wisdom?

19.   Can I be OPEN to God’s will – the good AND the bad, not just the fairy tale ending?

20.   Do we make good partners to serve Christ?

Confusion and Pleasure

This evening I sank to the bottom of the shower and just sat there.
Hearing and feeling the warm drizzle of the shower head on my back.
Weighed down with pleasure and confusion.
One side of me recognizes my quickness to react in emotion,
And I halt myself. I say wait. Give him a chance.
The other side of me wonders if I feel this confusion because
Pleasure came first.

I want to trust him. I want to believe the best in him.
And then I grab hold of nagging doubts and I feed them with paranoia.
And how can he respond, poor guy?
I've done this before.
I look for any reason NOT to be his.
But mostly, I want to be with him.
Life is not the same without him.
And within that sentiment I listen to him talk.

In an instant, I hear myself being married off.
I hear myself say "I do" through lifeless lips that are brought to life solely when his lips press mine.
My sisters eagerly plan my wedding.
And I scream inwardly that I'm not ready - I'm 22.
No one hears me.
I, myself, turn a deaf ear on my cries.
In one minute I could wait forever,
And in the next, I can't wait one more minute.

It's been just me for 22 years.
Sure guys have come and gone.
But I've had my alone time, my late nights, my spontaneous decisions.
I've answered to no man.
And I find myself wanting to share my bed,
But not my life.
It's a lot to ask an independent girl to blindly give herself to a man
She doesn't know.
Strangely, it is easier for me to give him my body,
Than it is for me to give him my heart.

I WILL wait, don't worry.
But for a moment, I'm struck between the magnetic fields of
One life direction and another.
For a moment, I'm sitting at the bottom of a shower,
And I hear the artificial rain.
And I go to a different place.

I cry to my Father - please, help me up.
I cry, take the worry that clouds my vision.
Show me clearly if it's me or if it's him.
No matter what,
I need to know - to spare him any pain.
Because I care about him.
And ultimately, all that matters, Father,
Is that it's all about You.

Difficult to Resist

All I can say is that since we made up he has been very difficult to resist. I put my no-nonsense face on and he somehow manages to wipe that away. But if I'm honest, as much as I love his playful side, I truly love this sweet/serious side he has. A side that I can tell is terrified to be close to me even despite all his confidence. A side that cares about me and looks at me to see if it's o.k. A side that pulls back and gives me a small smile that is half man, half little boy. A side that is not perfect, but that I accept.

I've given up on so many relationships before they even were relationships. I really just want to let this one work. So, I said yes to dating this guy. I officially can't give very good singles advice anymore. Honestly, that's a predicament I rather like. :)

Broken up

I miss him. I regret it. I just wanted to hold his hand and wrap him in a hug and keep from saying what I was thinking. I didn't want it to matter. I didn't want to be bothered or to bother him. I just wanted to go back to silly and fun. I wanted to make him laugh. I wanted to feel his arms wrap around me in comfort.

Instead, this horrible silence. His attempt to comfort my concerns with words that fall short. His understanding. His sweetness.

I knew it needed to happen, though. I needed to say what was bothering me. If he is going to know I'm serious about anything, he's going to know I'm serious by seeing me walking away.

But my feelings are still completely with him. If he gives me a reason to, I will walk right back.

I guess this is what a break-up feels like.