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.