That Girl: Do You Remember Her?

Somewhere, deep inside of me, an eight year old girl still lives. That girl who would stand on the deck of her house and wish the Rockies would stand up and trade places simply because they were bored. That wild horses ran loose in Elk Meadow. That hot chocolate is a summer drink just as much as a winter drink because it snows sometimes in July, even if it is melted by noon.

The third grader who insisted to her teacher that turning the notebook sideways helped her write; ridiculous right-handed bias against a left-handed student. That fourth grader who read the Hobbit, albeit in a month, and the Fellowship of the Ring and White Fang a year later, despite the insistence of her teacher that it was above her level and she did not want poor quiz scores to lower AR reading levels.

That girl who got an 18/20 on those reading quizzes and who was reading near college level at twelve. Who created her own world and its heritage in middle school and began the first draft of her first novel at age 13. The girl who fought through an eighth grade year of stupid boys  and numerous sick days to get her only 4.0 GPA for her final quarter. The girl who moved six times across the country and around the Pacific Northwest.

That girl. The one who despised page limits. Who railed against an average vocabulary and people who did not think. After all, it's the new sexy. The girl so bookish, she could lose herself for hours and read hundreds of pages, if not a whole book, in a day. Who tried her hand at romance writing and found she was good at it, despite having no personal experience to draw from and still does not.

That girl.
She got lost a few years ago.
Put down her pen.
Dropped her books.
Forgot the view.

You see, she fell in love with different stories. The wrong stories. She went against her nature until she suppressed it so completely. She loves people now. She loves their stories. She loves their lives and how they live it. She got involved in the mess. She became defensive of people, but never learned to be defensive of herself. She fiercely loves her friends, even when they do not fiercely love her. She enacted the traits she read about, the old-fashioned character that melded her upbringing.

She has learned the hard way.

Life is the same as the books she read. Full of danger and bravado. But no safety.

She has seen love in books and in life and rages at the discrepancy, wondering how people who know what it feels like, how they could present it as it is not. Who would do that? Who would tell them to do that?

She sees the epic quests. They are full of dragons and gold. But the dragons are not defeated. The gold is not reclaimed. It is becomes a constant fight in the singular.

And now she sits here, typing this, wondering at the girl she once was.
Wondering at the little girl I once was and how the things have changed.

And yet...some things have not. For I still remember pieces of her.

I still am one of the biggest Anglophiles you will ever meet. God Save the Queen!

I may not drink hot chocolate in July, but hot tea, any time, with milk and honey, of course.

And every week it seems, my book collection grows. Just today I added the complete and collected Sherlock Holmes as well as Kavalier & Clay. My time for reading goes down, but my book stacks in front of my shelves and boxes in the closet and garage are ever increasing. I have little time to just curl up and read, but when I do, God help you if you disrupt me.

I do not write any more, or have not since that one day, nearly three years ago. The words escape my head, my creativity in the throws of an extended drought. I know, though, that they are there, for I continue to write, just not like before, not like I used to. It may take some time, years even.

One day, I am sure of it. Perhaps I will be laying in the grass on a blanket, leaned against the chest of the man I love or with a child I would pull a star from the heavens for and it will begin again. The words will pour out, as if from my fingertips and I will not be able to stop them. And that first novel all the way back from 2004, it will find itself finished with a period, or possibly a question mark as its final punctuation. And because it was that child who gave me the words, it is those words I will read every night before they sleep until it is finished.

Yes, there are things about my eight year old, my twelve year old self I wish I could reclaim.
There was a lot of innocence in being that young, even with how much my family moved.
But there is one thing time has given me that I am thankful for and it is this simple:

If you had asked my eight year-old, boy chasing, insanely flirtatiously confident self if I was to be married I may have laughed at you and said boys have cooties, but I would like to think yes, if I could get past that. My answer has not changed. I am no longer insanely confident nor aware of flirtation, but I no longer think men contagious. If you had asked my twelve year old self, who fought with her little brother constantly, if I would have children with my husband, she would have flat out told you no, that children and siblings are the worst sort of thing you could inflict upon your self and the world around you. That answer has been completely replaced. Perspective changes everything.

And yes, do I fancy the idea that my Anglophile self will be rewarded with a husband with a fantastic voice and accompanying accent? Yes, on days I am truly ridiculous. Ordinarily, a great voice is more than enough and that designation is not strict, but must be earned.

I do not know how else to say it.

I am 22 years old...almost 23.

I freely admit that the sooner I get married, the better we all will be.

I also admit that it will probably have to be arranged, because I have no idea how it will happen.

I am massively introverted, regardless of how conversational I can be.

I spent years having the introvert beat out of me with constant demands for my attention. I am now fighting to beat the extrovert out of me. It does not belong in the dominance it has achieved.

In the future, any stories I write for my children or grandchildren or great grandchildren, I wrote solely for them. Publish something I write posthumously and see whom I haunt until eternity comes.

That girl. Do you see her now? Do you remember her, even a trace of her?

I remember that girl. She is still there. She is not gone. She is still me.

The Greatest Lie

I find myself at a loss as how best to explain myself tonight.

It almost undoes me to admit it to myself let alone other people.

Since May I have had conversations with a man I met at one of my best friend's weddings in the middle of April. We have conversed about many things:
* our love of food--particularly regional and ethnic
* we have shared music back and forth and have common favorites
* we both love insane Youtube videos and ridiculous, stupid jokes, particularly puns
* He is intelligent and driven
* He doesn't take himself too seriously, but knows when to be serious...I think
* He is family-centric
* I can see him fighting to pursue God
* He has the fortune of being able to combine his great loves with his studies and his job
* I know where he spent one of the best months of his life
* I have seen him handle a stressful situation with multiple attention demands and not lose his head
* He knows exactly how to tease me and turn me a color of red you may never have seen before
* If he had to chose another name, I know what it is
* Seeing him only twice this summer, one planned, one by luck of the draw, made me excruciatingly nervous for absolutely no reason. Spending time with him and talking with him was as easy as breathing.

What am I trying to say with all of this? As if the first part of this was not entirely laser-lighted, I have a crush on him I cannot seem to get a rein on. The worst part, as my radar is worth nothing when it comes to this sort of interaction, I have not the foggiest if there is even mutual interest, despite others suggesting there is grounds to believe there is. Besides, what man would talk exclusively to one woman for such an extended period of time?

And you know what lie the Deceiver whispered in my ear at church that Sunday, at the end of July, as I sat next to this man in question? He slithered onto my shoulder and hissed at me, "Silly, Sheridan. What were you thinking? You believed a man like him: popular, tall, and handsome would actually find something equally appealing in you? How ridiculous. But I know, he's exactly your type: the athlete, the one all the girls love, handsome, smart, from a good family, with your ever pressing and ridiculous requirement: a Godly man, especially one who treats the women around him with respect. He is exactly your type, historically. You are forgetting one small, but crucial detail: You have never dated your type. Your type has never liked you back, not that they have said anyway. What makes you think he is any different? Oh, my hell, you are so predictable. Well, sweetheart, let me burst this bubble of yours now, as you have, clearly, gotten ahead of yourself.

"Shall we examine the facts that sit next to you in this exact moment in time? I think we should. How long have you know him, three months, almost four? If he were interested, would he not have done something about it now or at least come to see you in the Springs? Not necessarily, you say. The whole long distance thing, an excuse, but then let's evaluate this then shall we? Let's describe him: 6'8", muscular build as he still maintains a fitness regimen, even if it is not as rigorous as his basketball days, sharp features--the jawline--and what other preposterous way you put it: underlying facial architecture--and the blue eyes. Of course, how could I forget, as if you were not so utterly ridiculous, his left-handedness made him even more attractive to you. You see how unfairly tipped the scale is, though, my dear? You are a foot shorter than he is and while you are not ugly or fat, you certainly do not really think you have what it takes to stand by his side. You are plain at best and while you are a runner, you have done so infrequently this year that you are far from tone and you know he looks every inch it. And you have seen the girl, his ex. Sweetie, time to step out of the clouds, plant yourself on the ground. Your type is out of your reach. You and the basketball player. Or the Navy pilot. Equal vanity points. Equally outlandish matches. Why would he choose you? Just think on that. What in anything that has happened suggests he will choose you?"

It is amazing everything that can be said to your heart and mind and spirit in the space of a few seconds, even sitting in church. We think the church is sacred ground against the enemy, that we cannot feel his effects within its walls and he should be burned by even attempting something. He is more crafty than that, unfortunately. He has convinced the world He does not exist, why should a building stop him? What are physical barriers when space and time mean nothing to him? He will attack your soul just as soon as attack your body. And do you want to know what that feels like? It is a wedge that drives itself between you and the subject of the lie. It left me feeling agitated and worried the entire drive home and at points throughout the day as to whether I had done something wrong by sitting with him. What finally ended it was taking a moment and screaming at the lie and telling God over and over I did not believe it and then deciding to do something I had learned weeks before: communicate, ask instead of dread, face the truth and move forward. The man in question confirmed that I had believed a lie. He was glad he got to see me before I left the state and that we had not gotten to engage in what will be, I am sure, a quickly escalating prank war (when it happens).

I forgot, consumed by the lie, the foundation of all of this, regardless of whether or not he likes me in return: he is my friend. We can laugh and joke and tell each other how badly we want a drink without the other beating down and instead saying, "I can recommend a good tap room." The Devil does not get to have the last word if you do not let him. Let him call me names like bookish and plain, I was told bookish is a fantastic word that is not said enough. Who is plain now? I see the world through a different set of eyes than he does, yes, but that does not make me plain or not good enough for him, as the Devil may want me to believe. In fact, it might make me excellent for him in more ways than one. Perhaps that is what Lucifer knows, how we are together, perhaps he fears what even something as baseline powerful as a friendship can do. Why not fray the edges while I sit and worry and destroy it myself out of fear? Oh how he loves to whisper such silly little things. If only they did not reek of his own agenda and fears. We are more powerful together than apart--believers in communion with each other.

After all, if the greatest trick the Devil ever played is convincing the world he does not exist, how much damage would it do to his lie, to see believers calling his bluff? His web of deceit. Battling past his utter bullshit. It sounds to me like we might be exactly his type and he does not like to lose.

For us, it may begin as recognizing a single lie.
For him, it is the beginning of the unraveling of the fabric. I am not sure he believes in loose ends.

To Him...I Believed You Impossible

I saw this little snippet tonight as a share from a girlfriend's Facebook page and it stopped me cold, dumped freezing water on my head, and then watched me stagger from vertigo. And I lie here on my bed processing more and more that final sentence, the one that hit me hardest: "But to me, the most important thing will be that you are falling in love with me, despite my thinking that it is impossible." It has put me on the edge of tears because it has exposed a deep-seated fear I have about you, my husband, predicated entirely on the foundation of a lie.

I believe your love for me impossible sometimes...or most times, if I am truly honest. I pass unnoticed to many, if not all guys, from where I am seated. And I am just struck with how that can be. Everything I learned at Focus this summer goes against all of this. Our relationship, you to me and me to you, is a reflection, the closest reflection this side of life, that exists to mirror what my and your relationship with God should look like individually. One spouse to another. God to His creation. Bride to her Bridegroom.

And yet, you love ME. You love my stupid jokes and how puns make me smile. You love how I turn an unseen shade of red whenever anyone, but especially you, teases me. You love how I cannot help but sing with the radio--EVERY song that I know--which may be all of them for hours on end, depending on the station. You forgive the fact that my enjoyment of crass humor will probably be my one way ticket down to the inferno. You may share it. You may have reined it in.

You love me despite the fact that our bed, no doubt, has at least one day's outfit laying at the bottom of it. And just because I stripped it off and changed into something more comfortable upon returning home from work and not because it was strewn there after some fun. You love me despite the fact that I do not always know when I have taken teasing too far. You love me despite the fact that I drive well over the posted speed limit and hopefully have not yet had a speeding ticket in the time we have been together, or perhaps you were in the car when I got my first one, and it took everything inside of you not to burst out laughing while the officer was writing me up and it made you love me more--even if I was upset about you laughing at me.

And you know what else? You love a most ridiculous woman. TV commercials and movie trailers can reduce me to tears. When I hear Rascal Flatt's cover of Life is a Highway, I have a strong impulse to dance, but not just anywhere--in the kitchen...around the island...with my dog, Pepper, who has probably passed since marrying you. I cannot seem to finish a full glass of beer, even in good company for two hours, but can take my shots like a champion. Although, maybe with you I can, if drinks take longer than two hours and I am not driving. I have books coming out of my ears and continue to collect new ones, even before finishing the old ones. Do we have a library yet? And despite being an excessive introvert, I really do not know as often as I should when I should simply shut up and stop talking.

You love me despite the fact that I know I have questioned it, like I am right now. You love me despite my frustration that the camera sees everything except for me the way I imagine God looks upon His creation. You love me despite the fact that I have been cynical about love and how people show it. Somehow you overcame my opinion of that in how you treated me. I wonder what it will be that makes how you and I relate different.

You love me even though I oft communicate better in writing. We must have broken down major communication barriers or taken it slow enough that they simply stepped aside because we did not try to pummel through them. You love me enough not to have rushed me, I pray especially in the physical touch arena. I am skittish and frazzled now even thinking about it. You should use that to your teasing and flirtatious advantage.

But you know what matters most about this quandary realizing this about your love for me? It exposes the fact that by even questioning the fact that you love me despite all my annoying little habits and married me in light of the little ticks and greatest flaws I have, how often have I disqualified God's own love for me on the same grounds? How often have I accepted the love I believe I deserve, not the love God tells me I deserve? Not the sacrificial love He has given me?

If I have believed even your love impossible, what then, have I believed about the Father's love? I have not even married you yet...I do not even know if I know who you are and look at what you have taught me about love. Look at what our LORD revealed about Himself by means of a relationship I have yet to experience even a taste.

Can you even imagine that love?

In this moment, I finally see a glimpse of it.

Yours,

Alex

To Him...

The very first time someone told me to sit down and write a letter to you, I was a sophomore at university. A girlfriend was explaining that writing things out, particularly stressors directly related to your presence or lack there of, would lessen the load. She has gone on to have a string of unhealthy and damaging relationships, so I don't put much stock in her formula for preparing for a husband. Yet, I cannot remember if I actually wrote one. I may have started it and never finished, long hand like it should be, in my crazy cursive handwriting that has been dubbed a crowning achievement of the left-handed populace by my discriminately right-handed handed social circle.

I best apologize in advance for that, my left-handed orientation. Unless you find yourself of the same orientation, I will forever have to be on your left side, so as not to cause a conflict amongst opposing dominant genetics. As if that were not all you had to contend with, I am head-to-toe recessive genes: blue eyes, left-handed, and skin that burns so fast you would swear I was a ginger.

All of the science aside, I should be honest with you, right? I marry you, therefore, this conversation is probably not uncommon, at least, I should hope not. Brutal honesty? From where I am sitting: you scare me half to death. And it is not that I do not want to be married to you, because I do. Just ask some of my girlfriends and they can attest to the fact that I have days where a man to put his arm around me and pull me close and a man to kiss sounds like the best thing this side of heaven.

Those days are hard days.
Those days make me question a lot.
Why?

It flies in the face of everything I have been taught in church. Respectable young ladies do not have such desires. Respectable young women keep their hands to themselves. Impeccably brought up young ladies do not flirt. I hope you are prepared for this mentality. I hope it does not intimidate you or come across as a lack of interest. What am I saying, it probably will. I have no idea how to communicate that affection.

When I flirt, I do not even realize I am doing it until someone points it out. Which is perfectly acceptable, right, because I will have seduced you with my awkward. Physical touch of almost any kind, even the thought of it, makes me turn an unseen shade of red on the color spectrum. As of right now, I have never kissed anyone. Perhaps it is unrealistic, but I think it would be utterly fantastic if you were the only one I ever did. My cousin was lucky enough that her first kiss, at 22, was to the man she married the following spring. Which consequently, the thought of my first kiss makes my chest concave.

You want to know something else? I really hope you like dumb jokes or, in the least, can tolerate them without rolling your eyes. I am sorry, you can blame a good man I know for that unleashing of character. Perhaps that is inconsequential, but somehow, humor is where people draw lines. I prefer to doodle on mine.

But, all of this, centers around a single all-encompassing fear: messing it up with you. Saying or doing something wrong. Assuming instead of asking you. Cultivating a friendship that I then proceed to blow out of the water before anything can even progress because of an action, a word, a gesture that I said or did, or worse, failed to do. To be even more honest, I have no idea how our whole meeting, interaction, and relationship will work, let alone get off the ground. Is that a bad thing to say? You have to understand--the more I learn about relationships and marriage and guy/girl interactions, I find myself wondering how relationships begin at all.

I know some great and Godly men who are single and it blows my mind because I do not understand how there is any of you left to chose from when there are so few available to begin. And I see the women of my generation and I see the Godly women and I see the women whose behavior would never have been tolerated in historical society and see how they are the first to go off the marriage market which leaves my head spinning. And then my married and engaged girlfriends tell me how my single status bewilders them because I am so funny, smart, beautiful, and Godly. High compliments for sure, but missing the point. That combination of characteristics does not guarantee me you, only a life in which I can live crazy dangerous and on the edge, if I were not so afraid.

It all hinges on that: my fear. I hope when you enter my life, whether you are in it now or have yet to show, that you will challenge my fear and encourage the risk. And here is the linch pin, when you like me, I hope you would just say it. I would like to think that when that time comes, I will not be quite so fearful and that I would take the risk and the chance to tell you the same thing. I have never been able to say it before which everyone says is my problem--how can you act if you do not know.

And if distance is a hinging factor, I apologize now. I keep bouncing back and forth between Colorado and Pittsburgh and the idea of moving to Portland or London for graduate school. Distance is rough and I am not one of its vehement champions because I desire spending time with people above everything else in my relationships. Emails and texts are wonderful, but so are phone calls and Skype. And despite even those forms of communication and technology, I do not like the notion that exists when friends or even you, would become this beautiful idea behind a computer screen.

I do not want a beautiful idea.
I want what is real.

I know you scare the hell out me because I have never been so close with a man before.

I know this makes me become flustered easily in my relationships with men because I am so bad at distinguishing what is innocent jokes from what is flirtatious.

I know that it will take work and a lot of it, regardless of distance, whether there is a twenty minute drive or a twenty hour drive between the two of us.

A good man I met this spring gives me hope for you because I know he would not cave in upon meeting my father. He may never meet him, but you will and until this spring, I was not sure men existed that my father would not laugh off his property. I now know one and you would make two. The numbers are climbing.

Despite my fears predicated upon your existence, you need to remember only this one thing: I cannot wait to fall in love with you. I have waited twenty-two years and every day God has shown me ways in which I am getting stronger and in ways I am weak. I know I have days where I want you so bad my skin is the only thing stopping my body from going everywhere at once. I know it will not always be easy, but life, nor God, ever promises that.

And here is the final thing you should know: I will keep waiting for you. My life is not on hold. I have not stopped living, but I have waited longer than culture has ever declared possible so that I am known fully only by you. It is a mystery I cannot wait to experience with you.

Just know that.
I have waited and am waiting.
I may berate you severely if you take a decade to show, but I am here.
I am not going anywhere.

Yours,

Alex

Promised vs. Engaged

Note: The promise ring I reference in this writing is in reference to a place holder for an engagement ring, not the promise/purity ring worn to demonstrate sexual purity prior to marriage.


Over the past few days my mom and I have had some interesting discussions involving this trend in relationships that I have noticed becoming pronounced amongst my friends. I do not know if anyone else is observing this particular phenomena amongst couples, especially Christian ones, but I find myself wary of the consequences it may bring. It is yet another affect of our dating relationships that I, personally, believe will prove more harmful than helpful. It grants the feeling of security and commitment when it, in actuality, puts full commitment on a stand still, satiating the feminine party and allowing the men to continue to build gumption enough to ask the all important question, on bended knee. It is a way to test the waters and suss out the possibility of rejection. It is the definition of actuarial science: probability, statistics, and assessment of risk. It is ridiculous. It is this idea of the "promise" ring, or in my family's derisive vocabulary "engaged to be engaged."

Promise rings, historically, have been a tradition, possibly beginning as early as the Middle Ages. These rings were, generally, given from a man to a woman with whom express intention of marriage was being made, but the money to wed or the financial stability to keep a wife was lacking without a man's commission. Ability to wed was entirely financially driven and matches were often subject to the approval of family or wealthy patrons. No physical contact of any kind was allowed prior to the wedding and couples engaged to be married were under strict supervision, unlike today's relational culture. Promise rings, however, were a statement of engagement with the idea that a wedding ring or a wedding was the thing that could not be afforded.

The trend I see amongst my friends and fellow believers, however, is a corruption of the original intention of the promise ring: its use a place holder for engagement, hence a ring stating we are engaged to be engaged. It is a ring that signifies that a man loves you and plans to marry you, but who has not yet proposed. It is something given, with the expectation of a proposal and proper ring soon to follow. That, right there, is the problem. It is commitment without commitment. It is the binding of yourself to another person, but not officially because he has not formally asked for your hand. It is an outrageous notion.

I believe that this practice causes great harm. It leaves people in a state of waiting. I do not believe in waiting, unless it is a very good reason. I am sorry, but a man is not one of those good reasons. He can either propose and make it official to everyone that you ARE getting married or not. There should be no in between, no ring saying I am going to propose soon. No! You can propose or you can leave. Those should be the two choices. I am not suggesting that at the time he presents you with a promise ring you should leave him. I am saying that he needs to understand, upfront, that you have expectations and a promise ring is not one of them. You want a proposal, a wedding, and to be married...to him. A promise ring practically declares the inevitable, so I do not understand why it is in practice in the first place. Most of my friends who had promise rings got engaged within the following six months and are now married, others are expecting an engagement any week now. Why not just skip the promise ring all together?! If you know you're going to propose, spending money on a promise ring is uncalled for, I don't care if you believe it to be romantic.

Ladies, do not compromise. I hate it when people say, "Ladies, don't settle." We all settle. Everyone settles. People that don't settle on one person are called man-whores or players or easy women. So telling us women not to settle for the best man is ridiculous. What we should be saying is DON'T COMPRISE. Do not you dare compromise your values or your beliefs or who you know yourself to be and what you want out of life. If you refuse to compromise, you will be able to settle down with a man who is at your level and you won't be "settling" for someone less. Time to remove that tired and treacherous statement from all vocabulary, particularly believers' conversations, once and for all.

This is why I refuse to compromise on this notion of promised vs. engaged. Promised is now the precursor to engagement. It is an unnecessary and toxic middle step. You have to be able to move on with your life, to take the next step, especially because my friends, my age are marrying. We are still young, promise rings and the waiting for the proposal keep both parties stagnant. It lets men take more time. If they don't know if they are ready to marry when they offer you a promise ring, they should not be giving you one. That is why it is so damaging. It still gives him time to decide when to you that ring screams that he already knows and you have found your "One" (another myth I won't get into here).

Do NOT compromise. Promise rings are silly. I believe they have two exceptions to their use and only two: #1) a military relationship, in which the boyfriend is deployed or #2) a relationship where distance outside of military deployment is an issue. In these circumstances I believe the ring should be one the man already owns, not one he purchased--that is an engagement ring--and that ring signifies, "I will come back for you." It is a promise to come back, not a promise of proposal.

Promising to propose is hollow. Promising to marry is significant. You can begin making plans together, you can begin having those more difficult more intimate conversations. You can begin building a life in the same direction. A promise ring means none of that. Promises can be broken just like engagements are, but to treat a promise ring with equal weight of an engagement ring is treading water indefinitely. People have drowned for less. I don't want you to be one of them.

I know I may have offended some of you, perhaps even more of you than I realize. I know I have some friends who are currently promised and waiting on their own proposals that may become quite upset at my words. I only say them because I love you and I have seen how we date and the damage it causes and how fallen we are and how we complicate relationships more than we have to. I think promise rings complicate relationships. They are meant to be temporary: the dog-tags given back to the sailor when his ship returns from sea; the ring given back to the man who travelled abroad for six months for work or school or adventure but came back to pursue you, like he promised. He kept his promise it is time to move forward.

Perhaps together, perhaps apart.

But, you have to move forward. You have to keep living your life. You cannot spend it waiting. If you spend your life waiting without owning your expectations, I fear you will always be waiting. I want you to chase the life God has planned for you and I want you to run wild within the boundaries of that, with faith like a child and an awe and wonder that is so often lost as we get older. I want you to find someone who can run wild with you, who can pursue their own calling while supporting yours and you supporting theirs. I want you to experience sacrificial love, but not like this. Not by sacrificing on the words and glitter of a promise. Sacrificial love is a vow, overcome by death, hardened in the line of failure, and ultimately triumphant. It does not fear the peaks or valleys. It steps out in faith, in courage, in union.

Do not compromise. Do not lose yourself waiting for the proposal and planning your future around that expectation. Live the life God gave you and continue to live it with the person you love, the person who makes you laugh, the person who believes in you and what God has set in place for you, the person who makes you feel most like yourself, the person who reveals yet another side of God you may not have seen without them.

Keep focus on the vow, it protects its promises.

Expect a man to own to it.

Allow God to protect you from the ones that won't, until He introduces the one that will.

Protect your hearts, sisters. For the heart is a muscle and therefore, cannot be broken, but crushed.

A worthy man will ask on bended knee, not give a promise stating his intent to do so.

Untangle the deceptions. Lighten the burden. Increase communication. Lessen the heartache.

Never forget He loved you first. Never forget His love is perfect. Never forget you belong to Him.

You're a Virgin?! Why?

My first exposure to the notion that I was sheltered came my freshman year of high school. Not only had my family moved 3/4 the way across the country (Washington to Pennsylvania), but I was contending with high school students I did not know how to handle. I was the oddity, that girl that had moved seven times. "Is your father military?" is always the question I get, even now at 22 years old. Families do not tend to move around a lot, at least not the ones I now found myself immersed in. It was the opposite of families I was raised with.

My father works in nuclear waste clean-up and nuclear power plant construction--when one job is done it is on to the next. The average is about two and a half years, three is we're lucky. The fact that we have had the same Pennsylvania address for eight years is outrageous. Perhaps I should insert a caveat with that: it is not for lack of trying. We were supposed to move after I graduated high school, but that never happened and I returned to Colorado for three years of university after having resided there a decade previously. My most complete memories begin with the three and a half years of my life in the Rockies.

The commonwealth of Pennsylvania, however, is structured differently, especially my regionally famous high school, which I hated for the first two years of attendance. I was picked on for being the ferocious animal rights activist (yes, I was that girl...) as classmates placed pictures of butchered wolves in my notebooks and slaughtered horses in my textbooks. I gained my first non-familialy designated nickname, because I don't know you well enough to tell you those (and if I do, we'll talk sometime): freshman. The junior and senior girls on my bus called me that. So did one of the theater girls.

My parents sounded overbearing to all of them. I never went to parties. I left Washington without telling this one basketball player that I "liked" him and did not call him when he wrote his number in my yearbook the week prior to my cross-country jaunt. I never did drugs or smoked (my father threatened to disinherit me if I did). I never swore worse than utilizing "crap." Outside of a sip of Budweiser at six (disgusting, my father declared he would never have to worry about me in high school), some Don Pérignon for finishing unpacking our house in PA, and a taste of peach schnapps my father poured into his orange juice at dinner one night my junior year, my first experience with alcohol was on my 21st birthday, which left some people I attended Christian university with, mystified. I had never slept with a boy, let alone kissed one, which has not changed.

The girls called me "freshman" because I had freshman morals. I did not do anything I was suppose to do in high school, like rebel. Clearly, these girls did not understand my idea of rebellion. Moving all over growing up makes running away appealing--rebelling is not always sex, drugs, and rock n' roll. As these girls graduated, however, their conversations grew distant. I disliked their stories of hooking up with their brother's roommate when they drove up for a weekend visitation at his college (what they did not realize is that his brother's roommate or friend won't exist like that if he ever finds out). I disliked hearing how not being easy made me worth less, that my lack of experience defined me.

It was never a difficult decision for me growing up. My cousin had a promise ring, vowing her virginity until marriage and I grew up respecting her approach to men, even the confidence she possessed in telling some guys to walk on because they made her sick. She married when I was in middle school and her fiancé said that in the weeks leading up to the wedding he grew anxious because he wanted nothing more than to remove her promise ring and hurl it at the wall across their honeymoon suite. As I am now a decade older than I was then, I can say that I greatly appreciate that imagery and would very much like my husband one day to actually do something similarly dramatic in deed and not just in word. I would, however, like my ring back, so it cannot go down a drain or out a window or get fed to the dog.

The first, outright, challenge to my promise ring (which is a classic silver band on my left ring finger) came the summer after my sophomore year. It was during a poetry seminar at a two-week writing institute I attended every summer. The only guy in my group brought up my ring and I explained that it was my promise to God, myself, my parents, and my (future) husband, that I will only sleep with him when we are married. Immediately, he declared my promise unrealistic and impossible to achieve so it was a waste of my time even attempting such a feat. "You won't make it to the alter a virgin," he insisted. "It cannot be done." I explained that my cousin had and she was happily married. He brushed it off, "She must have lied. No one can do it." The conversation spiraled from there. One of my friends tried to defend, explaining that it was my choice and she found it admirable I stood up for it. He would have none of it, "Even if you date a super duper Christian guy, you won't make it." Even looking back on that conversation from six years ago, I firmly believe he won our argument, even if he truly didn't. I viewed it as a loss because no matter what I had said, his opinion never changed. He called me crazy and fool-hardy and said he won't be surprised when I have multiple partners before getting married. I climbed into my mom's car twenty minutes later crying. I had never defended my purity before and I believed I had been steamrolled.

I have gotten a lot better since then. I have friends that believe the same as I do and we encourage one another. I have met many stand-up men, both Christian and non, and my faith is not utterly shattered by these conversations that whomever I marry will expect more of me than what I am prepared to give. As one of my favorite abstinence speakers said, "No ringy, no dingy." I cannot help but laugh at the crass, but utter truth of that statement. Just because I have found a solid foundation does not mean my views go unchallenged. In Christian circles, the perception is married or virgin upon sight of my ring, a quick question eliminates the first option. In non-Christain circles, the assumption is engaged or married, followed by shock at the actual meaning, often genuine confusion.

Back in the fall I had a conversation with a coworker, a man who perceives himself as God's gift to women physically and in all aspects of the bedroom because he is adventurous. You do with that information what you will, I am not elaborating more than that. He asked about my ring and I explained, which some people think is my first mistake, but I am not ashamed of what it stands for. If men know upfront they are either going to respect my decision or be completely bitter. It narrows down your options, and trust me, what you have left is where you should be looking in the first place. He asked why, outside of my faith, what practical reason could possibly exist for such an exception. The basis of his logical argument was this, "If you don't sleep with a man before you marry him, how will you know if he's bad in bed? You're just setting yourself up for lousy sex the rest of your marriage. That's why us atheists introduce sex into relationships (pardon his sweeping generalization that all non-believers are loose). We want to make sure we're compatible before we make a larger commitment to each other." Clearly, his interaction with virgins are limited, if not singular to me. My only rebuttal to this flawed argument, "If I have never slept with any man, but my husband, how would I know he's bad in bed? I would have no one to compare him to. And besides, isn't that a piece of the fun of being married? Even if it is, what you call "bad sex," it won't stay that way. Trust me."

Regardless of the fact that when I work with him he still seems unsure what exactly to do with me, since he cannot talk about his sexual exploits, his opinion on the matter has not changed. Neither has mine. So, to answer everyones' questions: Yes, I am a virgin. Yes, I am proud of that. No, you will not be able to change my mind. Is there fear associated with my honeymoon? Of course, but I have also never had a serious relationship (or really even a non-serious one) and if I were dating the man I am to marry, I trust that God will grant me serenity. I have been told that security like that overcomes fears we cannot even imagine living without. Is it a struggle? For me, a lot of time, no, but other times the worry over whether or not I will die a virgin overwhelms me. It is irrational, but I don't think I want to leave this earth without experiencing the most original human bond created by God. To say that I would feel cheated, even at 22, is an understatement.

And yes, some days the thought of sleeping with a guy sounds wonderful, I admit it, freely. I'm not perfect. I don't want you to think I'm this unblemished little flower. I find men attractive and thereby, distracting, just like any other woman. But it is a constant reminding and realigning of the goal: unity in marriage, without intrusion. Honor to God and my parents because I had the courage to stand up to everyone who said I'm crazy, that it's impossible for me to make it to the alter a virgin, and that even dating a wonderful Christian man is not enough.

And now, six years later, I understand the flaw in my very first conflict over purity. Everything he said reflected human will-power and self-control. We have them and demonstrate these skills, but they are intrinsically corrupted. I understand that I cannot do this alone. I understand that this is something I share with Deus. I understand that the support of my friends and family, including men, makes all the difference.

What you need to understand is that my decision is none of your concern. That was my mistake: believing that he had won an argument that he had no stake in. He just wants to see me fail.

When you have some stake in my purity, you can come and talk, but otherwise, you can stop asking, "Why?" It's a tired question and I will give you the same answer every time because, in the end, it is between me and God, it has never been between me and you anyway.

When Words Fail

“And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever should draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” Hebrews 11:6

It was the spring of my sophomore year and I spent a lot of time in the secretary’s office at my college. She had an incredible sense of humor and she made everyone feel lighter, even when the burdens of life weighed us down. She was my sounding board and I discussed everything with her. Her interns always chimed in with their thoughts and perspectives.

On this particular day, I was asking for advice on my testimony. I had never formally shared it and now the group I met with once a week had asked me to be the testimony of the night. I did not know where to begin. Should I give a quick overview of my life and then testify from my current struggles and how my youth leader’s suicide had quickly unraveled the people around me? Or, should I talk about my life more whole picture? I was at a loss.

One of the interns looked at me and offered, “Well, Sheridan, you could do that, but you could start at your conversion moment too. That way everyone understands how you came to Christ and you can proceed from a common ground.” Unfortunately for her, I do not have a conversion moment. I was raised in the Church and do not remember a time where I did not know Christ as Savior and Son of God. My faith has grown more personal since high school, but I have never not believed. It was half the reason I was struggling, I did not know where to start. The secretary made some suggestions, but her intern appeared dumbfounded. The only thing she said, “I’m sorry, Sheridan, but I think it’s kind of sad you don’t have a conversion story.”

Words. Spoken in that moment. Destructive. Words--fallen just like our nature.

Language is one of the most powerful tools we possess as humans. It enables us to communicate with one another across unspeakable barriers. Words, though, have this double-edged tendency to be both our greatest achievement and our greatest downfall.

One simple statement, spoken without malice, passed judgment on my worthiness to offer my testimony, but further than that, questioned my salvation and faith in Christ. Granted, she may never have intended for me to feel that way, but the way it was spoken—with shock and pity—communicated these things. We can never judge someone’s faith by the existence of a conversion story--many may not have one. Belittling the value of my testimony because I have never slept around or done drugs, waited to drink until I was 21, and do not remember a defining moment where I did not have God and now do, is a disservice to the stories I have within me. Whether or not someone’s faith story pleases you is not the issue, the issue is do you recognize God’s fingerprints in the faith they have?

~Prayer from St. Augustine of Hippo~

O Lord my God, I believe in you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Insofar as I can, insofar as you have given me the power, I have sought you. I became weary and I labored.  O Lord my God, my sole hope, help me to believe and never to cease seeking you. Grant that I may always and ardently seek out your countenance. Give me the strength to seek you, for you help me to find you and you have more and more given me the hope of finding you.   Here I am before you with my firmness and my infirmity. Preserve the first and heal the second. Here I am before you with my strength and my ignorance. Where you have opened the door to me, welcome me at the entrance; where you have closed the door to me, open to my cry; enable me to remember you, to understand you, and to love you. Amen.

...How Writing Can Quench Your Soul...

I do not believe many, if any, of you know this, but, I absolutely HATE writing. It is one of the most soul twisting, heart crushing, and convicting things I do when the need arises. And let me tell you what this need feels like: words may spill from my pores, glands, and finger tips, leaving me with the appearance of an Ebola victim if I do not put pen to paper or hands to keys. It is the complete opposite of what my promise ring signifies--it cannot be repressed, held in check, or subjected to self-control.

There is one definitive reason why not writing may, in fact, concave my chest: I was born to do it.

There. I said it. I have readily admitted it. As much as I despise the agony writing puts me in, because it forces me to confront things about myself that I never told counselors for my three years in Colorado. It puts my strengths and heroic flaws all out on the table. It demonstrates how humans experience the Seven Deadly Sins, although I believe there to be many more. My written words can tell you my feelings, my thoughts, my horrors and nightmares, my dreams, my longings, my wounds, my assaults, my struggles, my failures, my triumphs...

I suppose that sounds odd, hearing a writer say how much they hate writing. It is strange to hear a writer that purely enjoys it and writes from that. I do not believe those writers exist anymore, and if they do, they will not for long. Writers like that do not write things that publish. Writers like that write things that only friends and family read and that is rarely the goal of a writer. Writers are tortured individuals. Pull any book you can think of off the shelf and I will tell you what the writer has experienced of piece of in their life: it's all in the words they pressed to the page.

J.K. Rowling says it all the time.

Professors of writing say it all the time.

No wonder editors drink when they read the things we submit.

I am not suggesting that writers, however, are joyless people, because we are not. Our gift, and our curse, is that we feel things deeper than most people do. We have the ability, by talent and extensive refining, to take those circumstances and make you feel them too. If I write from a place of despair, you will be in it with me--I've done it before. If it is a place of hope, you will root for me.

Writers understand what C.S. Lewis meant by the "weight of glory." He may have been addressing believers, but only writers understand the imperative in his word choice. Now, I am not a seasoned athlete. Yes, I did basketball and soccer when I was younger and flirted with the idea of volleyball in middle school, but those quickly evaporated. I started running in college. Here is what I mean: I run because I love it, but also because I hate it. I hate how I feel when I am not running, which has been months now. I am on a low, stagnant. And then I run. I also lack discipline, which I am struggling towards gaining more of each day, but training takes discipline. Your body takes discipline, not punishment. "Weight" is innately heavy, usually a multiple person job, yet Atlas held the Heavens ("Glory") on his back, not out of discipline because he thought bench-pressing Heaven was good training, but out of punishment. He alone. And "Glory." Our light, our goodness, all mixed in with our failures and their shadows. Glory encompasses all of that. How much do you believe you weigh now? How much do you think the person next to you weighs? Would it be easier if you helped them and they helped you? And a third person helped you two in return? And a fourth? Weight of Glory. Powerful words, but could you just believe that? It is hard to do--doubt is part of our weight.

I opened with how much I hate writing. Yet, I followed by saying if I did not write, I may spontaneously combust. Somehow, I have managed to not do that for two and a half years. That is how long I have hated writing and refused to write.

You have to understand: I grew up writing. Evergreen, Colorado, grade school. Pages and pages of spare paper gone each day because I was concocting this great epic that unfolded in Elk Meadow behind my house. It involved wild horses. At eight years old, they are the most important. In middle school, I had binders full of story ideas and began the layout of my first novel. I have rewritten the first 150 pages seven times since then. It may never be finished.

As a high school freshman, we had to write a story about moving west. My group helped me brainstorm, outline, plot, and provided character names. I spent two days in my room generating a fourteen page masterpiece that was turned in on Monday. My senior year, I took three english classes and wrote a twenty-two page short story involving the origins of werewolves in Minnesota from their "Weird" states book. In college, I rolled in declared as an English Literature major with an emphasis in Creative Writing. A novel was in my future.

Sophomore year, writing crushed my heart and shattered my soul. I poured out every piece of myself into all short story, poem, and nonfiction prompts handed my way. My professor told me she believed I had been told my entire life that I was a good writer. Yes, it is true. People have said that about me my whole life.

Well, she said, it is time that stopped because you have a lot to learn.

Insert knife into my aorta and twist. I bled to death that fall semester. By December, I had submitted for a change of major to history and have not looked back, until now, this year.

Every once and a while I will hear a story of a writer that burned out. The longer they wrote, the less profound they became. The more dry they became. It was clear they should probably stop writing for a time. Renew. Refresh. Restart. Writers cannot just stop.

But that is exactly what I did. I stopped writing. I stopped taking literature classes. Every time I thought about writing, I panicked. No story ideas came to me. No new characters names that I could spend hours mapping--ask my father's secretaries, I spent a whole afternoon with post-it notes creating a world and its operational government on one of their empty walls as a high school junior. Everything about it stopped. It was then I believed the greatest lie: I have nothing left to say. That was how I felt. I believed I had said everything there was to say and I was a desert now. No life, just prickly fauna.

Until one year ago, I took my final writing class at my Christian college: Christian Writers. Until last semester when I signed up for Travel Writing because I had room in my schedule. Until three weeks ago, when I would ordinarily find something humorous or convicting I had learned once every few months to share, but now, I have stories pouring from me because of things that had happened at my best friend's wedding.

I can tell you about dialogue surrounding a steamer. I can express the importance of birth control pills and the effect their loss poses to a honeymoon. I am still trying to find a better way to say that I met a man that is 6'8" but have yet to formulate that one.

A lot has changed since I wrote about my conversation with the military recruiter. I have decided it would take a miracle for me to accept an offer from any branch of service. I have decided within the last week that a history Masters is probably not in my future. I have admitted that I am a writer and by putting fingers to keys have declared myself liberated from the poison that shattered me two and a half years ago. I am telling you that I am going to get my Master's in English Writing: Book Publishing and I will run over you with my father's Corvette if you try to stop me. I am writing to say that as I have journaled sporadically over the past year, even in the past six months, my view has shifted.

 I have struggled with being single because a lot of my friends are not. But my friend's wedding taught me that I cannot be self-conscious about being single because you cannot be free with others if you are trapped in yourself and worried about what a smile here or a wink there means.

I have learned that imprisoning yourself within other people's expectations or limitations of your abilities will slowly strangle you into sacrificing the truest pieces of yourself. Yes, I love history, but I know it was not what I was meant to do. Yes, I love Rome and Latin, but I love Literature and Writing and what words produce and I can no longer trade on that.

I understand what it means to be attacked, to be judged, because I have both attacked and judged others. I know intimately the details of being a hypocrite. I believe in beautiful sights and scenes and believe there are two ways to get there: writing and photography.

Quintessentially, I have regained my childhood. Yes, as much as I say I hate writing, there is something that has not changed, my LOVE of the written word and languages and how no matter where we are from photographs, writing, and music, they all convey the same emotions across unimaginable barriers.

Eugene Delacroix once expressed this simply, "What moves those of genius, what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough."

For the past two years I thought I had said enough. That my soul had uttered its last written syllable. But the amazing thing is, regardless of whether you believe you possess a talent or a divinely inspired gift, as I do, a soul that writes will mend itself. It may take two years or twenty years and it may take you months of stilted structure and frustrating typos to regain momentum, but your soul will mend itself and in the process you will learn to forgive those who inflicted wounds on you. Writing will be the way you cope, how you express your anger and distrust, how you express your love for your family or that one person.

Words can be a grand gesture. You just have to take the initiative.

And sometimes remembering the eight year old little girl, the one in the pink stripe shirt you swear you would never be caught dead in now. Perhaps remembering her, with her back pressed against a glass aquarium pane, her messy curls spilling over her shoulders, and seeing a tuxedoed whale swimming behind her, a goofy grin plastered all over her face--seeing her and believing that as she stands separated mere inches from one of her inspirations growing up--that she knew, even then, that words and not the water were where she belonged.