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.