I Never Want to Forget

 I never want to forget the feeling of uncertainty mixed with love.  It is thrilling, and it makes one sick to the stomach.  There have been times when you know this may not last, but this is yours to have and hold until it fades.  Each person who loves us gifts us with a life lesson worth remembering.  I believe I am a better friend and chaplain because of it, because I have been touched in some of life's deepest places.

There is also a wounding that occurs when those deep places connect with another human's heart.  And it does not have to occur within the context of romantic connections.  I have seen friends of mine--those who were undeservingly lucky to have married within 1, 2, or 3 tries of dating potential partners, and had relatively "smooth" love lives--get their hearts broken by their children.  Or by other family members.

My history includes deep disappointment in potential partners that my spirituality caused me to put a lot of faith, hope, and love in.  Those relationships affected my spirituality, and pushed me to seek out broader frontiers and more flexible frameworks.  I hope I am a better theologian because of the lessons that 17 1/2 years of dating--half of my life--have taught me.  Because what I believe has been altered by experience.

Esther Perel and other dating experts have noted that we often have up to 3 great loves in our lives.  Sometimes they occur with the same person, and because life alters us, the same relationship goes through different iterations.  Sometimes they occur with different people, because as life alters us, we change partners.  Either way, love comes in different phases and different forms, and love changes us.

I never want to forget what the journey was like, if one day I am ever settled.  I don't want to become one of those married women who doles out advice to someone who is single--whether happily or unhappily so--and I hope to always be on the side of the  relationally-disadvantaged and the unlucky-in-love.  So, because I never want to forget, I write this today, in case I ever need to remember.  

Great Expectations

 Growing up, I dreamed of becoming a wife and a mom.

In my young adult years, I envisioned myself changing the world alongside my husband.  In my twenties, I looked for men who had leadership qualities I could support, only to find that mine were just as strong.  In my thirties, I bloomed into my own leadership, and I decided that he would have to support me too.  Together, we would partner in ways that would make us a power couple, each pulling our weight.  As a seminary graduate and practical theologian, I collaborated with plenty of men, harnessing my lifelong tomboy energy to foster a certain kind of camaraderie and chemistry that was very collegial.  What I discovered that the men who reached out to me--whether it for mentorship or partnership--often had wives at home or women in their lives who did not necessarily share their vocational passions.  I was their intellectual match, their spiritual equal.  But men like that still wanted to "lead" at home.

Outside of the "church," there were more options, it seemed.  

There was a professor who expressed interest, a person of color and Ph.D who was a musician, therapist, and non-profit founder.  On paper, and even in person, these qualifications matched my own--I was working on my doctorate, I was a board-certified music therapist, I taught music lessons, and I had extensive work experience in non-profits.  The only catch was--Mr. Professor wanted to run for office someday, and I knew (especially after reading Michelle Obama's autobiography) that his career would always come first.  Were it not for that, it might have worked.  But I know that for politicians, their dreams are everything.  There is no stopping them.  Another black Ph.D had spent years in Asia, spoke and read Chinese fluently, and had a mother who was a doctor and hyphenated her last name.  The long distance got to us, though, and our lack of compatibility in our habits of "self-preservation."

I have had several loves in my life.  Not every love is meant to last for a lifetime.

In college, I had several conversations about marriage with men--some hypothetical, and some theoretical.  After college, I continued to meet people from all sorts of backgrounds.  Each relationship refined and reformed the dreams I had cooked up in my childhood and teen years.  Many different personality types, romantic styles, and cultural backgrounds enriched my own sense of self and self-understanding.  And yes, heartbreak hit every few years, leaving me in a "power down" position when it came to society's valuation of my worth.  No matter how much education and job experience I had, what people seemed to care about most was my marital status.  There was no escaping this--in my own family, at church, and at work.  My friends who married in their younger years shared about their struggles--but often doled out advice as well, as if being married somehow made them more knowledgeable about relationships than I was--when I actually had more experience in that realm.

Marriage is not an accomplishment, nor is it earned.  It chooses the lucky, and that's all there is to it.

So I decided to change my luck.  I manifested, and I primed my vibrational energy.  Like attracts like, and I focused on this law of attraction more than the futility and frustration of prayer and fasting.  And then he came to me--an old flame who had always stayed in touch, and the first "I love you" I'd ever said, during my senior year of college.  Circumstances had prevented us from exploring our feelings for each other when we were part of the same circle of friends, and 14 years later, he was moving away.  We expressed our love and gave each other as much as we could, knowing that the move needed to happen, and that life was full of unexpected surprises.  As we grew closer, we recognized that we were indeed each other's person.  We wanted to have our happy ending, and we wanted to start a family together.  After more than a decade of dating other people, making sacrifices for our families, and paying the price for progressive values, it took a matter of weeks to know that this was it.

When you know, you know, and no amount of community discernment can substitute for that.

When You Know, You Know

This post is written from the lens of one who understands people and relational dynamics through the lens of personality frameworks such as the Myers-Briggs and the Enneagram.  Several references made throughout will assume some understanding of core concepts of these frameworks.  Regardless of who the reader is, though, may it offer some food for thought.

For too much of my life, I have given my power away.  

Growing up in a Christian environment, the importance of discernment within community was always emphasized.  "In the multitude of counselors, there is safety," was the common word, and this was applied to life decisions around friendships, dating, career, and even school.  The ritual of presenting prayer requests during family time, small group gatherings, and even with friends, fostered a spirit of transparency that I still cherish and live out to this day.  But for an INFP--whose introverted intuition often knows the meaning of things before having the words to express them; whose perceiving way of intaking information leads to a strong tolerance for ambiguity and a willingness to wait for what is true to reveal itself; and whose belief in emotional process rather than logical outcome tends to make our Western-Enlightenment-colonized society feel uncomfortable--this also meant that many a decision I made in life took time to gain acceptance amongst my family and community.

At this point in life, I realize that those who instinctually understand me the most are not necessarily those who have known me the longest, or with whom I have had the most conversation.  Those who "get" me on a primal level share my core Myers-Briggs personality traits, as well as my "self-preservation" instinct (Enneagram).  Thus, I have felt more known by strangers, at times, than by those who know me well--including my own parents and brother.  My chaplain supervisor remarked during the winter, "Mutuality is hard to find, isn't it?"  Followed by a more facetious, "It sure is lonely at the top!"

What often exacerbates the feeling of being misunderstood is people's sincerest intentions.  I have often lamented that, in addition to the invisible, "I'm a safe person.  Tell me everything" written on my forehead, my youthful appearance and INFP personality have also seemed to elicit advice-giving and platitudes.  As a natural "Healer" type (per Myers-Briggs), and now as an experienced helping professional (between music therapy, social services, and chaplaincy), I know that the way people give advice often says more about their own needs and anxieties than about our situation and needs.  

Over the years, I learned how to make myself known, preemptively, by sharing with people that I'm an internal processor; that I never give (and prefer not to receive) advice unless it is asked for; and that I often will not consider someone to be a good friend until and unless we have known each other for 2 years.  I now understand that the "one-to-one" instinct is my most "repressed," according to my Enneagram subtypes "stack."  I was never one of those girls who needed a friend at her side in order to go to the bathroom, never designated another as my "best friend," and I genuinely wondered how one life partner would be able to be enough for me.  I often felt trapped by the energy of people who latched onto me in a very one-to-one fashion, and my self-preservation instinct would continue to wonder when I might leave to use the bathroom, drink some water, eat, or take a nap.  Those who wanted to get close to me sometimes commented that they felt that they needed me more than I needed them.

My secondary instinct is "social," which has served me well in my professional life, while still being balanced and regulated by my ability to self-preserve and maintain work-life balance.  My attention and sensitivity to the "bigger picture" of relational group dynamics has allowed me to take on leadership positions, even as an introvert, and to take multiple needs into account.  Whether it be on the floors as a chaplain, at parties during college, and sitting in class as a student, I never fully "zoomed in" to one person or one topic.  I would scan the scene for the multiple layers of what was going on.  In dating, I was never that person who became obsessed with their partner, and I always thought about who might be excluded by my participation in a heteronormative and monogamous relationship.  My uneasiness with so quickly "leaving" to "cleave" may have protected me from relationships that ultimately were not meant to be for the long haul, while still giving me the opportunity to learn whatever lessons they had to gift me.

Most of the life choices I am proudest of met with resistance from many--often those with hearts of ministry--who sought to help me "discern." There are too many to recount here, but it has been a pattern I have tracked for most of my adulthood.  I say his not out of arrogance, but out of a recognition of the few and far between individuals who actually "got it"--who helped me explore my feelings, my opinions, and my process, helping me eventually meet the Holy One with my desires...and who never brought their own "stuff" into the mix.  That is the kind of friend and helping professional I have always tried to be as well, and it is my passion to train others to do the same, as a chaplain educator down the road.

As a not-yet-educator-chaplain, I find the study of humans as "living human documents" to be fascinating, and I have gleaned so much wisdom from my patients.  "When you know, you know," is a phrase that happily married older couples use when young or single people ask, "What's your secret?"

I believe that this phrase applies not only to love, but also to life overall.  Do we trust ourselves and those we love to already have within them all the resources they need to access their best self?  Does our theology and psychological understanding allow for that?  

Mine does, after years of wandering in the wilderness of "Christian" "discernment"--particularly in Chraristmatic-and-Pentecostally-influenced Evengalical-type settings.  I now think very differently about "prayer" and "discernment," thanks to three years of studying under professors who are contemplative and holistic in their theology and intellectual bent.  And I have formed my own theology--in conversation with Process Thought and the Law of Attraction--that I am finding to be both practical and healing.  

In a way, I officially staked my claim on this theology yesterday, during my oral defense of Ph.D qualifying exams (based "officially" upon narrative pedagogies, critical auto ethnography, internal family systems, and virtue ethics, but "unofficially" also addresses themes of discernment and accessing our best Selves).  As I work out my dissertation research in this next phase of my degree, my aim as a practical theologian is to share these viewpoints with the lay community as well, because what is life-giving to me cannot be "hid under a bushel."  

Let us "quench not the Spirit" by disregarding our own intuitive wisdom, which comes from the presence of Christ within.  The more aligned we are to our own desires, gifts, and sense of security in Unconditional Love, the more we will begin to understand (as I am coming to see) the wisdom in "When you know, you know"--in all things, for all people.