Rubber and Roads

--for those who are seeing them meet right now.

Any of my close friends and any number of random acquaintances--along with a professional therapist or two--know that while I was in graduate school, I was enduring the prolonged trial of a (mostly non-)relationship that was largely static, with a delicately tortuous mix of high drama, poignant agony, erratic romance, pathetic betrayal, and dark satire. It emerged, devolved, reverted, and otherwise progressed at a glacial pace over a period of eight (yes, eight) years, mostly during occasional long-distance visits and overly contemplated letters.

When I think back on it, it's impossible not to feel foolish, and I knew even at the time that I was acting unwisely, gambling on things I knew better than to trust, and hoping against my better judgment that it would all work out in the end. Even though those years, from age 24-31, saw me gain a much more accurate sense of myself and what I wanted in other respects, I knew that within that relationship, I was becoming less secure and way more fragile--in other words, far less capable of participating in the kind of relationship that I wanted anyway.

And so, part of me thinks that during that time, and especially in that context, I was definitely at my most un-Christlike, or most unlike the person that God would want me to be: I was insecure, self-absorbed, depressed, and distracted.

And yet. I also wonder if something about being driven to the edge of my own personal sanity, about being out of control of my own heart, about living in the knowledge of my constant failure and helplessness over it, might have been, in fact, honest and profoundly true in a way that is impossible to access within the much neater boundaries of the kind of healthier relationships that I am now (and was then in other cases) more careful to establish. There's something so desperate and needy, so full of heartache and rage, about the letters of Paul and even the sermons of Jesus, that suggests that they weren't people who observed wise boundaries where the heart was concerned either.

In the end, I didn't successfully battle it out, or experience some spiritual victory that anyone could weave into a narrative of the power of faith; things fizzled and drifted and remained largely unresolved. And then after a short time, I met Sam, and our being together was inevitable in a way that meant there were no other considerations; thus, I moved on, but never really experienced a specific answer to the years of prayers that that relationship or that time would be redeemed in some recognizable way. And I don't need that; I just mean to say that I never triumphed; I just endured, and did that only involuntarily and only with a lot of whining and pathetic behavior--like a toddler with a temper tantrum who never seems to give up the desire for something bad for her or learn any lesson, but just happens to be distracted by something better. Except that maybe there in the midst of the kicking and screaming and crying was some authentic expression of myself, as sinner, that my efforts at dignity and concern for appearances otherwise shield me from. So while I don't ever really want to revisit that dynamic in my life, I also wonder if that doesn't explain the cross in "crucible."