I was feeling heavy from this all day. After getting up at B’s house and having her say like 4 things that I disliked, I got into a really dark mood. I was not feeling love. It was a feeling more like frustration or maybe even almost disgust. I watched a TV show about the landing on the moon and a character said to her daughter, “You should watch this because you will remember it the rest of your life.” I thought, B wouldn’t be astute enough to recognize that those moments are the ones you remember, unless she heard the idea from someone else. What a weird thing to obsess over, right?
I Marco Polo’d her (a video messaging app) and forced my self to say some things I liked about her. I told her about how when I proposed this weekend I liked how she socialized with all my family and all the people. And I sent another that said I really liked how she gets along with my step mom. This sometimes has the power to replace heavy thoughts with good ones, but today it was like I still had a bad though hangover.
I wanted to talk to someone but almost anyone I could think of would get tired of me having these feelings after just proposing. They’d say get out or you can’t complain. You’re making this decision. I finally talked to my friend W. He is grace filled and has plenty of days he wants to talk about the difficulties in his marriage. He is a great support.
But in my last Marco Polo I said I’d love to see you tonight.
It was so sweet. We went to IKEA which seems like my only fairly safe place. I’ve shut down, or had negative feelings, at just about every location we’ve gone to around our city. And those shut down memories seem resonate as the strongest and longest lasting in my mind. It’s sad that they contaminate all the good memories.
Our IKEA time was sweet. I recognized a few things right away that bothered me. The types of things I’ve shut down about before about sounding naive or uninformed. Some days they take me down and other days I can still have a wonderful time despite them.
Today was a wonderful day.
I was teetering right on the edge until the video guy sent us the video from our proposal day. It was beautiful. The song “Let’s burn the bridges down” was the theme song and it reminded us that we are moving forward and burning the bridges behind us because we’re deciding we will never turn back.
Then B told me about something she realized during a worship service she was at this morning (they have corporate worship one day a week at her ministry). And as they sang this song that said, You are good in the morning, you are good in the evening, she remembered all of the people over the years that told her they were praying for her future husband. From pastors in Haiti to dozens of widows from one of the ministries she taught at.
I got this idea that it is not me alone on this battlefield of my confused emotions. there is a whole cloud of witnesses offering up prayers for many years for me. For me. For me to love B well. I plan to write a story and make an art piece about that tonight.
I also read her some of the notes from my counseling session. She might not have gathered a new insight or anything from me reading them, but she mentioned, do you want to pick one of those things to focus on right now?
I said, that’s a really, really great idea. I thought. “Yes, I want to practice loving unconditionally. And if I ever question that tell myself, no, this is what I believe will bring us the most success.”
Then we went and ate Chipotle. And we talked about wedding plans. We agreed that we both want it to be a wedding that is a worship service and is vulnerable about our struggles so that it can convince people of the beauty that God can bring in difficulty. We want to the first priority to be exchanging vows, but second we want people to be drawn closer to God through our wedding.
She showed me a venue her roommate sent to her. Its capacity is 64 people. Guess how many people were on our guest list?
64.
It was a really good evening with her after a very hard day. I choose to believe there is purpose in the struggle. I choose to live like there is purpose. And by living this way I GIVE it purpose.
R 2-15-21
Relationship-OCD 