Fairy Tale Romances

Maybe it was doomed from the start. He was a senior, I was a freshman. His wealthy and prominent family paid for his schooling, while I worked two jobs and still had to take out loans. He was in the sciences, I was in humanities. Either it was doomed to end, or it had all the makings of the beginning to a fairy tale. I’m a 21st century girl, so I bet on the fairy tale.

I’ve always been good at research. Every time I discover a new creature, I search out all the information I can find on it. I want to know what it is, how to take care of it, how not to kill it, and what boundaries will keep it the healthiest. But no matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find a single clear and logical guide on how to deal with a guy.

Huh. Go figure.

So I winged it. And maybe I didn’t do very well - I was certainly terrible at setting boundaries - but I did end up falling in love, which is just as sparkly as you’ve heard it is. Everything I remember from this time has a warm glow to it. Sometimes it was like being as light as a sunbeam, thinking about him, and sometimes it hurt in an odd way, especially if I didn’t see him for a while. He was always on my mind. I even smiled and laughed differently, and it must have been obvious to anyone who knew the signs, because one day my Polish work study boss asked me, “Beth-Ah-ny, are you in luff?”

“Yes,” I laughingly replied, “How are you?”

“Well,” She said emphatically, “I am not in luff!”

All my big plans and dreams were changing to include him, or abandoned entirely in favor of him. He could’ve told me he got a job manufacturing nuclear weapons for North Korea, and I would’ve started thinking maybe North Korea wasn’t such a bad place after all and look into real estate in scenic Pyongyang.

The last time I saw him was when we had lunch together at Bob’s Cafeteria a few days before he graduated. We had a great conversation, as always, and as we left he smiled at me and said, “See you later.”

I never heard from him again.

I knew he was alive, because this is the 21st century and we have Facebook. He posted updates and commented on friends’ statuses, but ignored my posts on his page and didn’t reply to my texts (I only sent a few because I didn’t want to be that girl).

Not the ending you expected? I definitely didn’t see it coming. I felt so devalued, as though I mattered so little that he didn’t even have to bother breaking up with me. Maybe I was just his fun distraction during his last semester, and that made me feel like an idiot: a used idiot. I’m a little ashamed of it now, but I cried nearly every day that summer. Once, I had a dream that I saw him eating dinner with another girl and they were kissing and cuddling. I walked over to his chair, grabbed the top, pulled it backwards onto the floor, put my foot on his throat and snarled, “You could have at least told me.” I woke up surprised by my own violence.

Just as I could find no guide for keeping the relationship healthy, I couldn’t research out an answer to why it ended.

But fairytales always have a lesson, and I’ve learned a lot from this one lovely, horrible experience. For one, I can empathize with others who are entering relationships without a guidebook, and at least tell them, “Here is what I did that I should not have done.”

Also, when I read in the Word that not only does Jesus love me, but He’s in love with me, I understand a little bit more what that means.

When I flipped open the Message translation of the Bible this morning, it fell to Psalm 45. “Now listen my daughter, don’t miss a word: forget your country, put your home behind you. Be here - the king is wild for you...her wedding dress is dazzling...she is led by the king, followed by her companions. A procession of joy and laughter!”

I think this psalm is actually talking about a specific and historic wedding, but it sounds a lot like the wedding between God and the church (the church being Christians, not a building) described in the New Testament. It used to weird me out, trying to think of God as a groom and the church, including me, as a bride. But I think I’m starting to get it. I am so in love with Him that I will go to North Korea if He holds my hand all the way there, and I will go laughing because His love makes me light. It would hurt to be apart from Him, and the closer we are, the more joyful I am. To become so close to Him that I become a part of Him - that we become one - is my hope, like the hope of a bride planning her wedding.

Oh, don’t get me wrong - I still secretly want a sweet husband and chubby, dark-eyed babies. It’s just that I want God even more, because growing closer to Him has been more fulfilling and thrilling than the temporary experience of falling in love. Seriously, though, I’m not just saying this like it’s a religious requirement. Falling in love keeps sliding down the “awesomeness” scale, steadily being one-upped by the experiences of staying up into the early morning to describe God’s love to a Buddhist, and praying for a stranger on a train in Fort Worth, and finding all my financial needs met in the most unexpected ways, and repeatedly, the sudden feeling to say or do something specific to one person and then discovering it was exactly what they needed. We are told that falling in love is the best thing that can happen to you, and maybe that is the best thing that can happen to you. But the best thing of all is to be Love.

An Unexpected Ransom

We have your glove. Give us the money or else.

I was working hard in the Commons, trying to make good use of schedule break. I glanced at the text from Pierce, and quickly replied, Prove that it's my glove. Why should I believe you have MY glove?

Instead of a reply, he sent this picture.

That's definitely my glove, beneath the frowny face on Brianna's hand. I gave up trying to work and we bartered the terms of my glove's return.

Pierce: $5,000,000,000,000. Meet us in the alley behind the homeless man with a purple hat.

Me: Well...I can't pay that, but I do have something that might interest you more. But we will meet on my terms. Indoors, near people.

Pierce: We are in your work study building. We have lots of people. But they are hostages. Be here. Or be square.

Me: Ok, ok, just don't do anything...drastic.

Pierce:

I packed my backpack and hurried down to the engineering complex, making sure to take a route where they couldn't see me coming. I swung open the door to the pedestrian sky bridge they were on and caught them in the middle of a wrestling fight over my glove.

"I got the goods!" I declared, and pulled a new box of chalk out of my pocket.

Brianna and Pierce stopped struggling over the glove, eyes lighting up at my ransom. "Forget this!" Pierce grabbed the box.

Then we decided to draw a picture outside.

This is just one of the many unexpected, wonderful things that happens often at college. Every day is different.

A Pursuit of Larger Ends

When I went to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day speech last Thursday, I really didn't expect to end up in front of a crowd.

It was one of those odd switches. It's something like when you buy a cup of coffee for someone with your last dollar, and then someone buys a whole meal for you. Hours after surrendering my pride and the need to have attention, I stood with my back to an audience of hundreds who cheered and clapped for me.

This wasn't planned. I had already been wanting to go to Les Purce's speech, not because he's the president of Evergreen College, but because he was speaking on topics related to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and as the first black person to be elected as an official in Idaho, I thought he would have an interesting perspective. So instead of staying home watching episodes of Turtleman, I climbed the hill to the Administration Building to listen to Purce.

If you ever end up on the University of Idaho campus, one of the most beautiful things to see - if you stop a moment and really look - is the administration building on a speech night, when the stained-glass windows glow between the wreaths of ivy just below the stars. I was a little apprehensive about going to the speech alone but the windows were worth it.

Purce joked with Don Burnett, the interim UI president, and sang us an entire song without accompaniment. Surprisingly, he didn't focus too much on race issues. He talked about poverty, and how Martin Luther King Jr. was an advocate of the poor regardless of race because "we are inevitably our brothers' keepers." He talked about his family, especially of how his grandmother found ways to help people even though she wasn't allowed to be the teacher she was trained to be.

Les Purce. With a cake.

After the speech, there were two questions, and then there was a gap of silence. I wanted to get up and share my heart and I figured there would be a way to turn it into a question if I talked long enough, so I walked to the microphone smiling vaguely at the stage.

"Hi, I'm Bethany."

"Hello Bethany, where are you from?"

"Joseph, Oregon."

"Ah, Joseph! That's a beautiful place!"

"Yes, I love it...So I was in your speech, actually."

"Really?"

"I'm the one who never went to high school because of poverty."

I should have been so nervous that my voice would be shaking, but Les has a big smile and this natural ease about him, and that made me feel like I was talking to a friend.

"I can't believe I get to go to college. Sometimes my friends complain about having to take classes, and I try to be sympathetic, but inside I'm thinking, 'I'm so lucky to be here. You're so lucky to be here.'"

We talked about the poverty mindset and I said I didn't believe you could throw money at the poor to fix their problems. The only thing I've seen that's worked is individual attention. Are there any programs that can actually help?

He asked me questions about how I got this individual attention, and made a light bulb click on over my head when he commented, "Programs are full of people."

He asked what year in college I was and what I wanted to do. When I said I'd be graduating in December with a major in public relations and minors in Spanish and political science, he said, "You go!" And the crowd was suddenly clapping and Les said I needed to come to his next speech because he'd sing me a song called "Joe the Bandit" about Joseph. I felt the oddest desire to bow as I thanked him and reluctantly left, so I sort of nodded deeply and smiled sheepishly.

I sat down brimming with gratitude for everything, and feeling like God had just spoken through me somehow to at least one person, so that when Les said we must be in a "pursuit of ends larger than ourselves" he was confirming what I felt like God had been telling me earlier.

I've been a small group leader for a Bible study for the last semester, but I don't think I can do it anymore. I'm too self-centered and power hungry to be a true leader. Somehow I can always turn things around so they're about me instead of God. I'm sure I even steal the spotlight from my group members.

And then God said, "You don't want to be a leader? Then stop. Be a servant."

Brenda Zollman told me as I spilled all my troubles to her over the phone, "If you didn't feel desperate, you wouldn't hang on to Him. If you have to rely on Him, you're exactly where you need to be."

It sounds a little awful to be desperate - but I don't think it's the "my car just broke down in East Portland" type of desperate. Today it felt a little bit more like being in love - when you feel an urgency to be with the other person, as though it almost hurts to be away from them. It's a sensitivity that's impossible to keep forever, but you wish you could, even though it hurts.

Light is Never a Heavy Burden

Listen to this while you read. Or just watch and listen! (Link is here if the player doesn't work.)

Stop. Stop trying to figure everything out. Stop trying to redirect your entire life. Stop beating yourself up because you're not who you think you should be. Stop. And be still. Hush. Hold onto Me. Here I am - just turn around and I will be there.

I am not the petty, demanding God you have in your head. I am HE who spoke the universe into existence because MY words are powerful. I carved canyons with a word, commanded the stars to sing, and gave life with one single breath from MY lungs.

Mt. Shivling, India. National Geographic. 

What do you think I need from you but to look at ME and all I have done out of love? You cannot help but love ME if you truly see ME.

Because I am gently and lowly of heart. My burdens are light - and the darkness cannot understand that.

"In the night the stars shine, and beyond the Cross the love of God shines; our earthly sadness, too, will be lost in the light of Jesus." (Amy Carmichael.)

Spanish Moss in Virginia

So breathe My child - rest, My girl. With a single breath I will give you life. With one word I can teach you to sing.

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God, you are in all wordless music. In music videos, people always seem to pair wordless song with images of nature. It is You showing Your beauty, the delight You have in sharing it, and there is even some sense of Truth about it - this beauty is real. You are real.

"Though I have all Power in heaven and on earth, I am infinitely tender with you. The weaker you are, the more gently I approach you. Let your weakness be a door to my presence. Whenever you feel inadequate, remember that I am your ever-present Help.

"Hope in Me, and you will be protected from depression and self-pity. Hope is like a golden cord connecting you to heaven. The more you cling to this cord, the more I bear the weight of your burdens; thus you are lightened. Heaviness is not of My kingdom. Cling to hope, and My rays of Light will reach you through the darkness."
(Sarah Young)

"And a light shined in the cell,

And there was not any wall,

And there was no dark at all,

Only Thou, Emmanuel.

Light of Love shined in the cell,

Turned to gold the iron bars,

Opened windows to the stars,

Peace stood there as sentinel.

Dearest Lord, how can it be

That Thou art so kind to me?

Love is shining in my cell,

Jesus, my Emmanuel."

(Amy Carmichael)