You don’t need a man by your side to validate you as a woman. You already are loved and valued. You’re good enough exactly as you are. Do you believe this? Because it’s true. You have limitless worth and value. If you embrace this truth, it will affect every area of your life, especially your relationship with men.

You are worth dying for.

Your worth does not come from your body, your mind, your work, what you produce, what you put out, how much money you make. Your worth does not come from whether or not you have a man. Your worth does not come from whether or not men notice you. You have inestimable worth that comes from your Creator.

You will continue to be tempted in a thousand different ways not to believe this. This temptation will be to go searching for your worth and validity from places other than your Creator.

Especially from men.

But you don’t have to give yourself away to earn a man’s love. You’re better than that. You’re already loved.

When you give too much of yourself away too quickly, when you show too much skin, you’re not being true to yourself. When you dress to show us everything, then in some sense we have all shared in it, or at least been exposed to it. There is a mystery to you, infinite depth and endless complexity.

As the woman says in Song of Songs, “My own vineyard is mine to give.” In the ancient Near East, a vineyard was a euphemism for sexuality. She is saying that she doesn’t give herself to just anyone. She is fully in control of herself, and she is not cheap, and she is not easy.

Your strength is a beautiful thing. And when you live in it, when you carry yourself with the honor and dignity that are yours, it forces the men around you to relate to you on more than just a flesh level.

You are worth dying for.

When you live in your true identity, when you find your worth and value in your Creator, when you live “in Christ,” in who you really are, you force men to rethink what it means to be a man.

-Sex God by Rob Bell

This always astonishes me, every time I read it. And I need to re-read it…often.

I’ve been having a rough go of it lately when it comes to how I view myself. Anyone who reads this blog has perhaps seen through my thinly veiled musings about self-esteem and the battle I’ve been fighting lately. The spaces inside my head and my heart are battered and bruised with the sharp punches I’ve been dealing myself and I have reached the point of exhaustion with it.

Now I know that everyone has times when they are feeling a little blue or insecure — it’s natural. However, I loathe dealing with it so much that if it begins happening to me, I instantly ignore it and refuse to actually work it out. I just keep going so I don’t have to stop and stare myself in the eyes. I avoid mirrors and silence, and instead, fill myself to the brim with every distraction I can grab.

However, now that I am officially living alone, it’s a lot harder to avoid myself. In fact, I am my only constant company and in a studio, I wear out pacing and cleaning a lot faster. (I can clean the entirety of my apartment in about 20 minutes. I could probably somersault from one end of it to the other in about 15 seconds. Needless to say, it feels even smaller when I am surrounded by personal demons, who seem to take up an awful lot of room.) When it’s dark and quiet, and I am staring at the ceiling fan, trying to fall asleep, my inner voice is really, really loud — like screeching-at-the-top-of-its-lungs loud. And there is nothing to drown it out.

The other night, I picked up my Message translation of the Bible, hoping that somehow, God’s voice would be louder than mine and I can concentrate on something easier, like peace or justice or loving other people or righteousness. Anything sounded better than admitting to and dealing with the fact that I was having self-esteem problems. Only weak, sad people have those — the kinds of people who watch Dr. Phil and read “Chicken Soup for the Soul” books. I am not one of those people. So I sought refuge in the Scriptures, foolishly forgetting that they are not as much of a shield against problems, but rather a mirror for them.

I turned to Romans and came across this verse in chapter 15 — “It’s resurrection, resurrection, always resurrection.” It would be easy enough to pass this off as only the physical resurrection of Christ, but I knew that Paul’s nuance was a little different — I knew that in following Christ, we must pursue resurrection in all things — in creation, in love, in relationships, even those tricky ones with ourselves. I kept paging through the New Testament, hoping to find some better refuge, with tighter locks and better security. I came to 1 John, which explodes in exultation about love. I figured this was a perfect hiding place — the idea of “love” is broad enough that if I hide here, no one can find me. Well, as usual, God slipped through my defenses quietly and gently turned my head, removing the bandages I had wrapped so tightly around my eyes.

“My dear children, let’s not just talk about love; let’s practice real love. This is the only way we’ll know we’re living truly, living in God’s reality. It’s also the only way to shut down debilitating self-criticism, even when there is something to it. For God is greater than our worried hearts and knows more about us than we do ourselves.

And friends, once that’s taken care of and we’re no longer accusing or condemning ourselves, we’re bold and free before God!” -1 John, ch.3 (The Message Translation)

Umm, hey, God.
[uncomfortable silence]
Wasn’t expecting You to find me…errr, see You, here.
So, uh, what’s up?
Self-criticism? Accusing? Condemning? Me? Nah. This is just…a phase. I’m cool.
Seriously, no need to worry. I’m already “bold and free,” right? I’m all set.
[more pointed silence]
…right?

I felt that center-of-your-stomach-twisting kind of conviction, and I knew that a painful recovery was up ahead. I knew that I would have to face these poisonous little demons face to face and deal with every single one by name if I would have any hope of healing. But I’d put it off for one more day.

The next day, I settled into a cozy chair at Madcap Coffee with an iced Americano and my copy of Engaging God’s World, which I had been intending to start for a week. I began reading and found myself quickly tiring out my pen with underlining passage after passage. I felt like something in me had re-awoken and was fighting to get to the surface where it could break through whatever I’d been holding it under. I knew whatever it was, it wanted nothing more than to remind me of who I was.

Then I read this:

“For the sinful self is not my real self, it is not the self You have wanted for me, only the self I have wanted for myself.  And I no longer want this false self. But now, Father, I come to You in Your own Son’s self…and it is He who presents me to You.” – Thomas Merton

It was at that moment that the shade sprung up, the light clicked on, the sawdust from the plank in my eye began trickling out. The weak self — the one that criticizes and tears apart and sucks in my stomach and fights back the tears and envies  the success of other writers — that is not my real self. It is the self that I thought I deserved because I’m not perfect yet. I haven’t tried hard enough to eat entirely healthy or read enough books or been asked out on enough dates or found the right hairstyle or written a bestseller or garnered enough attention yet. And until I’m there, this critical, mean-spirited self is all I deserve.

But that false self died a Cross 2,000 years ago. That self was soaked in the blood of a Savior who cloaked me in His love so that when I looked in the mirror, I could see His face in mine. That self that thrives on manic control and expectations needs to be placed on an altar day after day, sacrificed so that my true self can emerge from the smoke. That self has no place in a soul that is brimming with the Holy Spirit.

I am peeling away each false self, like Eustace and his dragon skins in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Jesus leads me into the pool and tears away each layer of falsehood and lies, knowing that I have to experience the pain in order to heal.

I would open my arms to your prayers, if you’re reading this and pray. I am searching out faithfulness to this true self, to healing for the wounds that I have ignored and covered up for so long, for love that I have been denying myself for as long as I can remember. I am beginning this conversation with myself and my God in whom I find my ultimate self. Pray for the courage to dialogue, to listen, to read, to seek, to cry, to ask, to be silent, and to heal.

**I debated whether or not to even post this because I didn’t want to expose my weakness when it comes to the tender and sensitive topic of love and marriage. I like the idea of being the Wonder Woman of the single set. However, I realized what use is my story and my telling it if I’m not even honest? So here is my honesty, in all its insecure, stumbling glory.**

Like many other mid-20-somethings across the country, this summer exploded in a shower of weddings. I’m at that age now where getting married no longer sounds insane or foreign, and so I’ve been toasting, hugging, and YMCAing from here to Virginia all summer. This past weekend was my final wedding for the season, and I have to admit — I’m sad it was.

Now I know I’ve grumbled a little, since weddings don’t come cheap and let’s face it, sometimes I am (cheap, that is). But really, truly? I LOVE weddings — I’m the one always dabbing my eyes at the ceremony, ooohing and ahhhing over the ring, the cake, the dresses, and am always one of the last ones on the dance floor, busting my extremely graceful white girl dance moves until the DJ tells us to leave or until I stop, for fear of injuring those in a 5 foot radius of me. I file things away in my “Future Wedding” folder on my laptop when I find dresses I like, invitations, menus, hairstyles, engagement photo poses, anything. I am a sap for love and a nerd for weddings — it’s true.

(See, look how excited I was at Kirk’s wedding!)

Via Facebook, I’ve gotten to be privy to many other weddings I didn’t attend (hello photo albums!) and I’ve spent hours looking through all the stunning photography. (This guy in particular went to college with me and even though I didn’t know him, I am just a teeny bit obsessed with his photography…it’s seriously incredible.) It’s something about how a camera can capture a couple’s love that just astounds me…like making art out of emotion. The lens (and photographer) seems to find what is most beautiful about the bride and the groom and explodes it into Technicolor for all to see.

As I page through all of these stunning pictures, I come face to face with my own insecurities, which is always an ugly and unpleasant encounter. I always like to think I’ve conquered them, as a woman who is on the whole pretty happy with myself. I like to think that I will eventually get to a point where I don’t need to continually ask God who I am and be satisfied with His answer over and over and over again. I like to think that I will get past being jealous of other girls who have better hair than I do or are skinnier or prettier or have whiter teeth. Surrounded by the stunning beauty of this kaleidoscope of wedding photos, I end up feeling lumpy and ugly, instead of uplifted and inspired.

And it’s so, so, so stupid.

Whatever harsh, judgmental voice lives in my head, it snaps awake and immediately begins haranguing me with insults.

“You won’t look that pretty…if you find someone who will marry you, anyway.”

“Did you SEE those pictures from the last wedding that you went to? Sooooo AWK-WARD.”

“Whoa whoa whoa. Why are you taking mental notes on what poses you like? YOU certainly won’t look like THAT.”

And on it goes, until I eventually close the window, take a few deep breaths, crumble a little, pray a lot, and eventually return to my senses.

I absolutely hate that I do this. And even when I realize that it’s stupid and untrue, what is my first thought?

“Guys don’t like insecure girls. If you tell anyone about this or own up to it, no one will like you.”

Fighting this internal poison seems to be a lifelong battle for me and one that I have timidly stepped away from most of the time. Whatever wounds and disconnections that have been made in past relationships, I haven’t really dealt very upfrontly with most of them. I suppose I love watching other peoples’ love stories because I’m still not sure if I believe that I will have one and I seem to prefer escapism instead of dealing with my own problems.

I was reading my blog friend Kate’s blog awhile back, and came across a song she had posted that really hit me hard. Like really hard…like target between-the-eyes hard. Reading the lyrics flash across the screen, I realized something. Not that “if you believe you deserve love, love will find you” or “you have to love yourself before someone else can love you.” I realized loving who I am is a lifelong process and fight and it’s not about finding someone AFTER I learn how to do that. It’s about finding someone who will work alongside me and HELP me do that (though ultimately, it really is between me and the Man Upstairs).

(Read the lyrics of this song.)

I work so hard to discover beauty in everyone else and rarely look for it in myself. It’s a naughty, naughty habit and it’s about time that I kicked it for the billionth time.

[deep breath]

So I’m going to try.

The time is 2:55 am and it is now that I am realizing that my self-proclaimed “caffeine immunity” is, in fact, fictional. Espresso at 9 pm was Not a Good Idea. Two Americanos in one day was also probably not wise. (But I finally tried Madcap’s coffee…and mmmmm, was it yummy.)

So here I am, after my second attempt to fall asleep.
Caffeine: 1, Me: 0

I’m even typing in the dark, with the hopes that the lack of real light will lull me to sleep. In fact, it is just giving me a headache and is probably lethal for my vision.

So outside of that, I had other intentions/ideas running through my head as I reopened my laptop to write this.

I went to one of the loveliest weddings I have ever been to today. It wasn’t because it was a close friend (a girl I work with, who I don’t know very well) or because it was the fanciest (“short ‘n’ sweet” is a good way to describe it). Its beauty came from the fact that I have never seen two people more excited to marry each other than the couple I witnessed today. Joy, the purest, most unblemished and absolute joy, poured from them as they looked at each other — the entire time, I felt like I was intruding on some kind of private moment.

I have thought a lot over the years about what my wedding would be like if I get married — the dress, the food, the people. (Heck, I will go out on a limb to be extremely embarrassed here but after the romance of the day, coupled with my enormous, silly crush on the guy I bought my lettuce from at the Farmer’s Market today, I spent two hours tonight reading a blog on weddings when I have no immediate or impending plans of marriage.) However, the past few days, I have realized something.

I don’t know how to be in an “us.” I have absolutely no clue what it means to stop being “just me.”

I know how to be alone. I know how much to spend on two weeks’ worth of groceries for one. I know how to plan out next steps for one, and how to arrange vacations for one. I know what kind of furniture I like and what I will name my future cat when I finally find a studio that I like. I know how to wake up in the morning, and know I can do whatever I want. I know how to go run errands in a tshirt and glasses without caring, because no one will know that I slept in that tshirt.

I have absolutely no clue how to be in a relationship, and frankly, as much as it awes and excites me, it terrifies me even more. My few short relationship encounters never moved far past the “you’re pretty, no, YOU’RE pretty” stage and then imploded, and then ended. I don’t know what comes after that. It’s been two years since I’ve even been on a date (minus one last fall that I was completely unaware WAS a date and then had to awkwardly explain that to the guy who thought it was that it wasn’t). As I sat there today, watching this couple tenderly and humbly wash each other’s feet (literally, it was amazing), I realized that I don’t know how to do that. I know how to wash my own feet, but past that, it’s akin to landing on the moon with only a packet of freeze-dried ice cream and absolutely no NASA training or equipment.

I suppose all that relationship and “us” stuff is what you learn along the way (which is probably why relationships are so hard). I just know that in the precious gift that my single life has been, it has also spoiled me and I think made me a little selfish. Giving up that independence will be hard someday, even for someone that I love.

Hmmmmm.
So those are my thoughts, hyped up on too much espresso and probably too honest through the veil of restless sleep deprivation.

I will end my post with these two gems:

1. I have managed to keep this basil plant alive and actually growing for a solid week. I think this deserve a parade and possibly a national holiday.

2. I bought the most stunning peonies at the market this morning, and felt like a French woman as I carried them in my canvas bag back home. Aren’t they just scrumptious?

I am going to say the thing that you aren’t supposed to say as a single, independent, sassy woman.

I am lonely.

I wouldn’t say I am lonely for company, for I am blessed to be surrounded by an ever-growing pool of amazing friends and family that surprise me every day with how extraordinary they make my life. I’m not lonely for meaning, for I am doggedly chasing after a wild God that is teaching me joy and love in every single breath. I’m not lonely for things to do, for I live in a city I adore more and more every day. I can go to a coffee shop with just a book and my thoughts and be absolutely content for hours. In the grand sense of the fullness of life, I am not lonely for love.

But still.
I am lonely.

I’ve bought into the stigma that surrounds this word, this idea that being lonely is being pathetic and weak. In the cradle of my control tendencies, I mostly refuse to acknowledge being lonely, because it automatically forces me to admit that I cannot control my own loneliness. I was talking to my friend Amanda about this today, and as I forced out the word “lonely,” I actually felt humiliated. Acknowledging the presence of this loneliness and naming it, it rips off the Band-Aid that I can work enough and be involved enough and have enough friends that I’ll eventually stop thinking about that pesky desire to fall in love.

Well, that’s just a lie. And while I’ve managed not to focus on finding someone in any kind of psychotic manner, like the main character in “He’s Just Not That Into You,” I would be lying if I said that I had managed to cure my acute awareness that I am indeed single.

My dating experiences have been few and far between, and I promise, in all honesty, I will be the first to tell you that being single has been one of the greatest blessings of my life. In this time God has given to me (and I do believe it’s a gift), I have learned so much about who I am, and the world that surrounds me. I have been given the time to discover my passions and have my eyes opened to all the places it can lead. I’ve formed my own special traditions, like taking myself on dates. I make plans all the time for what my life is and will be, and as of now, I am content enough to plan for just me. I have seen many incredible places that have developed in me a deep love of traveling that I might not have had if I would have settled down at a young age. In fact, this fall, I am meeting a dear friend (hello Paddy, if you’re reading this!) in Ireland, a trip that I most certainly wouldn’t have been able to take if I was married or probably even dating someone. (What husband or boyfriend do you know that would happily send their wife or girlfriend off to backpack through a foreign country with another guy?) My singleness has been a gateway for so many incredible things, people, and experiences that I could not and would not have had otherwise.

Yet still, I am a woman. As much as I will scoff at them, I have feelings and emotions that tend to get the best of me when confronted with a sappy movie or pretty much any Joshua Radin song. I’ve written more embarrassing journal entries than I can count about relationships, and yet I am probably not much the wiser for it. I tend to really just confuse myself more (I can talk in circles like you wouldn’t believe…I give myself vertigo sometimes).

There are times when I am certain that there is someone out there for me, and others when I am not so sure. (Some days, my life feels like a Kate Nash song. But some days, not so much.)

Perhaps most importantly, being single has taught me confidence in knowing that even in meeting someone, whomever he may be, he will not fulfill me or love me in any way that God didn’t already do first. Even alone, I rest in the assurance that I am not incomplete.

Still…to have someone to share my daily life with, to make plans to, to love and create a life and family with. Well…I want that. I think there are plenty of people who can be happily single and celibate their entire lives, and it’s amazing. I just don’t think I’m one of them. I want to be a wife and a mother with all my heart, and I’ve stopped seeing that as an affliction.

So I wait.

Not for “the one,” for I have broke myself of that myth. While I believe firmly in standards and sticking to them, I don’t think that waiting around for the one singular person that apparently amongst billions of people completes you is useful or practical. I think there are probably more people than you’d think who could be “the one.” I suppose I just haven’t met any of mine yet (at least not knowingly).

And that’s okay.

(Thanks to Leigh, the amazing designer of Curly Girl Designs, for this. Seriously…I want all her prints.)

I suppose tonight I am just lonely, and it’s late enough that I am willing to write it for the whole world to read. (Late nights tend to make me much more likely to be honest about the tricky things.)

So to anyone else out there, who is finding shame in being lonely, just know that I am too. And it’s okay. You’re okay. We’re okay.

(And as one person I read recently put it, being single is its own beautiful gift and distinct lifestyle. We aren’t just “misfits or married people waiting to happen.” So don’t let anyone treat you like one.)

(My favorite Curly Girl print.)

I am uncomfortable with letting God love me because I can’t figure out His love.
And when I don’t understand things, I resist them.

When I think about God loving the world, I tend to think in very “big picture” terms. He loves the world, He loves the widows and orphans, the lilies in the fields, and the sparrows in the air. But when I think about Him loving me, like truly, intimately loving ME, that picture gets very, very small. I suppose I’ve always thought of God’s love in the way that I see my mom loving me; He loves me because He is somehow genetically engineered to think everything about me is wonderful “just as it is” — sort of a tolerant, ruffle-your-hair kind of love.  He loves me because He’s God and has to — in my head, He loves me but doesn’t actually want me. In reality and most importantly, in truth, nothing about God’s love is half-hearted or apathetic. Rather, His love is gentle and quiet, wooing me when I put him at a distance, and fiery and jealous, willing to use everything from sunrises to prophecy to convince me that I am drenched in His fiercely personal love.

He doesn’t just love me. He desires me, He wants me, He longs for me and will pursue me until the earth crumbles to dust. Not because He has to, not because He’s trying to be nice; He loves me because it is who He is. He seeks me, His beloved, His daughter, His bride, because there is a place in His heart for me that no one else can fill. If He is a God that is never-ending, then His love can never be quenched; even the whole of humanity could not use up His love, fill up the places in His heart that hunger for us. And realizing that is like the most painful joy you can imagine — painful because I still cannot understand it, and joy because I know in all its majesty, it’s true.

There is this amazing place in downtown Grand Rapids called the Bridge Street House of Prayer. They run a free coffee shop for people in the West Side neighborhood, have community living houses, and also hold different classes and gatherings in a room they call the “Tabernacle,” including prayer and worship on Saturday nights. My roommate Rachel has been going for a few weeks, and I tagged along this week. In short, it was an amazing and humbling experience. I am still baffled at how I can feel so comfortable and close to God in a room full of people I don’t know. I suppose I could sense that everyone else was there was bathed in a Spirit of love and grace, and it made me feel more okay with falling to my knees, broken, confused, angry, and without answers. Feeling that we have to come forward with our angel halos firmly in place dissuades a lot of people from be willing to be broken and to admit that we desperately, desperately thirst for Love that we cannot explain or understand. No one wants to be the one on their knees when everyone else is standing. It is quite a different experience to look up and realizing that no one is looking down on you, but rather is curled up next to you, with hands spread out, begging for grace.

This week, one of the guys who lives at the Bridge Street HOP began speaking during the worship. He said that he believed that there were people there who needed to hear that they were loved. After awhile, he just began repeating, “He loves you. He loves you, He loves you, He loves you.” In all of my stupidity and stubbornness, in my manic need for control and answers, in my selfishness and apathy, He loves me. I spend a lot of time telling other people that Jesus loves them, but rarely stop to hear what My Father, my Shepherd, my Lover, is whispering to me.

I pepper Him with questions all the time: “Am I good enough? Am I pretty enough? Am I nice enough? Am I busy enough?” He listens in the greatest patience, as I scrawl my broken-record confusions in a journal and never tires of providing the same answer: I am enough so you don’t have to be. You are beautiful because I made you that way. I am always, always coming back for you.

My last year in university, I took my one and only night class. The class would usually wrap up around 9pm and I would bundle up, head out in the cold and snow, and walk home as quickly as possible. Between the cold and the imaginary rapists hiding in every bush and darkened doorway, I would take shortcuts through the library and scurry home in a rush. One night, I decided to hell with the cold and rapists and took the long way home. It was snowing those big, fluffy flakes that look fake and it was quiet enough to hear them falling on top of each other. They were sticking to my eyelashes and the tip of my nose, and I just began laughing. Not just silent chuckles, but full-out belly laughs. I was a little girl, giggling with delight and dancing a waltz with the falling snow. I stopped and looked up into the never-ending night sky, deep and dark, filled with snowflakes that were coming from nowhere and everywhere. It filled every inch of the air without force or pressure; it was the most natural thing in the world and I couldn’t see an end or edge of its reach. It was one of the most incredible things I’d ever seen.

“I love you this much, Caroline.”

I stopped. While it wasn’t audible, I knew very clearly that I was not the one who said it or thought it. It had come from a whole Other place but it was the dearest voice in the world that spoke it. I knew that voice — it was as familiar as breathing to me. I had just stopped listening for it.

That is where He finds me each time. Not in my busyness, not in my anxiety that I’m never doing enough, not when I am striking a pose in my balancing act; I feel like I don’t need His love then, not when there are things to do and balance to be maintained. He finds me in my exhaustion, in my silence, in my solitude, in my shattered, messy, tender and wounded places that I won’t grieve for. I stopped feeling loved when I hold my hands over my ears to the Love that is writing symphonies around me. But He will never stop telling me.

I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.

I haven’t been able to sleep the past few nights and tonight, I find myself dreaming without the aid of closed eyes.

I am thinking of love letters tonight. Not just the “Hey there, you’re swell, luv ya bunches” emails or texts or something equally quick and thoughtless. But a real, honest to goodness, handwritten love letter. It’s a lost art that, in a world where there is still love, should never be lost. It has just been maimed, squeezed into moments where we have time to scratch a few lines in a greeting card we picked up near the grocery checkout or a Post-it that you stick on a computer screen. But I think it’s high time that real love letters had a comeback (and after the hordes of women who sighed over that scene in the “Sex and the City” movie, I think they just might…at least a little).

While I openly admit that things like Jane Austen have perhaps marred my expectations of 21st century men, I am still dreamy-eyed enough to be looking for a man who will write me love letters. My mom tells me about these letters that my dad wrote her when they were engaged (he denies they are as sappy as she claims) and how sweet they were, brimming with dreams of their marriage and life together. (Sorry Dad if you read this and blush.) I don’t care if we live in a world of emails and Facebook, darn it, I still want a man who will take the time to do something entirely sentimental and time-consuming like write me love letters. Gentlemen of the world, take note. Give me a bouquet of beautiful words from the heart rather than roses any day.

Here are some of my favorites (some old, some new):

“I already love in you your beauty, but I am only beginning to love in you that which is eternal and ever precious – your heart, your soul. Beauty one could get to know and fall in love with in one hour and cease to love it as speedily; but the soul one must learn to know. Believe me, nothing on earth is given without labour, even love, the most beautiful and natural of feelings.”
-Leo Tolstoy to Valeria Arsenev, his fiance, 1856

“You fear, sometimes, I do not love you so much as you wish? My dear Girl I love you ever and ever and without reserve. The more I have known you the more have I lov’d. In every way – even my jealousies have been agonies of Love, in the hottest fit I ever had I would have died for you. I have vex’d you too much. But for Love! Can I help it? You are always new. The last of your kisses was ever the sweetest; the last smile the brightest; the last movement the gracefullest. When you pass’d my window home yesterday, I was fill’d with as much admiration as if I had then seen you for the first time.”
-John Keats, to Fanny Brawne, 1820

“I will give you this, my love, and I will not bargain or barter any longer. I will love you, as sure as He has loved me. I will discover what I can discover and though you remain a mystery, save God’s own knowledge, what I disclose of you I will keep in the warmest chamber of my heart, the very chamber where God has stowed Himself in me. And I will do this to my death, and to death it may bring me. I will love you like God, because of God, mighted by the power of God. I will stop expecting your love, demanding you love, trading for your love, gaming for your love. I will simply love. I am giving myself to you, and tomorrow I will do it again. I suppose the clock itself will wear thin its time before I am ended at this altar of dying and dying again. God risked Himself on me. I will risk myself on you. And together, we will learn to love, and perhaps then, and only then, understand this gravity that drew Him, unto us.”
-Donald Miller, excerpt from a play described in Blue Like Jazz

Abigail Adams used to begin all her letters to her husband John the same way: “My dearest Friend.” I love that. What is love, real love, if it is not first the dearest and best friendship? It’s a beautiful thought — being able to pour your heart and soul into a single letter to someone who is both your lover and closest friend. Just imagining that in itself is enough of a reason to understand why people write love letters in the first place. I have only been in love once in my life and I wrote him a poem about it. I wasn’t planning on giving it to him at all, but for some reason, I decided to. I was so embarrassed while he was reading it that I stuffed my face in a pillow and wouldn’t look up until he tugged the pillow out of my grip and forced me to look at him. He didn’t say a word but just held me for a long time. I suppose in a way, that in itself was a love letter — he knew that even had he tried, at that moment, the words for what he wanted to say hadn’t been written yet.

I don’t suppose love letters will ever go entirely out of fashion, because I don’t believe we will ever reach a point where we run out of things to say about love or to those we love. Humanity will spend its entire existence looking for words to translate something that is by its virtue unknowable into something we can take between our hands and say, “Look. This feeling, this song on the tip of my tongue, this swelling in my heart that threatens to overwhelm all that I am, here it is to see and hear and touch.” We will never stop trying to use our senses to convey into words the language that is tapped out only in heartbeats.

Love letters will always be there because inherently, as creatures whose divine source is Love, we cannot separate our longing for connection and love from the desire to pull other people into it and make them understand what it is, what it feels like. We search for language to write a map to this crevice deep in ourselves that is only known by this Love and that we spend our lives trying to translate. It is something much too holy and sacred and precious for words to know, for it is a language that was spoken on that first day and will not be heard again until the last. On that day, I believe that for the first time, I will hear and understand and say, “Yes. For all these years, in all the lifetimes on earth, that is what we were trying to say.”

I just love this:

“I am a little pencil in the hand of a God who is sending a love letter to the world.”
-Mother Teresa of Calcutta

What a beautiful woman.
What a beautiful world.
What a beautiful God.

I think God’s love makes people nervous. When we try to wrap our puny human brains around the idea of “for God so loved the world,” we freeze in fear. The world? Like the whole world? Even the terrorists and George W. Bush and my pervy next-door neighbor?

In The Ragamuffin Gospel, Brennan Manning writes this:

“One thing we do know: We don’t comprehend the love of Jesus Christ. Oh, we see a movie and resonate to what a young man and woman will endure for romantic love. We know that when the chips are down, if we love wildly enough we’ll fling life and caution to the winds for the one we love. But when it comes to God’s love in the broken, blood-drenched body of Jesus Christ, we get antsy and start to talk about theology, divine justice, God’s wrath and the heresy of universalism.”

In a blow against the very human concept of favoritism, we have a hard time comprehending how God can love a rapist and Mother Teresa equally. Is He blind? Cannot He not see that one is far more worthy of love than another? I am starting to get the sneaky feeling that God’s love isn’t based so much on who we are, but perhaps that we simply are. He loved us from the beginning, before our bodies were formed, before we start making mistakes, before we began hurting people or over-consuming or driving Hummers. He loves us because we exist.

“For You created my inmost being;
You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from You
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

Your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in Your book
before one of them came to be.”

Psalm 139: 13-16

This truest kind of unconditional love always gives us the option of grace. Anything less, a love with qualifications and boundaries, would have no room for redemption. Christ’s empty tomb showed us that we can no longer have crucifixion without resurrection. He insists that we always have the options of light and dark. His love is simply a path with hints that show up in all kinds of ways, reminding us that He is still there if and when we are ready to choose Him. If He waited for us all to be worthy before He loved us and saved us, we would never have gotten very far east of Eden. We have been breaking God’s heart since the beginning, when Abel’s blood cried out from the dust. But still He endures in love because He can do nothing else. He is hopelessly in love with this broken humanity and history is littered with stories of the lengths He goes to in order to show us.

I don’t get it personally and am pretty sure I never will. I can know that all sin is equal but still be more repulsed by murder than I am by someone who lies. It is not up to me to qualify God’s love. All I can do is say “yes” or “no.”

Every day, every moment, with every breath and heartbeat, I answer…

…”yes.”

I have been wondering the past couple of days what it is about the idea of “Prince Charming” that enthralls girls so much.

I think back to the Prince Charmings throughout the movies and stories that I grew up with — Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid. What was it about those men that made them the creme-de-la-creme, the ultimate desirable partner, the manliest man since men were manly. Okay sure, he could dance, he could sing, he could sport a cape with the most dashing ease. He was rolling in money and usually was in line to replace his doddering old father as king, while he spent most days riding horses and speaking in sonnets to his kindly manservant. He was kind to his subjects and always fought bravely. He was inexhaustibly handsome and well, charming, but once the crescendo of the closing song was hit and the credits began rolling, that was it.

(Granted, there have been several satires on the character of Prince Charming and fairy tales in general– this one is my favorite.)

Did Prince Charming ever cook Sleeping Beauty dinner? Did he rub her feet when she was pregnant and be patient with her cravings for chocolate-covered raisins and pickles? Was Prince Eric a good dad to his children or did he scamper off to battle sea monsters every time a diaper needed changing? Did Prince Charming (#2) tell Cinderella she was beautiful even when she took off the ballgown and put on sweatpants? Did her love push him to become the best version of himself?

I wish I could say I was this inquisitive about this as a child, but alas, I was just as easily pleased as every other six year old girl. My very favorite, Prince Eric, had a boat and a dog named Max, so basically all I needed was fins and long red hair, and my happily ever after was signed, sealed, delivered.

But let’s face the truth — none of them even had beards.

(See, Aragorn has a beard.)

My friend Frank once told me to always look for men that have beards.
“I hope even though you don’t have your list any more, you’re still holding out for a beard,” he said. “Real men have beards, Caroline, remember that.”

Facial hair aside, I’m not sure I subscribe to the whole idea of Prince Charming as the ultimate for anyone other than a six year old girl. In the light of age and wisdom, I don’t find him so charming anymore. I don’t want some fellow in tights to prance in on a horse, stick a sword in a dragon and expect my undying adoration and devotion. I would rather have a man whose strength didn’t hinge on the reach of his sword; who would rather live in a simple straw cottage than an elaborate palace; who became friends with the dwarves and whose merit was not earned by defending castle walls and rescuing maidens.

I don’t want to be rescued, I want to be known.

Most women aren’t looking for someone to waltz in (figuratively or literally) and save the day — they are looking for someone who care about their details. Who wants to know what your childhood best friend was like and what kind of tree houses you used to build; who can’t wait to hear the stories about each Christmas ornament that you unwrap from ratty old tissue paper; a man who cares what you center your life around and wants to understand each delicate and lovely intricacy that makes you exactly who you are. Someone who loves the snowflakes sticking to the tip of your nose and the awkward way that you smile in pictures. Who loves you even when you begin acting just like your mother and refuse to admit it.

A man can be the worst dancer in the world, wear big glasses instead of a glossy white smile or live in a paper box that wasn’t even fit to be in front of a castle. I’d rather have him fight for me by refusing to let me forget how deeply I am loved than to pull out his sword to prove how strong he is — because that’s not fighting for me, that’s fighting for him. I’m not interested in rubies and diamonds and white horses, I’m more interested in his heart and how he treats his mother when no one else is looking.

We waste so much time creating expectations for each other that we forget to fold our arms around all our imperfections. The crooked smile and extraordinarily odd habits that make people so unique — we deeply cheat ourselves when we don’t allow people the opportunity to dazzle us with exactly who they are.

I’m not looking for Prince Charming or Prince Eric or even Mr. Darcy.
I’m just waiting for someone else…I can’t wait to meet you.