May 7, 2008

• Third Love

  Third love… you think I would take a hint! But I have come to be grateful for the wonderful gift God has given me in a heart that can be literally smashed to pieces, yet continue to love despite and pain or fear that might result in offering itself to another.

  This next love came very gradually (if you can consider three and a half months to be gradual) as I came to know a girl I will call Claire. I cannot recall at this time how we first came to be acquainted with one another, but it was a fateful October afternoon that we became friends, as people who survive a harrowing ordeal become friends. You see, it was on a lovely October walk in the woods that we discovered our hearts had been wounded by the same blade- a blade earlier refered to as Maggie. Please do not take calling her a “blade” to mean that I harbor any malice toward Maggie; as I tried to relate in the previous entry, I have forgiven her entirely. But I use blade to convey the idea of wounding, for as you have read my heart was deeply wounded by Maggie. It so happened that my friend Claire had been dating Maggie’s former boyfriend who, via a brief email, broke up with Claire to be with Maggie once again.

  Both Claire and I shared a deep pain and resentment of the two (childish, I know!) and this brought us together. Over the following few months I began to feel like I was falling in love with Claire; she was lovely, true, but she also had a wit, an artistic spirit, and an energy about her that was undeniably attractive to me. However, my past two failures at love haunted me and, believing myself truly to be cursed, I presented to my dear friend the ember of truth that was smouldering in my heart for her, lest it eventually roar into a fire that must painfully be drowned in tears like the two before it.

  Claire sweetly, honestly and gently accepted my ember as a sincere gift of true and deep friendship, but confessed that such an ember did not burn within herself. While grateful for the offering, she could not return such affection and wished very much to remain friends. I accepted this, relieved that our friendship would remain intact and that I had “taken care of things” before they got out of hand, so to speak.

  Yet, I was crushed. The ember, I felt, had gone out and with it had gone all hope of ever finding love.

  I see now that this was quite a dramatic sentiment.

  So on I went during my last year of school, longing for love but finding it nowhere, remaining close friends with Claire and slowly standing still as the days and months swam by in a blur until, finally, I was sitting in Happy Joes eating lunch with her, saying goodbye before heading off to study archaeology at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

  (Though it seems we’ve arrived at the all-important college years, there is yet one more key event from high school that I wish to post about, but I want to ask that person if I may blog about it, as she visits this site on occassion and it is, after all, the gentlemanly thing to do.)

  Today’s lesson- Chaste friendship. Though I did not realize it at the time (a recurring theme in the story of my life), God drew me in friendship to a person suffering from the same pain as I was, and He drew me to her through my attraction to her. We all struggle with the gift of sexual attraction, but it is not a curse! It is a powerful blessing that calls us to love each other rightly, as God would have us. Yes, I wanted very much to love Claire and be with her and marry her and all of the other things that run through a heart-sick young man’s mind when he is in love, but God called me through my past experiences to reveal my heart sooner rather than later, and then presented me with the beautiful and wonderful gift of my first close, deep, chaste friendship with a woman. This friendship was so dear to me, and it helped me to move deeper in friendship with other women because it taught me that relationships between men and women could be very deep and spiritually and emotionally intimate without needing to be physically intimate. What a gift; what a treasure! This was the first of what would, over the years, become many such friendships, and it continues to be a tremendous source of grace in my life. Certainly they are challenging at times, but love is as much a challenge as all else it seems to be, and it is a challenge worth taking up! Once I could love whole-heartedly my women friends and rise above the desires of my flesh, I discovered such peace and freedom that I had never before known, and it has only grown as I continue to move towards my vow of chastity.

  • 10:26 pm
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